Universal analytics vs Google Analytics – Important Differences

Universal analytics vs Google Analytics – The online world is expanding at a rapid pace and that is why gaining a foothold in the digital world is really important and vital to your success. In the initial phase, understanding the implications of website traffic might seem vague and that is why many brands implement it but do not take many steps to ensure its continued success and growth.

The internet is today filled with a lot of information and the competition on this platform is highly intense. That is why the campaigns need to be innovative, interesting and interactive. While building a website is the first step to creating a strong digital presence, continuous engagement and empowerment is needed to maintain high traffic. While having a high traffic is really important, it is more important to convert the traffic into leads and sales in an effective manner.

So even if you have many visitors on your blog/website unless they are buying your product/services, all those numbers will just remain as statistics and nothing substantial can be achieved from them. These accumulating statistics will eventually mean nothing for your brand or company. So even if there are million hits on your website and no conversion, it is actually a disaster for a company.

The main aim of every website is generating visitors but brands have to keep in mind that a maximum of the people who visit their website are targeted individuals. Generating qualified leads is one of the best ways in which brands can achieve success in all their digital campaigns and advertisements. Targeted traffic is quality traffic that is qualified and linked to the success of your company as this means that people who visit your website are actually looking for products and services that you are providing. The goal of any brand should be targeted audience that can in reality measure the true success of your brand. Here are some points that will help you to understand the growing importance of targeted traffic.

This article on Universal analytics vs Google Analytics is structured as below:-

• Universal analytics vs Google Analytics Infographics
• So what exactly is Google Analytics?
• Differences between Universal analytics vs Google Analytics
• Conclusion – Universal analytics vs Google Analytics

Universal analytics vs Google Analytics Infographics

• Targeted traffic helps brands to convert their customers in a much better manner, than before:

The single most important goal of any company is to increase its sales in a comprehensive fashion. And if a brand is not able to achieve enhanced and continuous sales, will eventually fail in the run. That is why digital campaigns that engage and empower customers at regular intervals is extremely important. As mentioned above, tons of website visitors are not the answer but having a plan that targets customers in a comprehensive style is the way to go. A good website with all the required information will help you convert and keep customers in a much better fashion and even if you have a less traffic that is getting converted then it is a successful mission.

• Targeted traffic is needed to ensure greater and better return on investment for the brand:

Pay per click advertising is a really popular method through which brands can build their brand and generate targeted traffic to the main page of their website. Pay per click advertising requires investment and in case this does not result in conversion, then it can lead to the failure of the entire company. Investing in PPC is a good option, but the campaign has to be strong so that it does not lead to wastage of resources or time.

On the other hand, if you can convert your visitors to sales, then you can generate the investment for a good PPC campaign. In turn if your PPC campaign is successful, the it can generate resources for even bigger campaigns and strategies. This can be explained through the help of an example. If a brand is selling a product worth Rs. 100, and a PPC campaign might need say at least one percent of conversion rate, in order to make the entire campaign successful.

• Targeted traffic helps to build your brand power, reputation and loyalty:

The internet is today a world of information and people are constantly on a lookout for information and services that they require on a daily basis. More often than not, many people get directed either through search engines or PPC ad, through information that they do not really need. During this process, many people will get frustrated and not even visit the website again. If you have a website that focuses on the right kind of content and when your website provides that same information, you will success in creating happy and satisfied visitors who will become regular followers of your brand. Targeted traffic will help you take your business/brand to the next level of growth and once these customers start talking about your brand on the internet in a positive aspect, the limits to which your brand can grow is endless and limitless.

After having established the importance of targeted customers, it is but obvious that brands need to study every aspect of their website in a comprehensive manner. It is here that Google Analytics and Universal Analytics can help brands to achieve this goal in a successful way.

So what exactly is Google Analytics?

A free web analytics service, that is offered by Google, Google Analytics allows users to track and report traffic of websites in a comprehensive fashion. Launched by Google in November 2005, it is one of the most common and most frequently used web analytics service on the entire web world. Offered in two additional versions namely google Analytics Premium, it is targeted at enterprise users while Google analytics for mobile apps, it allows brands to collect data on iOS and Android devices. Urchin Software Corp. was acquired by Google in April 2005 and this system also brought ideas from Adaptive Path. A product of Adaptive Path was Measure Map which was a part of the new design of Google analytics that was launched in 2006. While Google continued to sell standalone installable Urchin Web Analytics Software, it was discontinued in 2012.

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A new version of Google Analytics was released in 2005, which was suspended due to extremely high rates of sign ups. Google used to send out innovation codes as server before 2006 but post that this service has been available to all users, irrespective of whether they use Google as an advertising medium or not.

