Kate Collinson: Huge major change to the e commerce space. Super duper powerful when you're making decisions about where to put your money and where to put the resources. When we talk about Sunset, what they're saying is that Universal analytics will actually stop recording data.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to Add to Cart, Australia's leading e commerce podcast that express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving world of online retail. Every week, Nathan Bush from E Suite and an e commerce industry expert will share the news, research and insights that you need to know to keep you at the top of your game and of course, keep your customers Adding to Cart.
Nathan Bush: Hello and welcome to Add to Cart. My name is Nathan Bush, host of Add to Cart and director at e commerce talent agency E Suite. Now, I've always wanted to be as cool as a DJ and I'm glad
Nathan Bush: to say I'm now taking requests.
Nathan Bush: And one of the most requested topics for us to cover on Add to Cart is is the impending change from Google Universal analytics to Google Analytics 4. Oh no, not quite as cool as pumping out a banger at 2am in the morning, but this is what I've got, so we'll work with this. All right, so when this request came through, I immediately turned to E commerce marketing extraordinaire and friend of the podcast, Kate Collinson. Kate is an independent consultant and has worked with e commerce brands including Nimble and Cat, the Label Vino, Mofo, the Memo who you heard from a few weeks ago and heaps more. As you'll hear, Kate has written a comprehensive Google Universal analytics course and is about to release her new course helping marketers get up to Speed with Google Analytics 4. In this conversation we cover the change that you can expect between Universal analytics and GA4, how to implement GA4 on your store, and why the hell conversion rate has disappeared. It's shocking, but we're going to get through this. So here it is. Thanks to our partners Shopify plus and Paclio. Here is our deep dive into Google Analytics 4 with Kate Collinson.
Nathan Bush: Kate, thank you so much for joining us on Add to Cart. I wanted to do an episode based around Google Analytics and I thought, who
Nathan Bush: can I call up that I think
Nathan Bush: knows this free comments better than anyone else? And you were the first protocol and luckily you said yes.
Kate Collinson: Oh, how flattering. Thanks, Nathan.
Nathan Bush: So let's dive straight in Google Analytics 4. What the hell is it and why is everyone talking about it?
Kate Collinson: Okay, so Google Analytics 4 came a little bit out of the blue. It's the latest version of Google Analytics that they released relatively quietly. In 2020. And it's likely that you're not currently using using it because the majority of us use Universal analytics and that's been around since about 2013. And since then a couple of additions like enhanced E Commerce and some new advanced reporting have been added, but really largely the platform sort of stayed the same. And so Google Analytics we all know and love since about 2013. But then cut to October 2020, GA4 was announced. It was relatively quiet. You might have seen a little pop up in your Google Analytics account that sort of prompted you to create a new account with Google Analytics 4, but it still felt very much like it was in beta and no one was really paying too much attention to it and everyone was really just exploring it.
Nathan Bush: Everyone was like, yeah, yeah, GA4, yeah,
Kate Collinson: yeah, whatever, yeah, yeah, we'll get to that eventually. Because you know, as we all know, we don't like change, even though we have to get quite comfortable with it in digital. And yeah, Google Analytics 4 was something that a lot of people were like, I'll get to that eventually. But March this year, Google sort of cracked the whip and actually announced that they'll be sunsetting Universal analytics by July 2023, which is next year. So that gives us just over a year to actually move onto that new platform because we're basically being forced to. It's a huge major change to the E commerce space because for most retailers, GA is really their core source of day to day data about reporting on visitor behavior and channel performance. In particular, the way paid media performs as a whole, as well as all those key conversion metrics like conversion rate and your sessions and your aova. A lot of brands really rely very heavily on GA for that rather than other tools. So I guess everyone's talking about it because Google told us to get a wriggle on and set up GA4 and learn the platform. And so far everyone isn't really there and unfortunately Shopify hasn't even written a native integration yet. So everyone's scrambling a little bit when it comes to GA4. But I personally think it's really exciting and there's tons to be learned and tons of exciting new opportunities.
Nathan Bush: And when you talk, when you say sunsetting Universal, what do you mean by sunsetting? Is that a soft sunset? Is it a hard, soft sunset?
Kate Collinson: Well, it really depends. I think that what's going to happen is Google set the stage. We're not entirely sure if they're going to really stick to it. Obviously I think they're using it as a real incentive to get people moving onto GA4. But when we talk about Sunset, what they're saying is that Universal analytics will actually stop recording data in July 2023. And that's a really big deal because if you're not already set up on Google Analytics 4, you're really going to be left in the lurch. And additionally, if you don't also have Google Analytics 4 historical data, then you're not going to be able to compare month on month, year on year for a long time because everything in GA4 is set up from the date that you started. Unfortunately, it's a brand new platform, it's a brand new account, so it means that the sooner you get onto it, the better.
