Want to move a step ahead in getting closer to your customers? Get hold of Google Analytics 4, a gem for all businesses.

The e-commerce universe is now prepping up for the year’s extravagant fancy sale i.e., Black Week! This is where your privacy game will come into play while customers would be busy browsing lakhs of websites during this shopping spree.

Let us learn more about Google Analytics 4 and Privacy in this blog to accelerate your revenue safely.

Table of Contents:

1. Why Is Privacy More Important Than Ever?
2. Google Analytics 4 And Privacy
3. How To Assess Your Readiness?
4. This Year’s Trends and Consumer Behavior for Black Week

• Privacy
• Price Point
• CPC
• Competence

Regardless of your marketing platforms, the cost per click (CPC) will have an increasing graph alongside the market competition. The product margin gets pushed every time a massive marketplace enters the industry. Also, competence and shipping costs have been a place of struggle for those in the e-commerce industry.

How to Innovate in The Future?

To innovate your business in the future with guaranteed privacy, here are 3 things to take care of:

Consent:

Your website visitors should give you their consent of using their data.

First Party:

You should be able to smartly deal with the first-party data of your customers.

Modeled:

Data modeling is the way to enhance your first-party data and bridge the gap caused by cookie loss and measurement restrictions.

Why Is Privacy More Important Than Ever?

When it comes to online privacy, “The World-Renowned Privacy Advocate”, Max Schrems and his work cannot go unmentioned. Don't know much about Schrems and privacy? Then, read more about Privacy, GDPR, and Schrems II for Marketers.

Also, from 1st July 2023, Universal Analytics will be shut down. Website owners will not be able to collect data in the Universal Analytics setup and will have to implement the Google Analytics 4 setup to have their consumer database in place.

Google Analytics 4 model is not only a measurement tool but is much more about revamping your whole measurement system with the vital privacy-first approach. Nowadays, the tech giants have also started selling their products with a privacy-first approach and have initiated push privacy messages directed to consumers.

How Should Businesses Implement a Privacy-First Approach to measurement?

For any business, the collection of data in a secure manner will unlock further processes of measurement and activation of customers on their websites. Here’s a table showing how businesses can respond to customer insights and demands along with solutions: 

How to know if you are privacy ready or not?

Don’t worry, we are here to help you! We have a survey of 44 questions for you that follows the structure of collect, measure, and activate to gain a mere judgment on how privacy ready you are.

Here are 3 packages Keywordio offers to help you assess your privacy readiness:

Self-Service: 24,500 SEK

You have to take the full assessment all by yourself. It will then be reviewed by our team.

Self-Service + Workshop: 45,600 SEK

Post assessment, a workshop will be arranged to discuss further needful actions or have a discussion with the legal team/ data compliance team as per requirement.

Full Assessment + Implementation Plan: 120,200 SEK

A full audit of the assessment will be performed and along with the legal team, we make sure that the setup is customized and configurated according to your basic needs.

FAQs:

a. Will IP addresses be stored through Google Analytics 4 setup?

No, Google Analytics 4 does not store IP addresses. An IP address is seen as personal information, so it is important to treat it as private. Earlier, the tracked IP addresses in the universal analytics setup would end up in the US servers disregarding the privacy norm which was hence not considered compliant.

b. How can I set up Google Analytics 4 to ensure data is stored only in the EU?

Here, the setting up of Google Analytics 4 plays a vital role. To guarantee privacy, you need to know how to set it up for which you need:

-Server-Side Tagging Setup


-Your cloud in the EU is to be customized for IP privacy norms.

Also, remember that only setting up the default setup of Google Analytics 4 will not ensure full privacy. You should deeply understand the legal aspect of Google Analytics 4, how it is done, and the technical aspects like connecting the server-side tagging to Google Analytics 4.

Google Analytics 4 and Privacy

A common misconception about setting up Google Analytics 4 is that people think its default setup is everything, nothing more needs to be done in terms of setting it up. People then complain about the tool filtering out some elements. This happens when Google Analytics 4 is not properly configured to your needs.

Performing a detailed analysis in a default Google Analytics 4 setup is not feasible; detecting errors becomes a task! Moreover, the basic setup does not enable a year-over-year comparison with the old data.

Google Analytics 4, The New Data Model

Enables you to answer strategic questions in innovative ways and drive impact

If your Google Analytics 4 setup is configured as per your needs, you can utilize the data model a lot more. Everything comes down to learning and understanding who your most valued customer is and how can you get them to be more active on your website.

What’s new in Google Analytics 4 Attribution model?

Universal Analytics was a last-click attribution model whereas Google Analytics 4 by default is a data-driven attribution model from the beginning. Also, you can configure the lookback window and change the attribution model if any of the features is undesirable. One thing to be aware of here is if you change the attribution model, you can have different outcomes.

Let Us Take a Look at Some of the Challenges in Google Analytics  4:

1. The Disconnect between Revenue and Traffic

Business goals are not connected to cost or traffic.

