Familiarizing yourself with website analytics can be pivotal to growing the digital presence of your practice’s website. Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the updated version of Google’s web and app analytics tool, and many ophthalmology practices are leaning on it to make improvements to their websites.

Conveniently, GA4 is designed with the specific purpose of helping you observe the successful and the ineffective aspects of your website. As you can imagine, this is quite helpful when it comes to making site adjustments to better serve your current patients and attract new ones.

So, what is GA4, and how can you get started utilizing it?

WHAT IS GA4?

GA4 is a tool that provides helpful insights regarding your website’s performance and the behavior of your site’s visitors. This digital tool can help you track everything from how long people spend on your site to what web pages they click on. Therefore, you can leverage the data provided by GA4 to make impactful adjustments to your website, empowering you to connect with existing and potential patients more efficiently. Key features include:

• Detailed tracking capabilities
• User behavior and experience insights
• Predictive data and information
• Easy-to-understand interface
• Data customization

In addition to these key features, GA4 is celebrated for its “smart guessing” capabilities. That is, it reads the behavior and data of your site visitors to predict what they may do in the future regarding your ophthalmology private practice.

HOW DO I ADD GA4?

Adding and implementing GA4 requires you to take just a few steps and exercise a little bit of patience. You can always reach out to your web developer to help you get started with GA4.

If you want to do it yourself, you will want to start by setting up a Google Analytics account if you don’t have one already. From there, you can follow the seven steps Google outlines on its website (bit.ly/3R2FpfD ) to set up and implement GA4. These directions walk you through the process of creating a GA4 property and installing your Google tag either manually or through a plugin.

IS GA4 ALREADY INSTALLED?

Your website does not come with GA4 automatically installed. In fact, this digital tool has to be integrated, either manually with HTML or through a plugin such as MonsterInsights or Site Kit. If you’re not sure if your site is already using GA4, reach out to your web developer to ask if they set this up for you. It’s also very easy to see for yourself if you have GA4 installed on your site.

WANT MORE HELP WITH YOUR PRACTICE WEBSITE?

Check out our resource about how to get more patients with five-star reviews (bit.ly/44zM0kW ). Here, you’ll learn all about how Google reviews can drive more traffic to your ophthalmology private practice.

In addition, you’ll gain knowledge about how to strategically generate more Google reviews and encourage prospective patients to reach out and schedule an appointment. OM

Richard Zimbalist, OD, FAAO, is owner of Ignite Medical, a medical digital marketing agency (ignitemedicalco.com ), and COMO Web Designs (comowebdesigns.com ).

NATHAN ABRAHAM, MD, is owner of Abraham Eye Center (abrahameye.com ).