By Nandan Aurangabadkar, Senior Consultant, Digital Analytics @ Digitas India

Most of the folks in Digital Analytics space are aware on 16^th March, Google announced that it will deprecate Universal Analytics next year, Universal Analytics properties will stop processing new hits on July 1, 2023, and Universal Analytics 360 properties will stop processing hits on October 1, 2023.

When it comes to Digital Analytics, here are 5 tips which are easy to adopt to ensure a well-calibrated setup for 2022.

1. Start Moving to Google Analytics 4/Google Analytics 4 (360)

As a part of one of the major revamps of the platform over the last decade, Google announced an overhauled version of Google Analytics in Oct 2020. 

Many marketers are still in a dilemma on whether or not this upgrade is worth adopting. Several performance and analytics managers have reached out to me with questions like, “Is Google Analytics 4 (GA4) better than Universal Analytics? Why do I need GA4?”

Even though GA4 differs from Google Analytics 3 (GA3), there are a lot of inherent advantages to using it which a lot of early adopters are enjoying by gathering year-on-year data and adapting to the same. 

The new Google Analytics (GA4) employs machine learning at its core and allows integration between analytics and Google Ads. The product specialists claim that this will help customers manage their data better, derive enhanced insights and facilitate the management of industry disruptions such as a ‘cookie-less’ future.

Proactively onboarding to GA4 data-collection will ensure you are equipped with enough data to utilize the tool to its full extent as the product develops. At the very least, you should set up a GA4 property before the end of July 2022 so that you have historical data ready for comparison

2. Kick start your plans to use for Server-Side Tag Management

Coupled with GA4, another technology announced in 2020 that businesses have been slow to adopt is server-side tag management.

Server-side tagging is better equipped to handle user privacy initiatives and to scrub accidental personally identifiable information (PII) collected about the user before it’s sent to analytics platforms.

Server-side tagging allows tag manager users to move measurement tag instrumentation out of their website or app into server-side processing via a cloud-based setup. It is a new way to instrument your application across devices. Server containers use the same tag, trigger and variable model that you are used to, while also providing new tools that allow you to measure user activity wherever it happens.

Here are the top 4 benefits of using server-side tagging: 

1. Reduced Client Load/Improved Performance – It is better positioned to absorb heavy loads of Java Scripts in the browser and improve website performance
2. Security – As the data is now processed in the backend (away from the device), there is no worry of exposing sensitive information to the device
3. Reduce the impact of Ad blockers – In case of server-side tracking, as the HTTP request is made to your own server and not to any tracking vendor’s server, no ad blocker will block the request
4. Governance and Control – With server-side tagging you enable an additional layer of governance while populating the data to the destination analytics platforms; this gives users more regulation on how the data is being collected. Server-side data collection will soon be the only reliable way to measure customer interactions with your website. We recommend clients and product teams to get on board now before it becomes an absolute necessity.

3. Collect & initiate your measurements for ‘micro conversions’

With an ever-evolving website design, it is becoming imperative to look beyond KPIs like leads or purchase and include micro conversions data.

The setup & gathering of sufficient data is the perfect way to equip oneself to make better marketing decisions in 2022.

Confused about what micro conversions are? These are things like:

• Navigation – Clicks on menu items and call-to-action buttons
• Scrolling – Percentage of long-form content consumed by people 
• Downloads – Views of PDFs or case studies
• Video Views – Is your 60-second elevator pitch video landing with your audience?
• Subscribers – Building the house list could be the most important marketing activity you do
• Outbound Clicks – How much traffic are you relaying to partners?

If you are not measuring micro conversion yet, wait no more and start today!

4. Building actionable dashboards

Actionable dashboard designs help in making better business decisions. Here’s a process to follow to employ a best-in-class design:

• Interviewing and surveying your stakeholders
• Creating reports that answer business questions (instead of just graphs or charts)
• Planning and building reusable components instead of entire dashboards
• Providing interesting context like industry benchmarks and goals
• Delivering reports to users at the right time & place (e.g., based on a daily/weekly campaign need)
• Evolving your reports as you get more stakeholder feedback

5. Start leveraging your first-party audience (if you are not doing it already)

Analytics solutions have evolved to a great extent since inception. Modern platforms allow you to use your traffic for remarketing your products and services enabling you to influence your visitors based on defined criteria to engage and gradually convert with your business.

If you have linked your GA4 account to Google Ads and keep the default option to ‘Enable Personalized Advertising’, then your audiences automatically become a part of remarketing lists for Google search ads. Building “First Party Data” will thus help in audience profiling, progressive profiling etc.

In 2022, GA4 will introduce newer integrations with digital marketing platforms, combined with GA4’s enhanced ML capabilities the audience integration will potentially benefit to enrich quality visitors for programmatic advertising.

Take Advantage of Analytics

From a digital marketing perspective, it is recommended to focus on ‘data-driven decisions’, as it has been proven to achieve powerful results.

Think of the next few weeks as a chance to get ahead of your game before we’re all too busy to get data needs implemented. Don’t lose your opportunity to start off your setup on GA4 ahead of the curve!