Upgrade to GA4 Now and Keep Monitoring Your Website Traffic

by Design for Digital

In today’s digital age, monitoring a business’s online presence is crucial for its success. This is where web analytics tools like Google Analytics come in handy. You get valuable insights into website user behaviour and interaction. However, as with any technology, Google Analytics is constantly evolving. Google announced major changes to its Analytics platform, specifically with the introduction of Google Analytics 4 (GA4). This is set to replace Universal Analytics. As a result, many businesses must upgrade to GA4 to ensure they don’t lose out on valuable data tracking capabilities.

If your business relies on website traffic monitoring to make informed business decisions, take note of these changes. There are less than three months remaining at writing until Universal Analytics stops collecting data (1st July 2023). It’s important to stay ahead of the curve and upgrade to GA4 as soon as possible. Many businesses rely on for gathering important information on their site visitors.

Analytics data to be deleted

Historical Universal Analytics data (which you’ve been keeping for all of those years) will eventually be deleted by Google after 6 months, as they take heed of GDPR rules. So if you cherish this historical data for comparison sake, you will need to backup the data manually. This approach has also been applied to Google Analytics 4, meaning data will only be stored for up to 12 months now. Therefore if you rely on historical data in Google Analytics, you’ll need to consider the limitations from now on.

Google Analytics 4 is quite different from its predecessors. It offers more features, improved data privacy, and a completely revamped user interface. Many of the old features and reports that we have come to rely on in previous versions of Google Analytics may not be available in GA4 at all. Therefore we need to be prepared to invest time and effort into learning the new platform features and adjust our tracking and report strategies accordingly.

Events instead of goals

GA4 now uses events (something many Universal Analytics and Tag Manager professionals will be familiar with). This means ‘goals’ won’t be available and can’t be migrated across. You’ll instead need to set these up as ‘events’, likely through Tag Manager or website code updates. However, by default GA4 sets up several new default events including:

  • click
  • first_visit
  • page_view
  • scroll
  • session_start

Reports have a different look

Due to the change in tracking data, your Google Analytics 4 report pages look different. There are less options available, with some areas in different locations than Universal Analytics. You’ll find the following sections available to browse in GA4 reports which are fairly self-explanatory:

  • Life cycle
    • Acquisition
      • Overview
      • User Acquisition
      • Traffic Acquisition
    • Engagement
      • Overview
      • Events
      • Conversions
      • Pages and screens
      • Landing page
    • Monetisation
      • Overview
      • E-commerce purchases
      • In-app purchases
      • Publisher ads
      • Promotions
    • Retention
  • User
    • Demographics
      • Overview
      • Demographic details
    • Tech
      • Overview
      • Tech details

Convinced that you need to upgrade to GA4?

Changing your website code is necessary to upgrade and benefit from all GA4 features. If you’re not a coder, then it’s best that you reach out to one of our web developers here at Design for Digital. We can smoothly migrate your analytics account and upgrade to GA4, testing all tracking features. Our experts are on hand to assist with your analytics migration. We also have a powerful website statistical reporting solution (with realtime online and PDF options) which our clients find much easier to use than the analytics dashboard. Call us on 07793 22 68 69 for help with your Google Analytics upgrade.

Contact us for GA4 upgrades


SSL Certificate Bug Affects 3m Let’s Encrypt Websites

by Design for Digital

Weds 4th March 2020: Major SSL certificate bug means 3 million website security certificates revoked.

This issue has affected one of the world’s largest SSL providers Let’s Encrypt. Browser security warnings will appear in websites affected according to the BBC, meaning visitors will lose confidence in using these websites until they’re fixed. SSL certificates help encrypt data transmissions on websites keeping important data safe, such as credit card transactions and personal data. To correct this issue SSL certificates that have been revoked will require reinstallation. The security warning should then go away.

Design for Digital have already successfully tested all of our client websites and found no issues. Unfortunately, Let’s Encrypt only gave its customers 75 minutes notice before revoking these affected SSL certificates which far from ideal. More warning to all those affected would have been better business practice and easier for those affected to ensure their site is kept online.

