Aug 13, 2014

How to Test Universal Analytics Before Upgrading: via Google Tag Manager


Test Universal Analytics with Google Tag Manager

Since Universal Analytics came out of beta last April, more and more users have been starting the upgrade process from classic Google Analytics. Altough Google strongly encourages to do the upgrade, and reassure that the migration will not cause any loss of data (perhaps just a few seconds of traffic), some of us still remain a bit worried about the change. This is especially true in the case of big websites with a large number of tags already implemented through classic Google Analytics.

Will there be any significant difference in data after the complete migration? Will Universal Analytics inflate/reduce some metrics compared to classing tracking code? These questions should motivate you to perform some testing before moving completely to a new standard.

In this post I am going to suggest a step by step process to conduct your upgrade to Universal Analytics, with the help of Google Tag Manager. Yes, this post is also about Google Tag Manager. It´s actually about taking the opportunity of the transition to a new standard (Universal Analytics) and make it in the most efficient and safest way (Google Tag Manager).

The main idea of this step by step process is to keep the upgrade "under control" and make sure you are going to get the same quality of data as before.