Hey Mike

Yes to some of that (especially the messaging and auto-migration). But to be fair…

You could do a long list of the major drawbacks in the previous version - more limited data collection out of the box, fiddly cross-domain tracking, too many useless reports, meaningless metrics given way too much prominence (hello sitewide bounce rate), weird database/data model quirks that got in the way of basic analysis, bizarrely inflexible ways of doing custom tracking… Not to mention the privacy issues and vulnerability to spam.

GA4 isn't perfect but it fixes most of those things (and more) and is still under active development.

And it's free. Sure, there are better analytics tools out there, but the only serious ones cost a comparative fortune and/or need even more upfront effort (money better spent elsewhere). So that's why most people are sticking with GA4. 

Also, given that most museums tend to be freeloaders when it comes to Google services (GA, GTM, Google Ad Grants, Looker Studio…), it's maybe a little churlish to complain about the “360º e-commerce speak” and general feature-skew towards the things needed by actual paying customers.

And yes. The reporting UI is definitely more of a Lego set than… I dunno, some sort of readymade toy? (I need to work on this analogy).

But look on the bright side. At a conference (MCG or MuseumNext?) a while back, Dafydd James (then of Amgueddfa Cymru) talked about the Streetlight Effect and how people fixate on the metrics that are visible rather than thinking about what's actually valuable/worthwhile. In quite a few cases, taking museums through the GA4 switchover process has involved us having much more interesting chats about what they should measure and why (not just at a tactical level, but also to prove more strategic digital progress to the higher-ups).

Am I saying GA4 will single-handedly usher in a golden age of user/data-informed digital activity in museums, properly supported by senior stakeholders? YES. Well, no, that's obviously an overreach.

But being able/encouraged to properly customise the main GA4 reports is great - it's my favourite new feature. A small amount of upfront work can make a huge difference, basically serving up useful data on a plate for colleagues who haven't got the time to learn all the ins and outs. Training people on GA4 is a doddle once you make the reports make sense and that customisation doesn't have to take very long to do.

I'm aware of not wanting to be at all sales-y here (is anyone even still reading?), but I will say there are cultural sector analytics specialists out there who've done this for lots of museums (big and small) and who have bundled up some nice, easy instructions into a GA4 Reporting Kit. More generic templates are easy to find online. As David said, support is out there.

Don't get me wrong, there are bits that need improving. But the museum sector has survived worse software than GA4.

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