If you’re in the process of having a new website designed, it’s easy to overlook migrating your Google Analytics over to your new website. This important tool provides valuable insight as to what is working well on your new website and what isn’t, and can help you make any changes and improvements in the future. It can also help you compare the performance of your new website against your old one.
Here are some steps to migrate your Google Analytics during a website migration and why it’s important to maintain continuity of website data.
Install your existing GA code
If you already have GA installed on your (old) website, you need to copy the same tracking code over to the new website so there are no gaps in your data.
Make sure that you are using the latest version of Google Analytics (GA4) rather than Universal Analytics. If not, check out this blog on how to upgrade to GA4.
Don’t create a new Google Analytics property from scratch because you won’t be able to compare how your old website has performed against your new one. Instead, copy your existing GA tracking code to ensure there is no gap in the data and test to check it’s tracking correctly once your new website goes live.
Make a diary note of when your new website goes live so you can easily compare performance with your old site. The old Universal Analytics gave you the ability to manually add annotations to your data, but this is not available in GA4. There are tools such as Looker Studio if you want to use the annotations feature on a regular basis.
Why is Google Analytics important for your business?
Google Analytics collects valuable data about your users and how they are engaging with your content, allowing you to better understand the effectiveness of your website and make improvements where necessary.
Here are some examples of what data GA4 collects:
- Number of users and sessions
- The number of times visitors complete a specified, desirable action. This is also known as a conversion.
- Approximate geolocation of users
- How users engage with your content
- Ad performance and clicks
- How users found your website
By understanding this data, it enables you to improve your content and increase the likeliness of generating valuable leads for your business.
How GA4 can be used:
The analytics gathered by GA4 can help you make informed decisions about how you market your business online. Here are some examples of questions GA4 data can help you decide:
- Is your site navigation easy to use?
GA4 data can track what links and buttons users click on. This may identify content which is being missed by website visitors.
- Where do new users come from?
This data from GA4 can help you understand what channels are working best for you in terms of traffic and lead generation. Where are your leads coming from and what can you do to increase those?
- What are your top-performing campaigns?
If you are running Google Ads you can learn which Ad Groups are performing well and then use the same model for future campaigns.
At Moorhouse Digital, we can help support a smooth website migration and provide detailed website audits if you are considering having a new website.
Our team can check whether GA4 is fully working for your website and help you navigate the generated reports so you can better understand how to optimise your marketing.
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