Check your website for SSL issues

If you’re concerned about whether your website is affected by the SSL certificate bug you can check it online by visiting https://checkhost.unboundtest.com. If it is, please get in touch with us as soon as possible and we can help get your site back online.

Let’s Encrypt has revolutionised the way websites use secure transmissions and SSL certificates. However, it is vulnerable to these bugs and frequently has issues with recertification which is required every 3 months. Buying a dedicated SSL certificate not only helps prevent these types of issues but also brings a further layer of confidence to your visitors when installed. Displaying a ‘green’ padlock in Chrome browsers provides further trust for visitors when viewing your website, especially when taking e-commerce transactions. Take the next level of security for your website’s data and enhance trust for customers. Get in touch today and we can help install a dedicated SSL certificate for your website.

Website Maintenance Packages

Maintaining a healthy website is paramount to our philosophy as a website design agency in Bath. Not only do we design and develop engaging WordPress based websites, but we also provide affordable monthly Website Maintenance packages to help our clients concentrate on their own business. We ensure that your customer’s 1st point of contact – your website – is working effectively each day.

Take away the stress of website compatibility and security from your workload. Let the website experts at Design for Digital help your business’s website keep purring along confidently. Contact us today to get a website health check and quote on keeping your site healthy and secure each month.


Google Ranking HTTPS Websites Higher in Search

by Design for Digital

You may have heard on the news over the last year plenty of articles about cyber security and keeping your details safe online. Well Google has been pushing for years that it wants all websites to become secure using encryption regardless of whether they take payment details or not, in a bid to keep web visitors safe. Google has also admitted that HTTPS (the secure version of HTTP) is now a ranking factor in it’s own search algorithm, so it’s not something you should ignore. This is a big change and one of the biggest since Google’s algorithm change to rank responsive websites higher in search for mobile visitors.

Aside from the search ranking effects for HTTPS, Google will soon display a ‘site not secure’ message or similar if it deems your website needs an SSL certificate (the service that encrypts this data) but doesn’t have one in place. This could put off potential visitors, affect your brand and harm sales.

So, how can you get ahead in Google’s new secure website search update? Well, first you need to consider costs. Dedicated SSL certificates are usually more expensive than domains, need renewing every year and without technical knowledge, can be difficult to setup with your domain and hosting if you’re not familiar with the process.

Let’s look at the benefits of a dedicated SSL certificate first. Having a secure website gives your users:

  • Peace of mind when browsing your website that they’re connection is safe.
  • Payments or personal details will be encrypted between their computer and your server using 2048-bit key encryption.
  • Browsers will display a ‘padlock’ symbol and sometimes a ‘Secure’ message with a green highlight in the address bar, giving extra peace of mind.
  • As the website owner, you will also get varying levels of insurance covering you for interception by the SSL certificate provider. Usually this starts with a minimum of $10,000 and of course the higher the payout the more you pay each year.

On the flip side, there are some important points to note about SSL certificates:

  • Having an SSL certificate on your website doesn’t necessarily secure it from hackers. Don’t forget to update your website frequently and adhere to all security protocols when handling sensitive data.
  • Your website will load ever so slightly slower. Encryption usually takes longer to process and therefore page speeds will be slightly longer. The added security will help improve peace of mind for users though.
  • You will need to change all URLs on your website to use the new HTTPS URL, otherwise you will get browser ‘mixed content’ warnings and your browser and possibly search engines won’t give an improved ranking.
  • Renew the SSL certificate every year or risk losing your secure website status. Forgetting to do so could also mean your website may not load correctly. Each certificate is uniquely generated and therefore needs to be reinstalled on renewal.

If setting up an SSL certificate on your website all sounds too complex, we can help you set it up and provide hosting as well as domain registration. We provide dedicated SSL security certificates and will ensure they’re fully configured with you website. We’ll even check for old URLs so you don’t get ‘mixed content’ errors in the browser. Contact us today if you need an SSL certificate or would like some general web design advice.