Google made the change official two weeks ago. On March 16, the company announced that Universal Analytics, the version of Google Analytics used on almost every small business site we know, will stop processing new data on July 1, 2023. Paying Analytics 360 customers have until October 1, 2023.
The replacement is Google Analytics 4. It has existed since October 2020, but most users have ignored it so far, which is understandable: the tool seems unfinished and the reports are never where you expect them to be.
Fifteen months may seem like a long time. It is not, for the reasons explained below.
Why install GA4 now?
Because an analytics tool cannot go back in time. GA4 only knows what happened after it was installed. Universal Analytics data is not transferred, as Google has clearly stated.
Waiting therefore carries a significant cost. If you install GA4 this spring, by the summer of 2023 you will have a full year of comparison data. If you install it the week before the switch, you will start from zero, with no way of knowing whether your busy season is better or worse than the previous year.
For a seasonal business, and there are many in Quebec, this is precisely the purpose of analytics. July does not look like February. Without the previous July's data, it is impossible to distinguish a good summer from a weaker one in your own numbers.
The good news is that running both tools at once is simple. You add the GA4 tag while keeping the old one, and both collect data in parallel. On most WordPress sites, this takes a few minutes with a plugin or through Google Tag Manager. Google's help page introducing the next generation of Analytics explains the setup adequately, despite a somewhat promotional tone.
If you take only one step this week, we recommend this one.
How do you rebuild your conversions in GA4?
This is the step where many businesses are likely to be caught off guard.
Universal Analytics was built around sessions and pageviews, and success was measured through "goals". GA4 is built around events: everything is an event, whether a page view, a scroll or a click on a phone number. Your old goals do not carry over. You must redefine what counts as a result, configure it again and mark those events as conversions.
This step is in fact the most beneficial aspect of the transition. Many small sites still have goals set up years ago by someone who left the business long ago, measuring things no one reviews. Being required to rebuild offers an opportunity to ask a simple question: what do we actually want visitors to do on this site?
Which conversions should a small business site track?
- Contact form submissions.
- Clicks on a phone number or an email address.
- Completed bookings or reservations.
- Newsletter sign-ups.
- Clicks toward directions or a map.
Five conversions are more than enough. Beyond that, for example with forty events tracked, none is actually reviewed.
Which GA4 setting should you change immediately?
Data retention. This setting will cause difficulties for many users later, which is why it deserves separate attention.
By default, GA4 keeps detailed event data for only two months. You can extend this to fourteen months in Admin, under Data Settings, then Data Retention. The setting does not affect standard reports, but it limits how far back explorations can go. With a two-month setting, a year-over-year comparison attempted next spring will come back half empty.
The change takes thirty seconds, and we recommend making it now.
Why export your Universal Analytics reports before July 2023?
The final task is less engaging, but essential: extract your historical reports from Universal Analytics and store them somewhere you control. A spreadsheet is sufficient: monthly visits, top pages, traffic sources, goal completions, over whatever period matters to you.
Google states that the old data will remain accessible for at least six months after the July 2023 cutoff. After that, it will be gone. For most small businesses, the loss would not be catastrophic, but some hold ten years of history there, the only record of how the business grew online. Rather than relying on memory a year and a half from now, we recommend a first export now and a second one next spring.
What lesson extends beyond analytics?
Your data is hosted on another company's platform, under its rules and on its calendar. Google made the decision and announced it, and every site in the world must now comply, ready or not. Neither the bakery nor the campground was consulted about the July 2023 deadline.
There is no reason for undue concern, nor to abandon Google Analytics. The tool is free, it works, and the event model suits phone usage better than the old pageview model. We do, however, recommend keeping your own copy of everything that matters: your numbers, your customer list, your photos.
Quebec is adding its own requirements. Law 25, the privacy reform passed last September, is coming into force in stages, and its rules on tracking technologies are set to apply from September 2023. In summary, a site using analytics tools in Quebec will have to inform visitors and, depending on how the tools work, obtain their consent. This is one more reason to keep tracking lean: fewer tools, less to explain and fewer points of failure.
If you are unsure what your site is currently measuring, start with that review. Open the account, examine what is actually being tracked, and write down the three figures you want to see every month. Most setups we review require less work than people fear, and the real gaps are usually on the conversion tracking side.
We recommend installing GA4 this week.