One of the data sources I’ve worked with quite often for clients is Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is a tool commonly used for web sites, web apps, mobile apps, and other digital products to measure traffic, leads, conversions and other important metrics on your site.

Around July 2023, Google started to sunset the old version of Google Analytics, “Universal Analytics” or just “UA”, and require that all customers move their Analytics properties to the latest version Google Analytics 4 or “GA4”.

There are some differences between UA and GA4, but the basic principle is the same – it’s still a tool for tracking user behavior on your websites, and it still requires reporting expertise to get the insights you want and need to understand user traffic, conversions, and so on.

Here’s generally where I help clients the most with GA4:

• You don’t like the Google Analytics interface and want to use a separate reporting tool

For example, say you use Power BI or Looker Studio for other reporting needs, so you’d like to also have your Analytics data there as well.

• You want more customized reports

Reporting in Google Analytics itself is pretty basic – unless you opt for custom reports in GA4 which are clunky – in a separate reporting tool, it’s much easier to massage the data, perform calculations, and get the insights you’re looking for.

• You want to integrate GA4 with other datasources

This can’t be done through Google Analytics itself, but it works well in reporting tools like Looker Studio and Power BI, where GA4 is simply another datasource that you can blend/merge/combine with other datasets easily.