Nathan Bush: So if we're on GA4, there's no historical data that will bring over from Universal?
Kate Collinson: No, that's one of the really unfortunate parts about this is that there's no not currently and I, and I suspect there's not going to be in the future any historical data import. So it is going to be a bit of a manual process in comparing that year on year data. You are still going to be diving into your Universal analytics reports to make sure that you know when you're looking at that, that historical data and those comparisons, which is really how we want to use that data because data in a vacuum is really quite meaningless. We really want to look at changes over time and comparisons to relevant periods. So yeah, unfortunately at this stage you have to set up a brand new GA4 account. It's fresh and it will be gathering data only from the date that you set it up, unfortunately. So that is a real shame. But hopefully it will be the, the only platform upgrade that we see for a long time yet.
Nathan Bush: Wow. And do you know if Universal our accounts will still be available post that cutoff date?
Kate Collinson: Yeah, the account will definitely be available for historical purposes for looking back. And you can still slice and die back data in every way you currently do. It's more that Google has indicated that Universal analytics tags will not work anymore, so it won't be recording any data. I think that it's a pretty harsh statement from Google, which is why I'm feeling a little bit skeptical as to whether or not they'll really stick to that date. I think they might softly phase it out, but what Google is basically indicating to the industry at large is this is the direction we're heading in, guys, and this is where you need to be. So this is where we're focusing at the moment.
Nathan Bush: Ever scrolled through an E Commerce packaging website for fun Nah, me neither. Until today. Paclio is putting the joy into the packaging game. So let's play a game. I'll tell you the name of the Paclio product and you have to try and guess what kind of product they are. Fairy Floss Compostable Mailer, Queen Bee Honeycomb Padded Mailer. Here we go. Gummy Shark Water activated tape. Now if my jaded self thinks that this packaging is fun, imagine what your customers will think. Paclio is also eco friendly Australian owned and operated with same day dispatch and 14 day returns. Now that's pure joy for everyone. Check out the Paclio range of E commerce packaging options@paclio.com that's Paclio P A C K L E O paclio.com.
Nathan Bush: You said that you were excited about GA4. I think you might be in the minority there because like you said, we don't like change. And the few founders and the few E commerce managers I've spoken to who've popped their head in started playing around with going, ah, this is so different. What's specifically changed, good and bad in terms of how GA4 operates compared to Universal?
Kate Collinson: Yeah, look, I mean I have to agree with you there. I wasn't bouncing out of my seat when I heard about GA4's announcement. It's not, it's certainly at first glance it's, it seems like an overly simplified version of the universal analytics that we're used to. Change is not great, especially when we're very much in a rhythm of weekly monthly reporting and we have all our data studio reports set up. We've, we've got a good grasp on universal analytics. Why would we want things to change really? I guess there's a lot of really great changes, I think, and a lot of it's in response to the sort of industry changes we've seen over the past couple of years. Years. There's definitely a few puzzling changes that I think are going to be sort of ironed out. And that's what I mean when I say I think GA4 is still in a sort of soft beta stage. It is. They are sort of ironing it out a bit. But the good news is that like I'm not a data scientist and you certainly don't need to either to be, to understand what's going on here. So I guess the biggest change really to GA4 is that it's an event data driven model. So, so I won't get too technical here, don't worry. But UA was really designed around page views and sessions and events were sort of this add on that you saw under the behavior section where you could track custom actions like add to CART video views. Shopify might have inserted some of those automatically through the native integration. You might have even set up some custom events like clicks on your homepage banner and sort of assess what your conversion rate was from there. The challenge with that is that the Internet has changed so dramatically over the past few years and the increase in mobile usage and single page websites really means that sessions have become sort of less relevant. And, and really GA4 is designed to address that and it's designed entirely around events. So we still have sessions. Sessions themselves are an event now along with like a whole raft of new events like remove from cart, view item, view item list. You know, there's a ton of new sort of very e commerce focused events which is really exciting. And what this means for you is that it gives us a whole lot more flexibility with the data by enabling us to strip out the need for a session for an event. We're just left with events, the event parameters, which is what else do we want to know about this event? So which item was added to CART specifically? Or what was the cart subtotal when the begin checkout event started? And then we can also look at our user properties. So who actually created that event? So what do we know about that user? What channel did they last come from? What channel were they first acquired on? What country are they in? So when we have those events set out in GA4, we're able to slice and dice that data with a lot more power. So basically GA4 is really trying to address as well a whole raft of privacy changes that have come into play over the last several years. So we've seen Google announce things like the death of cookies, gdpr, Apple's going after Facebook ads on privacy features. I mean, it's been a rough trot, hasn't it, in the digital, the digital landscape. I know, right? You have so much to learn. I love it. But you know, it's. You got to roll with the punches a little bit in this industry. And I guess GA4 is really an attempt to address some of that and really upgrade the way that GA collects data. So this sessionless data really makes it far easier for Google to anonymously track a single user across multiple devices and sessions. And I get really excited about that because one of the things that I discuss a lot with clients is not only the need for multiple sessions to a conversion and the fact that GA4 obviously GA Universal analytics being based around last click conversions, is obviously only one piece of the picture. But also it's very challenging for us to identify that user across multiple devices because we know that users will browse our store on desktop or mobile. They might prefer to check out on desktop or mobile, and they. And they really jump around. And our ability to really understand that path better is super powerful in terms of where we put our ad spend and where we put our resources. So we know that when users have that sort of behavior, the more we can connect those dots, the better we can understand our true path to purchase. Okay, so second new thing in Google Analytics 4.
