As Universal Analytics sunsets, brands who need to transition to the new Google Analytics 4 or GA4 360 will want to do that quickly, smoothly, and in a way that sets them up for success long-term. Watch our video of a step-by-step migration using the Apollo analytics management system, which empowers a fast, easy GA4 transition and a host of benefits.
The deadline is coming!
Deadlines are terrific motivators, and Universal Analytics properties will stop processing hits on July 1, 2023. The clock is ticking, and Google Analytics users’ and admins’ successful transition to GA4 or GA4 360 will be determined by how soon (and how smoothly) they can make the move.
Why to use Apollo for your migration to Google Analytics 4
Apollo, the world’s first analytics management system, is Search Discovery’s proprietary technology that allows for fast, easy GA4 transitions. Three main benefits of using Apollo are that it
- Significantly speed up the migration process to GA4 while ensuring that you follow best practices and Google’s recommended event structure.
- Uses existing triggers already in your tag manager for GA4 calls in many cases, rather than having to re-implement your data layer
- Works within your existing Google Tag Manager container
Read about the seven benefits of using Apollo to expedite your GA4 transition, here.
Who should use Apollo?
Apollo is the fastest, most inexpensive way to migrate from Universal Analytics (GA3) to Google Analytics 4. It’s built for teams who
- Have more important things to do with their time than learn how to map UA events into GA4
- Have limited resources to support their migration
- Want the benefits of an analytics management system that serves as mission control to integrate and automate their analytics implementation for long-term management.
Anne Wilson maps an old Universal Analytics Implementation into Google Analytics 4 in under four minutes!
To demonstrate how easy it is to use Apollo to make this GA4 transition, Anne Wilson just goes ahead and does it in this quick video. We know that sounds too good to be true, but, really, give the video a watch. It’s seriously impressive.
Here are the steps happening in the video:
- Connect Apollo to your Google Analytics accounts: Okay, so Anne has already done this before the video starts. But, if you follow this link, you can easily follow the steps to do this for yourself.
- Select your GTM container to import: This allows you to get the info from UA into Apollo. Anne has also done this just before the video begins, but you can follow instructions within this link to get to the very screen where Anne starts her video, which is the GTM container as it exists today. Anne can see a list of the tag names that she’s imported.
- Map the UA events to Apollo events: Apollo has a list of built-in events that provide context to the data that you are collecting. Anne reads the tag names and searches for the corresponding Apollo event name (skipping the ones she doesn’t want to migrate). This sets the stage for Apollo to turn the events into GA4 events.
Note: In the new GA4 event-driven data model (which uses Firebase Analytics), everything that happens on your website—that is, all hit types (including pageview hits)—now happens at the event level. The custom events that you’re used to still exist, but the category/action/label fields are retired. If you repeat this mantra to yourself several times, you’ll be all set with this shift: Everything is an event. Everything is an event.
- Next, select existing GTM triggers from the menu and/or identify new triggers you want to implement: The fact that Apollo can use existing triggers is a benefit—we can use the triggers’ existing structure(s) to help them map to custom dimensions. In other words, there’s no need to adjust the data layer to get the triggers into GA4.
- Configure Tag Attributes: On each event, you can configure tag attributes. If you want to map these into custom dimensions that already exist, you can do that. If you want to map your event action category and label, you can do that for each item, too. When you complete your mappings, select “All Mapping Complete,” then “Save and Finish.”
- Congratulations! You’ve imported your implementation, and you’re ready to publish to GA4.
- Select Deploy (left sidebar), Create a New Build, Send to your Staging environment, check the boxes to publish to your tag manager and your data layer docs.
- Within your Deploy screen, you’ll now see links to your tag manager and your data layer docs.
- If you open your tag manager in another window, you’ll notice the version changes. Apollo has created configuration tags for GA4 and all the events that you’ve mapped. In fact, everything is now ready to go to GA4!
