As I mentioned in my previous blogs Google Analytics (GA)will stop supporting the old UniversalAnalytics from 1 st July 2023 and will ONLY provide data to GA4.

How does this affect me?

Do you use Google Analytics (GA) to provide useful information on visitors to your website and their
behaviours? Do you have a GA account and is it linked to your website? If you have a website but have no idea how to answer those questions its really important for you to schedule a chat with your web developer pronto.  From 1 st July 2023 you will no longer receive any data about your website if you haven’t changed over to GA4. If you are selling products online or have calendar booking tools enabled this is going to massively impact how your website works as well as making it hard for you to track your customer sales analytics.

Does this affect website policies?
YES! With the change in the analytics platform you will need to review and change you website Privacy policy. GA4 will be offering more advances towards GDPR and how is captures data – to include the following:
 How they collect both website and app data to understand the customer journey better.
 Uses events instead of session-based data.
 Includes privacy controls such as cookieless measurement and behavioural and conversion
modelling.
 Predictive capabilities offer guidance without complex models.
 Direct integrations to media platforms help drive actions.
 IP anonymization is always enabled for GA4 properties & no manual action is required.
 Google Analytics 4 uses IP only to determine where to record other personal data of users,
and then it is deleted.

All of the above and more need to be covered in your Privacy Policy as well as the usual information like how you work as a business, where your website and hosting are based and the services you offer. All of this must be included in your Privacy Policy which MUST be included as a link or tab on your website (usually it is found in the footer).

Time is running out

Remember there is no grace period for businesses once GA4 has been implemented and all areas it
affects and captures need to be openly and transparently communicated to your website visitors. This is a huge gap that can lead to data breaches & believe me, no one wants one of those! I can not stress the importance of reviewing and changing  your policies enough. If you aren’t reviewing and carrying out the changes to your policies- you can guarantee that your competitors are as being tight on the running of websites & your back office policies are the things that set a successful business apart.