Google Analytics App + Web Property Walkthrough

Content:

1. Real-Time reports
2. User Snapshots
3. Conversion Tracking
4. Enhanced Measurement
5. Advanced Analysis
6. Funnel Analysis
7. Pathing Reports
8. Default Reporting Identity
9. BiqQuery Export for App + Web Property
10. Summary

1. Real-Time reports

App + Web property brings over the real-time reports from Google Analytics for Firebase. This gives us a way more flexibility than the current real-time reports. Now, it is possible to easily filter by user properties (user-scope custom dimensions), launch user snapshots, and get more insights into what is happening right now.

2. User Snapshots

App + Web has new user snapshot reports that allow you to see random anonymized users in order to understand what is happening on your site and apps in real-time with the new stream views. You can drill into any interaction to see additional details, such as what user properties and parameters are associated with that interaction.

Debug Mode is also a new feature that is automatically launched when you are in preview mode of Google Tag Manager. This will stream all your data into a stream view, so you can easily see all the data that is being recorded from your test visits, as well as all of the parameters and properties for each interaction. The feature is of a great help for QA and tracking validation purposes.

3. Conversion Tracking

Updates in conversion tracking are the most important ones. Automatic conversions and simpler custom conversions setup are now available in App + Web Property.

Ecommerce purchases, first visits, first opens, and in-app purchases are enabled as conversions by default. In addition, you can enable up to 30 more events as custom conversions, which you can toggle on and off as much as you like. Setting up custom conversions is improved in App + Web with the addition of a simple toggle to mark an event as a conversion, instead of the more complicated goal setup in existing Google Analytics.

4. Enhanced Measurement

Upon creating a new property, you can enhance your measurement by enabling additional tracking features such as scrolls, outbound clicks, site search, video engagement and file downloads without any customization. You can disable this and customize everything as much as you want.

5. Advanced Analysis

Advanced Analysis has never been available for users of Google Analytics standard and was only available in Google Analytics 360 and Firebase. App + Web brings Advanced Analysis to everyone and even includes the addition of new features and reports that have never been available even inside Google Analytics 360.

6. Funnel Analysis

Funnel Analysis lets you create ad-hoc funnel visualizations. You can create a ‘Standard Funnel’ which shows how users are completing steps or a ‘Trended Funnel’ which allows you to see trends for each funnel step and how they are changing over time. You also have the option of selecting ‘Make Open Funnel’ which will include people entering the funnel at any step.

You can now choose to have an open or closed funnel. A closed funnel requires users to start from the first step and sequentially go through each step. An open funnel allows users to enter from any step within your funnel.

Next action is a new feature for Funnels, which allows you to hover over any step in your funnel to see what the top next actions your users have taken immediately after completing the previous step.

7. Pathing Reports

Path Analysis allows you understanding how people travel through your website and app with a tree graph, similar to what you would find in the flow-style reports in a standard reporting view.

8. Default Reporting Identity

By default, not only will it use the anonymous first-party cookie ID, as it always does, but also it will use User ID. Meaning, the User ID will be the primary key any time it is sent, but the first-party client ID is also used whenever it is not available. At any time, you can change your preferred selection for identity setting and it changes all of the data in your reports to reflect your new choice. This setting will not permanently change any of your data collection or data processing no matter how many times you change it.

9. BiqQuery Export for App + Web Property

Now you can export all of your raw, unsampled events from App + Web properties to BigQuery, and then use a SQL-like syntax to query that data. In BigQuery, you can choose to export your data to an external storage or import external data for the purpose of combining it with your Analytics data. This used to be a feature exclusive to GA 360, but is now available in App + Web for all. Follow the link to explore more.

How to Connect and Export Data from GA4 to BigQuery?

Summary

It is important to note that even though there are many new awesome features, App + Web is still far from having use-case parity with the existing version of Google Analytics. New features will be rolled out over time, until some day in the future when we break out of beta with a fully functional platform. It also requires starting from scratch and does not import or use any of your data from other Google Analytics datasets. For these reasons, it is only recommended to use App + Web for web properties as a secondary implementation that exists with your current implementation of the existing version of Google Analytics. It is not yet ready to stand-alone as a primary analytics solution for websites yet.