Nathan Bush: Do you mean that was only one new thing?
Kate Collinson: There are multiple new things, I'm afraid. Nathan, are you a fan of bounce rate?
Nathan Bush: Love a good bounce rate.
Kate Collinson: Well, I'm so sorry, but it's actually gone from GA4. It's been replaced by engagement metrics. So I think this is actually a really good change because bounce rate in many ways, particularly with when you've got single page websites and the sorts of behavior we see with users with multiple tabs open, browsing around, it doesn't give us a lot of intel or a lot of contextual ins. Engaged sessions, which is what replaces bounce rate is sessions over 10 seconds or sessions that had an event or that had two or more page views. So it really actually gives us a better idea of the quality of that traffic. And engagement rate is the percentage of engaged sessions that gives us a lot more context for the traffic. Right. Bounce rate always a little bit dodgy because analyzing the number of single page sessions in this day and age, and we have long scrolly pages, a one page visit could still be really valuable, but it depends on how the user engage with the page. So engagement rate is much more of a nuanced metric. And then the other thing I think is great about GA4 that's been brought in is a new focus on customer lifetime value and customer acquisition. Now, obviously, in this day and age, with paid media costs increasing, everything's about cac, right?
Nathan Bush: Tell me. They've solved it. They've done this puzzle. They've got a perfect customer lifetime value equation and everyone's going to know exactly what channels have delivered what cost of acquisition.
Kate Collinson: It's unfortunately not that developed quite yet, but they have added a bunch of new metrics which will give us a ton more insight into the unique customer acquisition costs and the customer acquisition behavior that help you make better decisions about your customer acquisition strategy. So what they do is GA4 has structured around channels that drive new customers. So they call These first users. And technically that was possible with ua, but you'd have to kind of get into some segmentation. And this is actually a really a dedicated section that helps us focus on new users. So for example, if we're seeing Facebook ads driving a really highly engaged new user, then despite a drop in ROAS after iOS 14, we can still really interpret how that traffic might be positively impacting the store and growing our bottom line. Because we're better able to track users across devices and sessions. There's a clearer delineation between simple traffic and users. And user data is arguably far more powerful. So the sorts of new user properties we're getting is things like first acquisition, source and medium, which really helps us understand regardless of when a user actually converted, whether that be 90 days after the first acquisition date, which is very common for a lot of brands, we can get some really great insights into where they fit. First discovered the brand. That's super, super valuable because a lot of the time, particularly with UA and last click attribution, that was very, very much in the background of the data we were looking at. There's also a new retention section that we can see. Customer lifetime value super important metric that we used to have to rely on some calculations or some third party tools to analyze and now that's just sitting here in ga. And that's also a really great reason to set up GA4 as soon as possible because obviously the further back your customer lifetime value data goes, the more insight you have over time. So that's really fantastic. All right, do you want me to get into the things that aren't so great about GA4?
Nathan Bush: Yes, please spill the beans.
Kate Collinson: It's a brand new platform. As we discussed, there's no data history, so your universal analytics account probably contains years and years worth of data and you're very comfortable comparing that year on year and digging back. Have a look at how that sale performed or how that month performed year on year. Particularly if you're a seasonal brand or a fashion brand. But Google Analytics is kind of like a printer. There's no retrospective changes to data once it's recorded. And GA4 is unfortunately a brand new platform. We're not able to import historical data from UA and it doesn't seem to be much in terms of integration to enable us to compare that data. Really, really frustrating. And I think that just means that there's going to be a lot of fun trying to compare year on year and get your Excel skills ready because you're going to need them.
