July 1, 2023 will mark a major transition in website performance tracking with the official transition to Google Analytics 4 and the sunsetting of Universal Analytics. The shift to Google's new website performance tracking platform will introduce many new ways of monitoring lead attribution, events, conversions, and engagement. For multifamily marketers, it's important to be aware not only of the new forms of tracking capabilities that GA4 will bring, but also in how GA4 defines many metrics that differ from how Universal Analytics defines them today. Yes, GA4 measures many of the same KPIs we look for in Google Analytics currently. However, the new platform brings many new definitions for common metrics marketers look to each day.
Given the upcoming changes, we want to ensure multifamily marketers are well ahead of what's to come in 2023. We'll be posting frequently to help marketers prepare for the transition in the months and weeks leading up to July 2023. To start, let's look at the difference in what Google Analytics 4 defines as a session vs how Universal Analytics defines a session on your property website. Today, Universal Analytics considers a session as "a group of user interactions with your website that take place within a give time frame." A single user can have multiple sessions on a website, which can occur on the same day or over a larger time frame. Marketers commonly refer to sessions as overall website traffic and users as individual website traffic.
What's to be expected of this change in GA4? The goal is to avoid inflating website traffic numbers due to repeat users visiting the site multiple times within that 30 minute window. It's important to consider when looking at overall website sessions as marketers should expect less inflated website traffic with the transition to GA4. heir browser window and return within the 30 minute period, this would count as the same session in Google Analytics 4. This is different from Universal Analytics today where if a user were to exit and then visit the website again via a different source it would get credited as two sessions.
What's to be expected of this change in GA4? The goal is to avoid inflating website traffic numbers due to repeat users visiting the site multiple times within that 30 minute window. It's important to consider when looking at overall website sessions as marketers should expect less inflated website traffic with the transition to GA4. This will also impact lead attribution when considering multi-channel attribution within Google Analytics, which we will be speaking to shortly. For now, expect GA4 to report less inflated traffic in 2023 with this change in measuring sessions.
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