In April of 2011, a new version of Google Analytics was announced that had multiple features that included custom report, a brand new interface design and multiple dashboards. In 2012 of October, the latest version of Google analytics that is called Universal Analytics was announced. The main difference between Universal analytics vs Google Analytics is cross platform tracking, flexible universal analytics tracking code that allows collection of data from any device and the use of custom dimension and custom metrics.

Differences between Universal analytics vs Google Analytics

Universal Analytics is an updated version of Google Analytics that has completely transformed the manner in which data and information about website traffic is collected. This in turn has helped brands and companies to gain a better and deeper perspective about online content and how Universal analytics vs Google Analytics can transform the form in which brands are perceived in the digital world.

Some of the Universal Analytics benefits include the following:

1. Universal Analytics have the capability of connecting multiple devices, sessions and engagement data with the identity of the user:

The universal analytics user id allows brands to associate multiple sessions through the use of a unique ID. Brands can use a single ID and the related engagement data to Analytics, all the concerned activity is done under a single user. This universal analytics user ID can help brands to gain a more accurate user count, analyse the user experience and get access to reports based on new cross devices as well.

2. Universal Analytics helps brands to collect new and flexible tracking code that in turns helps them to collect data from almost any digital device:

Universal Analytics has three new versions of tracking code that can be used by brands to implement their own specific technical needs and requirements. By using analytics.js JavaScript library for websites, the Analytics SDK can be used by brands to track mobile applications while the Universal Analytics Measurement protocol can be used for other digital devices like information kiosks and game consoles. In Universal Analytics, almost all the collection methods are fairly easy and can be handled by the developer in a simple fashion, thereby enabling easy set and customisation of tracking codes. Further, Universal Analytics make cross domain tracking for websites relatively simple and accurate, thereby increasing their popularity and usability. Some things like organic search sources, referral exclusions, search term exclusions and session and campaign timeout handling are some things that brands can control through the Admin page of the Universal Analytics page.

3. Universal Analytics can implement enhanced E-commerce:

Today, E-commerce is a very big part of the digital marketing plans of any brand. Companies that ignore the impact and reach of e-commerce do so at their own peril. With Universal Analytics, brands can manage and develop their e-commerce websites in a better style and by tagging sites with ec.js plugin, they can effectively use universal analytics enhanced ecommerce reports as well. These reports can help brands to analyse the users and their shopping patterns and purchasing behaviour. This will help you generate better success for your marketing efforts, both in an internal and external manner. Economic success can transform the brands in multiple ways and by understanding the data of the customers, companies can use the said data to transform their companies future in a successful fashion.

4. Universal Analytics helps users to stay updated with brand new updates and features:

Universal Analytics provides brand managers access to not just standard analytics reports and tools but also new universal analytics features that are only accessible to those who use this product. Those brands that use old collection methods, will not be eligible to using the future updates on the product.

This being said, moving from Google analytics to Google analytics can sometimes be a very complex and challenging task. The first step in this process is to get acquainted about the major features of both Universal analytics vs Google Analytics platform.

Both Universal analytics vs Google Analytics run on a JavaScript application that is maintained by Google. While the classic google analytics uses a tracking code called ga.js, the Universal Analytics code that is called analytics.js. Both Universal analytics vs Google Analytics manufacture and transmit data into the data servers of Google that are later collected into reports. The major differences between the two analytics version is in the customisation, which include the following areas namely custom search engines, timeout handling and referral exclusions.

Tracking of data and insights in the digital world is based on tags that are triggered when a user enters a web page. In other words, page tags are fired when certain events occur like clicking a button or changing dropdown list by the user. This will help brands ti understand what the user really wants to know and which information he is really looking for. That is why implementing Google Analytics Universal requires that brands convert their page tags either through a software or manually. Some page tags example that need to be converted to Universal Analytics syntax are event tracking, universal analytics e-commerce activity, universal analytics custom variables, social interactions and virtual page views. These tags allows developers to improve and enhance their functionality, flexibility and consistency so that they can capture the required data in a comprehensive manner, thereby ensuring better and reliable insights from the collected data.

Conclusion – Universal analytics vs Google Analytics

Both Universal analytics vs Google Analytics are important means in which brands can collect data and gain insights from them. Websites are worth a lot more than what brands think and investing in their potential holds the key to success and failure of the company, both in the long and short run. Brands can do this by generating high quality content, that is effective and engaging on one hand and learning from data insights on the other hand is one of the key ways in which brands can grow and transform themselves in a profitable and prosperous way.