Nathan Bush: Do you think there's much point trying to compare year on year given some of those changes that you've mentioned around being event based versus session based and some of the metrics that we're used to like bounce rate disappearing or do you think we should just start fresh?
Kate Collinson: It depends on what you've been analyzing. So obviously things like sessions and conversion rate and AOB still in GA4. Well, conversion rate I'll come to, but super, super relevant still to analyze new metrics. So yes I do. I do think that you'll still be comparing year on year. We can't start afresh because if you start afresh you're looking at data, you're looking at data in a vacuum and it really doesn't have much context to it. So year on year comparison, if you have year on year data is still super important to understanding how your business is growing compared to a similar seasonal period. But unfortunately it just means that we're going to have a lot of crafty fun slicing up that data. And that's another really important reason to get set up on GA4 as soon as possible. So you can start collecting that data now and you can do your month on month and year on year comparisons hopefully within a year. Now let me get to conversion rate. Being in E commerce, we obviously live and breathe conversion rates, don't we Nathan?
Nathan Bush: We do.
Kate Collinson: In GA4, conversion rate is nowhere to be found.
Nathan Bush: What?
Kate Collinson: How is this possible? It's true.
Nathan Bush: Have you got Adobe's phone number? I'm going to call them up.
Kate Collinson: I hope it's coming. It seems to be a big miss from Google. Currently you can track your conversion rate easily through obviously that simple calculation of purchases divided by sessions, or through a metric that you can set up in Google Data Studio, which is relatively easy to do. But conversion rate as a metric is just not in GA4. It's really confusing.
Nathan Bush: Surely that's deliberate.
Kate Collinson: I don't know. I don't know. Because there's obviously purchases, there's everything we need to calculate that metric. There's no ability for us to necessarily set up a custom metric to calculate that. I assume that's all coming, but at the moment it's not there. The other things that are not there are things like integration with Google Search Console, which is huge for SEO. No views for filtering out bad search traffic like your sort of, you know, your self referrals or your bots. No ability to customize a default channel grouping. Paid social is in by default though you don't have to set that up manually anymore. Thank God. And then there's no benchmarks, which you know, were hit and miss sometimes but gave us some nice intel as well. So I guess, yeah, there's that. But overall, I guess the biggest, yeah, the biggest bummer about GA4 is simply that it's new and different and we really hate change.
Nathan Bush: I was getting excited when you were talking about engagement rate because I think that's a fantastic stat because I always talk to people around that conversion rate is great, but if you've got a conversion rate of 5%, it doesn't mean that 95% of your customers had a bad experience or they didn't achieve anything. So it's actually really good. But then I still like my conversion rate totally.
Kate Collinson: And I think engagement rate, particularly when you're looking at your different channel traffic, is really important because a particular channel, and we say this quite often with paid social or Pinterest advertising, we'll invest really heavily in there and we might not see Google Analytics recording any of that many direct conversions. But that doesn't mean that isn't very much contributing to your overall growth. And looking at things like engagement rate of that, that traffic could be a really great metric to measure your Facebook performance in the in that post iOS 14 world.
Nathan Bush: So you talked a lot around the need to move over pretty quickly.
Nathan Bush: So can you tell us how you
Nathan Bush: actually move From Universal onto GA4? More than happy if you want to use Shopify merchants as an example because I know we've got a lot of Shopify retailers listening how much is involved in actually at least just getting the data flowing into GA4?
Kate Collinson: Yeah. So look, getting that basic data if you're a non e commerce store for example is simple copy paste of code, that's great but for e commerce stores it's actually quite a bit. If you want to feed through all of those e commerce events like add to cart, remove the cart, purchase all of those e commerce events that carry all those parameters and those user properties that we want to really maximize the performance of GA4. Unfortunately there's not yet a native Shopify integration and they have been completely silent on whether that's when that's coming. We know it probably will be coming, but we just don't know when. I believe Magento has an open source app integration, but nothing is quick and easy unfortunately with these new platforms. So the current way to integrate is via Google Tag Manager. A lot of people groan when I say Google Tag Manager because it's an interesting platform. It was designed for marketers and strategists but it's actually not. It was designed for code free tagging, but it's really not a terribly intuitive platform. I'm personally not a huge fan.
Nathan Bush: It was meant to simplify the process for non coders.
