As you may know, Google UA (Universal Analytics) has been replaced by Google Analytics 4 as of July 1, 2023. So we thought we would focus this post on a discussion of the notable differences between Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4.  There are a few changes you want to be aware of when looking at your G4 data. 

Here are the changes you want to be aware of:

1. Engagement Rate Replaces and Is the Opposite of Bounce Rate

Instead of looking at the number of bounces, you can now focus on the positive and see the amount of time someone spends on your web page.

User engagement is the amount of time someone spends on your web page with the in focus or app screen in the foreground, which allows you to measure when users actively use your site or app.

How Engagement Works

When a user begins a new session, Google Analytics starts to record the amount of time in the session (in milliseconds). The amount of time is sent to Analytics when any of the following happen:

1. The user moves the site or app screen to the background
2. The user focuses away from your web page
3. The user navigates away from the app screen or web page (e.g., the user closes the tab, window, or app; the user navigates to another screen or page)
4. The site or app crashes
5. The amount of time is sent in an engagement_time_msec parameter and added to the next collected event.

Google Analytics omits the engagement_time_msec parameter when there's no engagement time since the previous event in the session.

Google Analytics uses this information to populate engagement metrics like User engagement and Average engagement time.

Some standard reports, such as the Pages and screens and Events reports, include engagement metrics by default. You can also customize a report and create an exploration to include engagement metrics.

Finally, you can use the "Recently active users" audience or segment to create an audience or segment that uses engagement data for further analysis and marketing.

2. Sessions Replaces Unique Pageviews

Sessions has replaced "Unique Pageviews. It's defined as a period of time during which a user interacts with your website or app.

Here's How the Number of Sessions is Calculated

Analytics calculates the number of sessions that occur on your site or app by estimating the number of unique session IDs.

Where you can see session metrics

Session and User metrics are calculated through an estimation. Google Analytics provides a number of session metrics, including Session, Engaged sessions, and Engaged sessions per user. These metrics allow you to see data about the number of sessions that have started on your site or app.

The metrics appear in reports, such as Acquisition overview, User acquisition, and Engagement overview. You can also see session metrics in Explorations.

The session counts in your Google Analytics 4 property may be lower than the session counts in your Universal Analytics property. This is because Google Analytics 4 does not create a new session when the campaign source changes mid session, while Universal Analytics does create a new session under that circumstance.

3. Conversions Replaces Goals

You can record a conversion when someone visits a specific page on your website (formerly known as a URL destination "goal").

How It Works

You will need to create a separate event based on the page_view event that measures when someone views the specific page on your website.

Set up the Conversion

Step 1: Create an event for the confirmation page

To record a conversion whenever someone views a confirmation page, first create a separate event using the page_view event. In this case, you will use the generate_lead recommended event. You should use recommended event whenever possible, instead of custom events, to take advantage of new Analytics features as they become available.

In Google Analytics, click Admin.
Make sure you are in the correct account and property.

In the Property column, click Events.
Click Create event and then Create.
If you don't see the Create event button, you don't have permission to create events.
In the Custom event name field, enter a name for the event. In this example, enter "generate_lead".

In the Matching conditions section, enter the first matching condition. In this example, enter "event_name equals page_view".

Click Add condition.

Enter the second matching condition. In this example, enter "page_location equals https://www.example.com/contact-us-submitted".

In the Parameter configuration section, click Add modification twice. Because you are using a recommended event, you need to define each of the required parameters. Otherwise, Google Analytics will treat the event as a custom event.
In the first row, enter parameter "value" and value "100" to define the value of the lead in this example.
In the second row, enter parameter "currency" and value "USD" in this example.
Click Create.

Step 2: Mark the event as a conversion

Analytics hasn't received the new event yet, so you need to preemptively mark the event as a conversion.

In Google Analytics, click Admin.
Make sure you are in the correct account and property.
In the Property column, click Conversions.
Click New conversion event.
Enter the name of the new event, "generate_lead".

Verify the conversion event

When you mark an event as a conversion, it can take some time (from a few minutes up to a few hours) for the configuration to apply to the event.

Once your configuration is applied to the event, visit the confirmation page on your website. Then go to the Conversions by Event name card in the Realtime report and look for "generate_lead". If you see the event in the card, then Analytics is treating the event as a conversion.

Report on conversions

The quickest way to see all your conversions is in the Conversions report. The Conversions report shows you which conversion actions are most common, how many people performed each action, and how much revenue is associated with each action. The default conversion counting method is Once per event.

You can click an event name in the report to see more information about the event, including the number of times the event was triggered (event count) and the number of times it was triggered recently (event count in the last 30 minutes).

Next, you can go into the User acquisition report and select "generate_lead" from the drop down under Conversions. When you select the the conversion event from the drop down, you will be able to see the default channel grouping associated with a user's first session that generated the most conversions. The Conversions metric is available in most other reports.

Finally, you can go into the Conversion paths report in Advertising. The Conversion paths report helps you understand your customers’ paths to conversion and how different attribution models distribute credit on those paths.