Sales and revenue budgets have to be associated with the marketing cost figures. To scale a business, remember that you must always have your Sales Budget, Cost Budget (P&L), and Traffic Budget in line as Google Analytics 4 will not do it for you.

2. Misunderstanding Distribution

Metrics have a distribution and assess the effect on key parameters like Revenue, and COS.

One must infer from the given infographics the normal distribution or expected variation for the conversion rate. Consider the two figures measuring 2.8 and 3.2 where 2.8 is a normal conversion rate that falls within the normal distribution range however, 3.2 is an outlier that is interesting to understand why.

Google Analytics 4 will assist you in spotting points and measures that appear outside what can be seen as the normal range. So you can focus on understanding why you reached such a high conversion rate. Here are a couple of reasons:

• New product launch
• New price point
• A campaign
• A successful traffic source

You must be able to identify when you scale. This applies to approximately all the metrics like Cost Per Click (CPC) that hugely vary over the year. Knowing this is important.

3. Attribution

 

What is the lead indicator for success? IOS affect? It's the New Google Analytics 4 Attribution model!

 

Let us understand the difference between the GA4 (Google Analytics 4) and UA (Universal Analytics) models. When you review your channel report in Google Analytics 4 or Universal Analytics like in the past, remember that Google Analytics 4 has a different model and hence neither expect to have the same data nor expect to have it for GA4 to compare it with the Universal Analytics model.


Try to verify your data with what you know is true. Look at the real sales for that time. See if you are being able to track the number of transactions or even the right type of revenue. Look at the total numbers and ensure they are correct. Post verification you can dive into a more detailed breakdown.

 

Accuracy Levels of Digital Analytics (Google Analytics vs Real World):

 

Green - (within 5%): Great

Keep monitoring. A detailed investigation would not be required.

Yellow - (5-20%): Warning

Evaluate your transactional tracking code for accuracy. Try to issue using the transaction details from your back-end that are missing in Google Analytics.

 

Red - (20% +): Urgent Attention Required

When it’s red, understand that something’s wrong with the GA4 setup. The performance metrics that are determining the success of your ad campaigns might completely be incorrect.

 

Consent Mode for Web and App

 

Consent mode is a feature that brings in two new tags/ SDK settings to control the ads and analytics cookie storage based on user consent status. This will eventually improve your data's reporting, modeling, and accuracy.

 

 

Beta, EU only

 

Intelligent Home

 

Intelligent Home will be the new landing page of Google Analytics 4. Presently, the Universal Analytics default properties are fixed to a set of reporting-only cards that may not necessarily be relevant to every user. Intelligent Home will give individual experience catering to every user by surfacing content specifically relevant to them. How will this happen?


Google Analytics 4 will fetch the implicit and explicit signals about every user, role, and property. Based on user activity, the system will keep evolving in terms of improving user experience through tailored insights and suggestions. The intelligent home feature will only be available in Google Analytics 4 properties.

Exploration Hub -

Free Form

 

 

Safari has a significantly higher amount of active users from source none.

Here’s a free-form table depicted in the picture above. You can pull all the required data, so doing the analysis and playing around with the Exploration Hub is essential.


To compare different browsers, seeing how they perform along with all the frequent new releases is a must. To perform this kind of analysis over 2-3 weeks during the release is interesting like when Apple pushes a new version of iOS and Safari gets updated.

Funnel Purchase vs Non-Purchase

Segment:

 

 

Predicted | Custom | Default

The segment part comes with many of the new features in machine learning that are accessible to you. So, this is one of the reasons why you must make sure you set up your Google Analytics 4 early and start filling those audiences and segments.

Funnels:

 

Compare the funnels | Set Hypothesis and test

As seen in the image above, listed here are people who are buyers and people who are not buyers. The blue column depicts the people who have purchased something and the pink column depicts the people who have not purchased anything.

You can build your segments and use different ways to set them up. Here, looking at the image we can infer that somebody has scrolled and viewed an item, added it to the cart, checked out, and purchased it. Hence Google Analytics 4 is a great tool to set the funnel up and share it within teams.

Cohort Analysis:

           

• A time-specified group of users, compared to other time-specified users.
• Used to evaluate updates on site, campaigns new changes on site, etc.
• Use Funnel to evaluate Key metrics, and evaluate those metrics with the cohort method.
  

Integration

Google Data Studio Connector:

Data in Google Analytics 4 can be visualized in the Google Data Studio via Google Studio Connector. The data studio enables users to create reports that are creative and engaging. It also allows easy sharing of insights with stakeholders.

Google Ads Integration:

• Your Google Analytics 4 property can now be linked to your Google Ads account with up to 400 links per property. With a click, you will be able to build an audience in your Google Analytics 4 setup and send them to Google Ads for targeting. These ads will work for the app as well as web data. This linking also allows Conversion Export which means you can export your set-up conversions from Google Analytics 4 to Google Ads for bidding toward conversion outcomes.
  