Kate Collinson: It was supposed to simplify. It was supposed to simplify tagging of a site and if anything I think it's made it more complicated. It definitely takes a bit of a learning curve to learn in order to set up GA4. There's a huge container you need with, with 50 plus tags. It's just not worth it. Right. Unless you're a developer. And if you have a developer, you can certainly have them set that up. But if you're on Shopify, what I would recommend in order to get set up on GA4 as quickly as possible is checking out some of the done for you service supported apps like Analyzify or Elevar. So that's Analyzify or Elevar. So they're, they're two of the players. One of them you'll pay a setup fee and the other is an ongoing fee. But in the long run I think it's really worth it because it'll get you set up on GA4 with a standard setup that they will then customize to you specifically and you'll get you gathering that data as soon as possible. I go into more detail on that in my blog@KateCollinson.com so if you need a bit more guidance there, definitely check it out.
Nathan Bush: It's a great blog post and we'll definitely put a link to it in the show notes and on the blog post because it's a great read and you kind of step it out step by step. Do you think for most retailers who may have a development agency, it's best to brief them in?
Kate Collinson: Definitely. Always when there's going to be analytics, major analytics changes on your side. I would definitely brief in developers and have them sort of manage that process. The only reason I suggest this sort of done for you setup is that I've done it across a bunch of Shopify stores already. It's been pretty painless and I think that, you know, it's, it's definitely worth just getting it set up as quickly as possible rather than reinventing the wheel and getting your developer to go through all the documentation and build up those GTM containers. Just get it set up with, you know, with a, with a pre built container. Yep.
Nathan Bush: And so if we've got Data flowing into GA4, that's fantastic. But you mentioned that retailers need to set up their own events. Do you need to set up events right from the get go or you can just, can you just focus on getting the data flowing through and then add events over time as you get used to the platform.
Kate Collinson: So this setup through these pre built containers already has all those events set up. Unless you've got some custom events in addition to your standard GA4E commerce events, like you know, for example, any homepage tagging or any particular product scroll tagging or you know, then you might need to set up those custom events in GA4 as well. But everything from a standard E commerce perspective is already, is already set up in those pre built containers and is come standard with GA4 once correctly implemented.
Nathan Bush: Brilliant.
Kate Collinson: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: And are you finding from a reporting perspective how does GA4 compare for reporting and you finding a lot of your clients need to redo a lot of their automated reporting now?
Kate Collinson: Yeah, unfortunately we are in the process of rebuilding a whole bunch of our Data Studio dashboards. So I spent a lot of time in GA4 and GA Universal analytics, but my clients really prefer to look at Data Studio dashboards, understandably with all the metrics that matter to them most. So yes, we are rebuilding monthly reports, weekly reports, Data Studio dashboards that we use daily. Unfortunately that is something that we need to do. Great time to be alive. But those new, those real, those new metrics are giving us so much insight. And one of my favorite parts of GA4 is the Explore section, which is where the real power comes in in terms of customizing and understanding that data expl. Also probably the most intimidating part of the platform. And I'm trying to get my clients sort of getting their hands dirty in that. But you know, there's some amazing, there's amazing reports in there like funnel exploration where we can see, we can actually set up our custom funnel and we can, we can see elapsed time between stages. So how long does it take from viewing a product or a first, first visit to the store to adding to cart to then beginning checkout and purchase? We can, we can really analyze that desktop versus mobile. We can look at, you know, does the Google traffic perform differently to Facebook traffic? When we're looking at acquisition source and really understanding that behavior about top of funnel traffic, I find that report really, really valuable. There's also the path exploration report where we can, that was in Universal analytics, but it's far more sophisticated in GA4. So we can, you know, select any start or end page or event and we can dive into that qualitative data around which pages do Users browse to your store. It's really handy. And there are, you know, there are some fun ways to use that data, like looking at your 404 pages, how do users actually get to them? And really troubleshooting some behavior there. One of the other things I love I'm using GA4 for currently is attribution model comparison. So that's definitely also in UA there was a sort of model comparison under the conversion section of Universal Analytics. And we know that GA is by default structured around last click conversion, which is the very last channel that drove the user to the store that will receive the full attribution. But it often means that channels who drove the user there in the first place received zero recognition. And when you think about that, we're really just churning our customers if we're focusing on the performance of those last click channels. So when you're really looking at spearheading growth in your store, your attributed revenue in Facebook or Google, it might never line up with ga. That's simply because it's just different attribution. But you want to be focusing on what were those first channels that drove traffic to your store and that were later driving conversions. So in this attribution model comparison tool, you're able to compare different models. So comparing first click to last click and looking at the different channel performance there, super duper powerful when you're making decisions about where to put your money and where to put the resources.
Nathan Bush: Yes. Because I know there's a huge discrepancy between platforms, advertising platforms like Meta, who claim a lot of the sales versus what you actually see in ga. So it's really good to have that different viewpoint because there is no one attribution method that's really kind of universal yet, right?
