Taming the GA4 Learning Curve: Expert Tips for Retailers
With the transition to GA4, there are many challenges retailers faced when interacting with its user interface for attribution modelling and complex report customisation. Data is a goldmine to them for personalisation and targeting efforts, but how can they harness this treasure trove of insights for optimised marketing performance?
In this post-event Q&A, we interviewed Sami Khan, Digital Marketing Director of MAAP.cc and Juan De La Pava, Co-Founder of Digital Immersion, about leveraging data activation for improved ROI and ROAS. They discuss navigating GA4’s complexities, ensuring data consistency, and optimizing product feeds for accurate pricing and updated information. Read on to discover how to harness customer data to drive traffic and enhance performance marketing.
How has the transition to GA4 been received within your business, and what have some of the challenges been since adoption?
Juan: At Digital Immersions, we have noticed that many of our clients have faced challenges transitioning to GA4, particularly with the shift to an event-based tracking model. While GA4 provides more control over metrics and deeper insights, setting up reports and configuring key metrics can be complex for businesses. We are actively supporting our clients by training them on how to effectively leverage GA4, helping them understand the key differences and empowering them to use the platform like analysts. The common challenges we are seeing include a steep learning curve due to its new interface and event-based model, a more complex report customisation, fewer default reports which often are different from GA Universal, difficulties ensuring data consistency during migration, changes in attribution modelling that can cause confusion for some clients and challenges integrating GA4 with tools built for Universal Analytics.
Sami: At MAAP, GA4 has given us a much clearer picture of the entire customer journey, particularly across devices, which has been a big win. However, the transition hasn’t been without its challenges. We’ve had to invest time in retraining teams and dealing with the loss of historical data comparability due to GA4's different measurement models. Lack of comparison data during that period was a problem but since we were early adopters, we had GA4 data building up for nearly a year before GA3 was sunset, so our impact was not beyond manageable.
What are the new data opportunities you will be looking to deliver/monetise in the coming year?
Juan: At Digital Immersion we are focusing on helping our clients' Data Maturity by integrating Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) for the purpose of centralising customer data as well as creating a clear data governance framework and enabling the creation of dynamic segments. These segments can be exported to key channels for activation and used to drive personalised experiences on-site, unlocking new opportunities for targeted engagement and monetisation should they have a Retail Media opportunity.
Sami: We’re heavily focused on maximising first-party data, particularly from our events, rides, and customer touchpoints like LaBs and digital engagement. We see opportunities in predictive analytics, allowing us to create personalised experiences and product recommendations. Additionally, we plan to monetise this data by building more tailored re-engagement programs and better segmenting our audiences for more effective campaigns.
Being eCommerce - how important is product feed optimisation to your business's performance?
Especially with social stores now taking off and PMax with Google. Juan: Product feed optimisation is essential for eCommerce growth, as it allows businesses to manage and update product information at scale, ensuring accurate pricing, product details and even creative updates. For example, businesses can quickly adjust promotions for flash sales or distribute selected products across marketing channels and external platforms efficiently. With the rise of social stores and Google PMax, an optimised feed enhances product ad relevance, driving better targeting and improved performance across paid channels.
Sami: Product feed optimisation is crucial to our performance, especially as we see more traffic coming from social commerce and PMax campaigns. An optimised feed ensures that product data—like availability, pricing, and imagery—is accurate and up to date, which directly impacts the likelihood of conversion. It also allows us to tailor our product offerings to different audiences, improving relevance, visibility, and ultimately driving more sales across social and search channels. Without this, we’d risk wasted ad spend and reduced conversion rates. An additional consideration for us is the aesthetic appearance of these feeds across the internet so we stay on top of it to ensure the brand is being seen in a desirable light across the wider advertising portfolio.
Our Contributors:
Sami Khan, Digital Marketing Director, MAAP.cc
Juan De La Pava, Co-Founder of Digital Immersion