If you haven’t heard about Google Analytics 4 (GA4), or you have heard but haven’t planned when you are going to transition, then this week’s insights is for you.

Google Analytics 4 was released quietly out of its beta launch program and into full production earlier this year. It still had a number of unwelcome bugs to iron out. Overall user adoption was somewhat slow – advice from our analytics expert was to ‘hold on setting it up’.

Since then, most if not all of these bugs have been fixed as well as new features added – the result is GA4 has become an extremely well-polished and amazingly powerful analytics tool – thanks to our analytics expert, they now advise – ‘it’s now time for small businesses to begin the transition’.

Google has advised that Google Analytics 4 is going to replace the current version of GA sometime next year.

For those not familiar with Google Analytics 4, it is a complete reimagining of how Google plans to track and analyse user data. The insights that you can generate are mind-blowing in comparison to what is possible with Universal Analytics (the current version of GA).

Benefits from early adoption of the GA4 platform for small business owners:

  • Future proof your data collection systems for the inevitable closing down of Universal Analytics in 2022, and avoid data loss or gaps of missing data
  • Get much deeper and more valuable insight into the performance of your website, marketing campaigns and products, so you can make fast and profitable changes
  • Visualise the entire path of your marketing funnel from first touch to conversion, and establish where you can make huge improvements
  • Customise your data collection framework so it fits your exact business needs, to maximise the value of your measurement and analysis
  • Figure out what users are doing when they get to your site, so you can learn what your customers like and don’t like, and tailor your offering to suit.


We encourage businesses to get Google Analytics 4 set up in parallel with your Universal Analytics set-up. When your business switches over to GA4 permanently, you’ll have a long track record of GA4 native data which you can use to compare and analyse your results.

If you would like to read more on how to get started with Google Analytics 4 you check out this article. If you aren’t ready to transition and are using Google Analytics universal analytics then check that you have the eCommerce best practices in place.