Kate Collinson: Absolutely. And I think it's funny because we're so as digital marketers because we can track so much right. In digital marketing, so much more than you ever were able to if you were in TV land. Right. The there's a tendency to believe that we can track everything and unfortunately we can't. And there's never going to be. That's really the heart of attribution. There's never one single truth, there's never one single answer when it comes to which channel is the most powerful or has driven the most growth because it's always a combination of multiple channels. It's about getting that balance right between where are you putting your top of funnel spend and how are your organic efforts going and and how is that contributing to the overall path to purchase.
Speaker E: Stationary brand Milligram are the prodigal sons of Shopify. Starting life 10 years ago as a Shopify store before packing their bags for an adventure with another platform. Milligram are backed over to Shopify Plus. Milligram now have over 100 employees and four physical stores, so they needed a platform that had integrated content and commerce, reduce technical debt, the ability to have promos live immediately, and most of all be reliable in peak season. As an added bonus, they were able to optimize their search bar conversion rate from 4% to almost 8% with Shopify Plus. Now that's something to write home to mum about. To read more of Milligrams story and to see other case studies, visit the customer section on shopify.com/plus.
Nathan Bush: What I'm getting from that is that it's not a case of just replicating the current reports that you're putting together from Universal. It's kind of time to rethink reporting and the data and the way you can present that data because there's new possibilities.
Kate Collinson: I think you can definitely duplicate your reports and connect most of the metrics in GA4. Obviously conversion rate, you'll need to set up a little custom metric, which is quite easy to do. But there are a wealth of new metrics that you really want to be taking advantage of. And you don't want to just be spending all your time in Data Studio. You want to be diving into GA4 and understanding the way that platform works and that Explore section with the reports, because that's really where you're going to get most of the power out of GA4.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, and I know Google's put a lot of attention and focus on trying to give you some automated insights. They started that kind of Universal, but I feel like they've taken it up a level in GA4. Have you looked at those automated insights and do you think they're very valuable?
Kate Collinson: I think they are. I think particularly if you're sort of starting out and you're not terribly familiar with data analytics, those intelligent insights will develop over time and the more data that comes into the platform, I'm sure we'll see them become more sophisticated. I'd love to see Google actually spitting out some really valuable insights. I haven't seen any in particular yet beyond sort of just, you know, this channel is performing well for your store. But you know, I do think that as the platform grows, we will see more of those intelligent insight. I still don't think, Nate, that we're going to see IA in the short term. Really Supersede the ability of your own thinking and your own mind in terms of all of that wealth of knowledge you have around the context of your brand and how your store is performing. I think a solid understanding of GA4 and being able to sort of dive into that data is so important to running an online store and growing it. So I think that those IA insights are going to be valuable, but they're certainly not something we're going to rely on.
Nathan Bush: So if I'm sitting here as an e commerce manager and I've listened to you and I've gone, you've kicked my ass into gear, I need to finally bite the bullet and get to know GA4. What tips do you have for e commerce managers out there to get familiar with this platform?
Kate Collinson: Yeah, so obviously the real value comes from understanding how GA4 works and it's really important to get set up as soon as possible and get your hands dirty on the platform. That's definitely how I learned how to use Google Analytics when I was agency side. And I think if you, if you want to learn to leverage the data as quickly as possible, I remember I definitely recommend an investment in some upskilling on the platform. There's a couple of learning. I mean Google definitely offers a basic sort of one hour course on Skillshop that I'd recommend checking out. But if we're looking at, you know, specifically e commerce training in using GA4, that's actually something that I'm writing an online course for currently. So I wrote an online course in 2020 for universal analytics because I just had all these clients coming to me saying I want to learn ga, but I just don't know where to start and what, what online course to do. And I really couldn't find any, any E Com courses that were specifically for e commerce ecom businesses on GA. So I wrote that and then two months later Google announced GA4. So as you do so, you know, I'm in the process of writing an updated course for GA4 which will be hours worth of content and you know, I'll be, I'll be going through a whole bunch of different contextual examples. It's not a one on one 101 course, although I definitely will cover the fundamentals and it's not simply a tour of the features. It's a course that's specifically designed for marketers and e commerce specialists looking to get a really solid grasp on GA4. And I'll dive into real examples of how you can apply GA4 Insights to your store, setting up custom reports handing you data studio reports that are already customized for GA4 and ensuring that everything you do in UA, you'll be able to do better in GA4. So if anyone wants to be notified of when that launches and access any exclusive early bird pricing, then I highly recommend you sign up@ga4eecommerce.com and I'll be launching that in the coming month or so.
Nathan Bush: Is that a four with a f o r or a four number?
