Upgrading to Google Universal Analytics

Question

I have been searching around to find out anything that needs to be taken into consideration when upgrading to Universal Analytics.

I found this post:

Google Analytics - Upgrading to Async Code

He explains that if you are not doing anything advanced you should be ok. We have lots of event tracking in place that we would like to keep the same. We also have some Custom Variables I could do without and/or deal with in Custom Dimensions.

Other than that we have a fairly basic setup.

We do have a "keep alive" event in place also that helps determine an accurate time on site.

Another really important question has everything to do with being able to transistion from Classic analytics to Universal. Is this possible? I found an article that said it wasn't but that article was a couple months old and not sure if its still true.

Thoughts?

Answer 1

Universal Analytics is Google's newest tracking code. It is currently in beta phase, so you may want to hold off on it, depending on your resources... In principle it works more or less the same way as the async code. Here are the major points about it:

• The syntax is different. All config/tracking is done by making a call to ga()
• Some of the "config" arguments for things have been moved to the GA interface. For example, names and scope for custom variables are no longer passed as arguments on-page. They are now done within the GA interface. Actually to be more accurate, custom variables no longer exist. Google now has custom dimensions and metrics as a replacement. Custom dimensions are the closest translation to custom variables (they are pretty much the same in principle). Custom metrics are some kind of mix between dimensions and events.
• Google currently does NOT offer a way to upgrade your profile(s)/account(s) to Universal Analytics style. In order to use Universal Analytics, you have to create a new account or profile. If you want to try Universal Analytics out, Google currently recommends implementing it along side the traditional or async version you already have implemented.
• Google has not currently officially stated when or if they will provide a means to migrate existing profiles, though I personally think they eventually will, since preserving historical data and reducing time and costs associated with migrating is a huge concern to everybody.