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Since the infancy of the internet, businesses with any kind of online presence have been using web analytics. They have used this to gather consumer data and to help guide their business decisions in increasingly profound ways.
Early analytics allowed businesses to view things like page clicks and server logs. Today’s analytics are complex enough to gather such valuable data. Some examples are session playbacks, heatmaps, customer lifetime value, and traffic sources. Businesses are also able to use data to predict purchase probability of particular users. They can get an accurate view of their potential revenue.
The History of Analytics
Early on, Urchin was the go to data collection program since it dropped the collection time down from more than a day to a matter of minutes. However, since Google’s purchase of Urchin in 2005, Google Analytics has become the most used data collection program in existence across nearly 30 million active sites.
As web analysis continues to evolve, Google develops newer programs to enhance its offerings to businesses.
The newest in these developments is Google Analytics 4 (GA4). GA4 is ready to meet the challenges facing businesses and their online presence today. It allows data from browsers and apps to be used collectively and is centered on user privacy. Also, it adheres to all the newest privacy regulations. Businesses can be assured that GA4 will help them to be in compliance with the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR.)
GA4, which launched in 2020, is set to replace Google Analytics completely by July of 2023 and those businesses that currently use Google Analytics will need to get on board to learn the new program and fully implement it before that time.
In Conclusion
While this may be a complicated process for those who rely heavily on analytics, fortunately there are companies who make it their business to make the transition easy. Get ready for Google Analytics 4 and learn more in the infographic below:
Source: InfoTrust