Kate Collinson: G a f o r e commerce.com g a4e commerce Yes, I know it's a little confusing because it's actually G A4 for E commerce, but great naming
Nathan Bush: Kate, but yes, absolutely. So we'll put the link to the blog post that you've already written, which is actually, I don't think it's fair to call it a blog post. It's a really comprehensive guide to how to get started. But then yeah, absolutely, visit that or connect with you on LinkedIn to keep up to date with what's coming over the coming weeks. Now, do you expect that we're going to get any more major Google Analytics changes coming up probably a couple of weeks after you launch your course? Right?
Kate Collinson: Yeah, exactly. That would be. If history repeats, it would definitely happen. I think it's unlikely that we'll have another subscription. Substantial update for now, I think Google is hard at work updating this platform and and developing this. But you know, the Internet moves at such a pace we can't say anything with real certainty. But what I'm hoping GA4 will start to roll out is things like conversion rate, a bit more customizable, customer lifetime value, some more sophisticated AI insights. I would love to see an integration between UA and GA4 for historical reporting, but I just don't know if that's going to happen. And then some better integrations with Google products like search console. But what we will see as well is with any luck, a lot of the ecom platforms and tech platforms that integrate already with UA will be releasing GA4 integrations and that will make life a lot easier for us all. So yeah, there will be many changes to come. I just don't think it will be the actual platform. So definitely rest assured that if you're learning GA4 this will be the last time for a while that you need to learn something brand new.
Nathan Bush: Do you see? Because obviously Google Analytics is the standard for a lot of businesses using both in E commerce and outside of E commerce and it is critical to making business decisions from this changeover and Google having control of the rules do you find that you're got any retailers who are saying I actually need a backup analytics solution to support Google rather than having all my eggs in the Google basket?
Kate Collinson: Yeah, I definitely do. Certain larger retailers will often invest in BigQuery data warehouses. They will. And you know, actually GA4 has a BigQuery integration now. So you're actually able to save a lot of historical data from GA4 into BigQuery which is super powerful. So a lot of, a lot of those platforms will invest in an analytics platform which is far more customizable, like a tableau that obviously requires a full time analyst in your, in your company. And a lot of, a lot of, you know, majority of E Comm stores simply don't have that resource. So I think for the, for the average E Comm store, not really. I'm always on the lookout of course for great new analytics platforms and I've definitely analyzed a few. But most of them tend to simplify the data that GA has. And I think I still recommend GA every day for a couple of reasons. It's raw data and it's flexible for just about any type of report. If you can export it, you can send it off to Data Studio, you can send it off to Excel. The raw data is really important when you're looking at the ability to customize that data in any way you want. To answer any particular question, it integrates with a lot of platforms we use every day and I think that's really important. So Google's products like Search Console and Google Ads, but also, you know, Semrush and Ahrefs are very heavily reliant on Google Analytics. It's also super highly customizable if you're integrating it with Google Data Studio. So look, there are ecom platforms building out the better analytics platforms that I do. Shopify analytics quite a bit definitely as a, as an order management platform, it has a bit more accuracy when it comes to data on, on customers. And I combine that with Klaviyo for CRM Insights. But in terms of actual GA alternatives or data platforms, they really just simplify the data for you. The best thing is actually just to get really comfortable with Google Analytics itself.
Nathan Bush: It's not going anywhere, is it?
Kate Collinson: Not going anywhere.
Nathan Bush: So I think I know the answer to this, but I kind of want to hear your version of it. If you've got one piece of advice for retailers today, what would it be?
Kate Collinson: Oh, I hope, I hope I'm not going to disappoint you then. Well, look, a lot has changed. Covid Threw us all for a loop. And either for an E commerce store, it was either Covid was either a huge blessing or a huge, a huge challenge. Right. So going back to what you said about historical data. Historical data is skewed right now. Right. Because Covid just completely changed the game. I think one of the biggest changes we've seen is that paid media costs are just on the rise and they're certainly not going to stop. And you know what I'm really encouraging a lot of my clients to do is focus on customer retention and generating brand advocacy through their customers. So making the experience of their brand so incredible that, that those customers can't. Can't help but share your store. And I think, you know, that is super, super important. And a lot of businesses tend to talk focus on that customer acquisition cost, that top of funnel. A lot of them jump into loyalty programs without thinking about what their unique goals actually are. And sometimes that can be really hit and miss. Ask how you know, how you can make a loyalty program your own and what value you're really bringing to your customers. I think really it's, you know, as privacy increases in our industry, creating a value exchange is super important. And you'll hear these days a lot the words first party data thrown around because as third party data really is eroded, Facebook pixels eroded, you know, there's more and more third party limitations. It's really about creating a value exchange where you ask your customers for data in order to give them something, whether that be personalization, a discount, something that is valuable to them. And if you repay them with that value, they'll give you that data that will enable you to personalize that experience of your store for them. And I think, I do think that's where a lot of businesses are heading and certainly platforms I work with like Klaviyo are really focusing on that. Yeah, retention I think is probably my answer there.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, love it. That was much more strategic and deep than the answer that I thought you were going to give.
