GA4 transition

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Gwendolyn Chambers
Gwendolyn Chambers ✭
Ancient Membership Facilitator 1 Name Dropper Photogenic
in Blackbaud Luminate Online® & Blackbaud TeamRaiser® Discussions

Hi All!
Our team (myself) has been following and, to some degree, preparing for the switch from Google Analytics to GA4 and would love to hear how other organizations are tackling this. The most recent informational webinar I attended stressed that the new software is hugely different, has a steep learning curve and will employ not just GA4 but also Big Query and Google Data Studio. It suggested that some smaller non-profits may struggle or not have the staff to make the switch easily and that consideration of other alternatives should be investigated. Are any of you deciding to move to a different product for analytics (or are you already using an alternative that you like)? On a parallel track, I'm also trying to set up our GA4 property and have not come across info on how to implement e-commerce transactions for Luminate donation forms. Any resources on what's needed to properly track donations would be super helpful.

Looking forward to hearing from some folks!

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  • Elizabeth Favre
    Elizabeth Favre Blackbaud Employee
    Fourth Anniversary Facilitator 1 Name Dropper Photogenic

    I was really hoping this thread would get more traffic. I am very curious to know how people are adapting to this analytics shift.

  • Gwendolyn Chambers
    Gwendolyn Chambers ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 1 Name Dropper Photogenic

    Yes, me too! If nothing else, I'd like to know if there is some equivalent to the transaction/donation tracking in GA4 and if so, instructions for setting that up.

  • Melanie Grayson
    Melanie Grayson ✭
    Ancient Membership First Reply

    Yes, me three! Our web developer just reached out to see what options are available to us to prepare for the switch to GA4. Support confirmed that this webpage is the most current info they have & pointed me to this community to see if there was any additional intel here . I'm a little stuck on how we would then implement our code into our LO pages.? This older thread (from 2019) shows how to add the code to a pagebuilder reusable page to then use to update all wrappers. Has anyone done this successfully?

  • Gwendolyn Chambers
    Gwendolyn Chambers ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 1 Name Dropper Photogenic

    @Melanie Grayson I don't think the old documentation will work for GA4. What we need is documentation on setting up Ecommerce Tracking Purchase Event in Luminate forms.

    Hoping we can get some guidance on this?

  • Reid Dossinger
    Reid Dossinger ✭
    Seventh Anniversary Facilitator 1 Photogenic

    I too would love some code for e-commerce in LO. I came here looking for something, so another vote for some guidance!

    GA4 does indeed take a good deal more configuration and work. It's not (at least, not yet) nearly as plug-and-play as Universal Analytics (UA, aka GA3). Configuring goals is far more time-consuming, and I've had difficulty getting some of the pageview-based goals to be accurate.

    The other two things that people should be conscious of is that (again, at least at the moment), the way to have a usable report is to use Google Data Studio. Plus, you'll likely need to dive in to additional ways to archive data.

    I'm going to continue our org on the path of using GA4, but would also be interested in finding out if anyone else is switching rather than using GA4, and if so, what?

  • Kent Gilliam
    Kent Gilliam Blackbaud Employee
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic

    @Reid Dossinger
    I have a session this Wednesday where I'm talking about GA4 as kind of a “we're letting you know” session. In it I'll talk about the options that have enabled older GA code employment and I'll share a bit about the discussions we're having around how we're looking to setup so GA4 can be easily implemented across all LO/TR pages. Now I won't be getting into the funnels and such like that since that's more on the Google side of things but I'm hoping by getting this topic more in front of people that more resources will come in here to discuss what they are going to do. Stay tuned!

  • Reid Dossinger
    Reid Dossinger ✭
    Seventh Anniversary Facilitator 1 Photogenic

    @Kent Gilliam Definitely interested. Is there a place to register? Or will you just be able to post the information after the fact?

  • Elizabeth Favre
    Elizabeth Favre Blackbaud Employee
    Fourth Anniversary Facilitator 1 Name Dropper Photogenic

    @Reid Dossinger
    https://hello.blackbaud.com/CustomerSuccess.html

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    644ab134e489b539288cbdbee3d91359-huge-im
  • Kent Gilliam
    Kent Gilliam Blackbaud Employee
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic

    @Reid Dossinger I'll post after too but here's the hub. Just scroll down to the Luminate Online section to see the session link:


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