For those of you in Google Analytics regularly, you might have noticed a new little option in your account properties. Here are the pros of the Universal Analytics Upgrade button, as well as another option higher education sites should consider.

If you haven’t heard of this Universal Analytics thing, here are the Cliff’s Notes:

• There’s a new Measurement Protocol. Changes to the way the tracking code works now allow for a much more user-focused tool. For the data-driven among us, this is a very good thing!
• It allows you to do some pretty amazing things. Want to segment using your (anonymous) CRM id? You can do it. Want to get a better picture of users across multiple devices? You bet. Want to import conversions from point-of-sale systems? Yep, you can do that, too.
• You’re going to have to upgrade. Google has been working on rolling out the new tool over the past several years. It is currently out of beta and in Phase 3 (of four phases). The next phase starts a clock on the old asynchronous tool – you’ve got about two years. Now is the time to make a plan to upgrade.

How do you upgrade? You need two things.

Step 1: You need to be using a Universal Analytics property within the Google Analytics interface.

There are two main paths to get to Step 1.

First, you can upgrade within your existing property.

For many industries with small, straightforward websites, this is as simple as pushing that little upgrade button in the interface and making a quick code change on the main template. However, higher education is not known for simple websites. We have all kinds of web entities that we need to incorporate.

The first step of any transition plan is to make a map of sub domains, root domains, third party applications and off-Content Management System (CMS) sites. Next decide which ones should be tracked together in the Universal property. (Think about this in terms of referrals – do you want to see referrals from your admissions sub domain, or it is really part of one user flow? Usually the latter.)

This approach is for those of you who are confident that you were tracking your site accurately in the first place. If you were tracking things correctly, it makes sense to just push upgrade, update your site code and enjoy all of that great historical data.

The pros of this approach:

• Historical data. You keep all of your website’s historical data in one property, easily accessible to compare year-over-year or month-over-month. Keep in mind, however, that if you made a lot of (necessary) changes regarding which sites you’re tracking in order to have more accurate reporting, you’re comparisons will come with plenty of footnotes.
• It can seem less daunting. Switching to a new version of Analytics can seem like a big deal. This little button, to Google’s credit, makes it feel like less of a process and might be a little easier to get buy-in.

Your second option, create a new Universal Analytics property and run it alongside your asynchronous property for a testing period.

After going through the mapping process with clients, this is my more common recommendation. Typically what we find is that the site wasn’t tracked completely right in the first place and in fixing the set up, we are also rendering the historical data inaccurate.

If we start tracking 1000 new pages (for accuracy) then of course Pageviews will go up year-over-year. And if we are redrawing the lines around what we consider the “site”, we can expect our time on site, bounce rates and pages per visit metrics to be skewed.

The good news is, there are some benefits to running both your current asynchronous and Universal Analytics at the same time – which yes, you can do safely.

The pros to this approach:

• Data for testing. Universal Analytics records things a little bit differently than asynchronous (like sub domains), so do not expect your two properties to produce identical numbers. But, you can do a quick comparison of your sub domains, domains, third parties and off-CMS sites to make sure things are reporting and within an expected range. Through this process we’ve identified CMS template and publishing errors as well.
• Great for the risk-adverse. This is the toe in the water approach. You can continue all tracking and analysis with the asynchronous tracking code until you feel ready to push forward with full Universal. Heck, you don’t even need to pull the old tracking code off at all if you’re feeling nostalgic.
• It’s actually just as easy as the “upgrade button”. If you’ve ever made a new property, you know it is just a few simple button clicks and you’re up and rolling.

The single biggest consideration as you’re deciding if you should upgrade your existing property or take the dual tracking approach with a new property is this:

Is your existing analytics set up accurate enough to make the historical data valuable?

Even it the answer is “no”, you’re not going to throw your historical data away. It will just be carefully tucked in a retired property that you can reference as needed. This can actually be a positive thing in for shared accounts as it protects other users from making invalid comparisons.

Step 2: You need to have the new Universal Analytics code on your site (analytics.js).

Once you’ve decided which route to take for the upgraded property, you’ll need to tackle putting the new code on your site. Note, this includes any event tracking you might have place.

Use your map to identify the list of sub domains, domains, third party and off-CMS sites. If you’re lucky much of your site will be maintained within one CMS and maybe even within one template. This process can, however, be huge. Having that list can prove an invaluable resource to check these off.

Hate the idea of updating code on all of those sites? Use Google Tag Manager(GTM) to streamline the process (at least next time). Place the container code one time and you can make updates to tags from a user-friendly (let’s be honest, marketing-friendly) interface. GTM also allows you to place event tracking, AdWords conversion and remarketing tags.

Not excited about Universal Analytics yet? Check out Justin Cutroni’s blog, How Universal Analytics will Drive Strategic Marketing for a really slick real life example.