Kate Collinson: What did you, what did you think?
Nathan Bush: I thought you were just going to go just get the bloody GA4 tag on your website now, start collecting data.
Kate Collinson: Definitely do that too. But we've spent half this time talking about it, so I didn't want to sort of belabor the point.
Nathan Bush: That's fair. You've given much more value. Kate, it's been so great. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and you know, you've done the hard work for us in diving deep into GA4 and getting hands on with it. We'll obviously share your blog post and keep people up to date as you release your course. Apart from writing the course, what's next for you?
Kate Collinson: Oh well, Nate, I have, as I'm sure you have as well, I worked my bum off during COVID and I've spent the past two and a half years in Australia. So I'm off to do the digital Nomad thing for a couple of months across the US And Europe later this year. I'll still be working, but I'm enjoying a long, a long awaited reunion and enjoying the good life a little bit because I think if Covid taught us anything, it's that we need to slow down and get some balance. So I'll be back in the country ready to roll for Black Friday. But yeah, at the moment a little break. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: What's the one city or country that you really like? Just can't wait to get back to.
Kate Collinson: I can't wait to get to Lisbon. I'm going to park myself there for three weeks and I'm going to be hopefully meeting a whole bunch of other people in the digital and e comm space who live there. So I'm really excited.
Nathan Bush: Amazing.
Kate Collinson: Cool.
Nathan Bush: All right, Kate, you've got shared with
Nathan Bush: us before, but just in case people have missed it, what's the best way for people to get in touch and keep up to date with what you're doing?
Kate Collinson: Yeah, so you can definitely follow me on LinkedIn. I love posting on LinkedIn to anyone who'll listen. And you can also reach out to me at my website, which is kate collinson.com Beautiful Kate.
Nathan Bush: Thank you so much.
Kate Collinson: Thank you so much Nathan. Always a pleasure.
Nathan Bush: Kate is amazing, isn't she? Now if you want early bird access and special pricing for Kate's new GA4 course, head on over to GA4eCommerce. That's G A F O R E C. Oh you can spell the n commerce.com where you can sign up to be kept in the loop. And if you like that format, that deep dive format and have requests for future deep dive topics, this is me being a DJ again. Send them through, shoot us a message on LinkedIn or Insta or drop into my inbox@nathanadocart.com really interested to know what topics you want to deep dive into. I reckon we can have a lot of fun, get some great experts in and kind of get into the bones of those big topics that we're all thinking about now. I don't think there was a second wasted in that interview. It was packed with gold but if I was to pick three lessons that I'm going to take away from our chat with Kate, here's what they are number one D day for universal analytics is July 2023. There's no going back unless Google changes its mind. But at the moment, July 2023, there's going to be no more data collected on Universal from this date. But don't wait until then. You need to act now. Get GA4 implemented to start collecting your data today. Even if it's not the perfect setup and you stumble around in the corridors, getting the data flowing through is critical so that when you are forced into that changeover you have some historical data. The second One is around GA4 implementation and it's not necessarily a simple integration. You can use Google Tag Manager to implement the new GA4 tracking, however, using a partner such as Kate's recommendations on an Analyzer Phi. Get that Analyzer Phi or Elevar E L E V A R will not only get GA4 implemented, it will make sure you have the basic settings set up with events and everything else ready to roll. And the third one Events replacing Sessions so we better get used to the term events because they are the centerpiece for GA4 and it doesn't mean sessions go away. They're just one type of event. But there are multiple types of events, so it's worth getting your head around and confirming what the primary events are that you will be tracking so that you can start collecting data on them
Nathan Bush: and adjusting your reports.
Nathan Bush: To get the highlights of today's episode, head on over to addtocart.com and sign up for our free newsletter each Tuesday. We will send Monday's episode summary links and discount codes for you to go next level on. And if you're looking to explore your next e commerce opportunity, come and Visit us at eSweet. We're a dedicated ecommerce talent agency connecting the best e commerce talent with the fastest growing brands in Australia. Head on over to esweettalent.com where you can download the free E Commerce Salary Guide and sign up to our weekly ecommerce job emails. Thanks for listening and until next time, keep those customers adding to cartoon.
