Google Analytics is rolling out their latest App + Web property, a quantum leap for Google and marketers alike. Here's a recap of what this means for customer journeys, consumer insights, and cross-platform reporting.

What's different about Google Analytics App + Web

Up to now, Google has kept web and app analytics separated by offering two distinct tools - Google Analytics for website data and Google Analytics for Firebase for mobile apps, resulting in fragmented insights across different platforms. All this has just changed with their latest update (now running in beta for GA 360 accounts) that unifies app and website data in a new Google Analytics property. The traditional Session/Pageview model that's been in use for 15+ years is now replaced by Event + Parameter-based analytics, which enables you to connect more metadata with user interactions across different devices.

Yes, you guessed it right: with this release, they're raising their game and tapping into a key trend has been dominating the marketing and analytics space for a while now: cross-platform customer journey insights. What does this mean for marketers?

1. Better customer journey tracking from consideration to conversion

When you're in marketing, knowing where and how conversions happen, as well as knowing which advertising channels drive the most ROI are top priorities. With the latest Enhanced Measurement feature in Google Analytics, you can now measure beyond page views no matter the device, and, to our rejoice, it requires no coding :-)

Here's an example: if you're wondering what leads your customers to make a purchase, you can now easily see if a user started their journey on mobile and continued on desktop where they actually bought your product.

By toggling on the tracking option for website events like outbound links, scrolling, downloads, video views, you can better understand how your customers are making their buying decisions and get the granular insights that you've always wanted.

See it in action:

If you're an admin in Google Analytics, these options can now be found under 'Data Streams' in the Property section. Here's how it looks:

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2. Enriched user behavior visibility across devices from one place

According to Google's latest release, the new Google Analytics App + Web property will answers questions like:

- How many total unique users do you have, regardless of which platform they use?

- How many conversions have occurred on your app and website in a specific period?

- Which platform is driving most of these conversions?

So, how does this work? The new Google Analytics App + Web property introduces a new Audience builder (replacing the old Advanced Segment builder in Google Analytics) that helps you better understand your users' behavior by slicing and dicing your website and app audiences by hits, sessions, or users. You can easily combine these parameters and unify and segment the web audiences that you want to have a closer look at, no matter the device.

"Getting insight into these cross-platform journeys is critical for businesses to predict customer needs and provide great experiences." - Russell Ketchum, GROUP PRODUCT MANAGER, GOOGLE ANALYTICS

3. Powerful reporting tailored to your needs

With the newest Google Analytics App + Web property, you can slice and dice your analytics data and dimensions however you want, which makes your campaign reporting integrated and unified. This is made possible via the new Analysis tab that you can now find in Google Analytics.

Here's are a few cool features:

- Funnels (open or closed)

Gives a good grasp of when customers are entering or leaving your funnels

- Path analysis

Helps marketers understand the steps in the customer journey that led them (or did not lead them) to a conversion

- Exploration

If you want to get down to the nitty-gritty, this feature makes it easier to visualize your data by dragging and dropping variables of your choice

What about other neat analytics features?

All in all, we can definitely see that Google Analytics has raised its game with this update. There are definitely more analytics and reporting gold nuggets associated with this release, and analysts like Krista Seiden and Tushar Gupta are already covering it in more depth. Do check their articles out if you want to take a deeper dive! This was a quick overview of the highlights relevant to marketing :-)

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About Diana Ellegaard-Daia: ‍

Diana Daia is the Head of Content Marketing at Accutics and a strategist with a no-nonsense growth approach. She is passionate about digital marketing, CRO, digital analytics, and account-based strategy. She works closely with collaborative content & influencer outreach by creating guest articles and deep-dive interviews with leading marketing and digital analytics experts.

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