• The conversions that are exported from Google Analytics 4 are currently the last non-direct click only. Google Ads integration in app and web properties enables cross-platform audience lists and the use of one interface to export the app and the web conversions.

Advanced Features:

When more data imports are needed, the search console is the most suitable advanced feature and undoubtedly requires more customization.

Now let us look at the aspects of Google Tag Manager Server-side Tagging vs client-side tagging.

How Does Google Tag Manager Server-side Tagging Work?

The benefit of server-side tagging is its installation. You just install one tag on your website and it sends the data to a secured server, where you can filter out information you would use for advertising or send to Google Analytics 4. This gives 100% control of what data is shared with Google or other Ads platforms using the data stream.

How Does Google Tag Manager Client-side Tag Work?

 

 

Activating server-side tagging with the enhanced conversion of Google will benefit in finding conversions that you did not define previously and will help overall advertising on your platform, especially in implementing better ad optimization.

 
This Year’s Trends and Consumer Behavior for Black Week

 

 

Funnel for Black Week

 

A lot of effort goes into prepping up for Black Week. At this point, we as businesses target our current customers and users, which would increase sales but without growth. Shifting our focus from only targeting current customers to creating awareness amongst strangers will promote significant growth in the business.

• SEO
• Google Ads
• Paid Social 
• YouTube Ads

Integrating the above tools into your marketing mix would maximize your advertising campaigns. Once the strangers get hooked on your website through some advertisement, you can then retarget them with new offers or pre-ordering facilities. If a visitor adds an item to the cart or views a specific product, you can tailor your retargeting ads toward him.

Having bottom cart ads on Performance max is very essential for customers adding items to the cart and viewing the products multiple times. Availing the tool of an email provider will aid you in retargeting people with abandoned carts, which will help in bridging your Revenue Gap. Thereafter, you need to segment products for retargeting and then use the dynamic retargeting method.

Build Up your brand awareness before Black Week 

• Research starts in September.
• Google Ads Pmax runs continuously
• Update content/asset group

The image above shows the long-term plan for Black Friday. The month of September is the research month for customers to look for what they are going to buy for their holidays.

You as a business should be on your toes to mark your presence on Google ads from the very beginning. By late September, you must have good content in your performance max campaigns like YouTube ads to build your audience’s trust in your products.

Key Dates for Holiday Season – Black Week 2022

Note these important dates in your calendar and make sure you plan them out.

How does Google Ads Performance Max Work?

Identify the three biggest contributors to a successful Performance Max campaign - good creatives, nail the bidding and optimize your feed.

Performance Max is a semi-new type of campaign in Google Ads. It is a perfect place to integrate all types of ad campaigns, the old as well as new ones. This campaign is easy to use and enables easier optimization.

We have identified 3 different deciding pillars that would define your performance max success:

• Accurate bidding
• Strong creatives for multiple placements
• An optimized feed with detailed information about product title, attribute, and description

Moving ahead, let us dive into:

1. Best Practices for Titles: Google searches have become more mature than ever.

 

 

2. How to Structure Product Titles: Provide rich & unique product titles.

3. Feeds and Campaigns are Interrelated: Use all feed attributes, particularly customizable attributes

Use all feed attributes, particularly customizable attributes.

6 attributes in a Google feed can be used in Google Ads to structure Pmax campaigns.

4. Use Custom Labels to Match Your Business Objectives:

Custom labels are optional attributes for your product. They allow you to set up, bid, and analyze Performance Max campaigns according to your business requirements.

5. Match Structure & Bids to Commercial Objectives Using Custom Labels

Custom labels do not show up with ads. They can support structural, analytical, performance-related, and/or bidding-related Pmax strategies. Every custom label supports up to 1,000 unique values.

How To Adapt Your Bids to Sale Peaks?

• During peak time, various companies lower their bid to become more efficient and reach a higher ROAS. We prefer to maintain the standard bids as people start surfing the web way before the season is high. It is important to be seen before the season high period to capture the traffic enabling them to come back and quickly make their purchases.
  
• Now, in the peak season, we have high bids to surface during the season high, and post that we lower the bids to make them stand even lower than the standard bids. These low bids are retained for a week and then retracted to standard bids.

Adjust ROAS Targets

• From the image above, it can be seen that the ROAS in A is higher than in B whereas the result in B is peaking by 43% as compared to A. The inference from the example would be just to keep a habit of testing.

Conclusion

Privacy has now become the most valued element of a business. The second half of 2022 alone has seen around 52 million data breaches worldwide, says Statista! So, care for your customers’ confidentiality and protect yourselves from costly lawsuits. Google Analytics 4 is your escape.

Need help assessing your privacy readiness Analytics 4 setup? You are not alone. Schedule a call with our data/privacy experts and put an end to all your questions.

For better understanding, we have this blog "coursefied" for you! The course is full of examples and important questions answered by the experts.