Users Data from Universal analytics is different than the one in GA4, and different than Squarespace analytics data as well

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I had a problem tracking the data of a low-traffic website built with Squarespace.
I’m currently trying to compare the data between 2 date ranges(3 months before the website redesign and 3 months after).

I saw that Squarespace gathers more data than google analytics. Mainly UA and Squarespace are near each other and we always have Squarespace that has more data than UA for the primary metrics(Page views, sessions, Unique visitors, bounce rate…)

12 OCT - 12 JAN Universal Analytics Squarespace GA4
Page view 9736 10185 9400
Vistis(Sessions) 5623 5900 5467
Unique visitors(Users in GA) 4403 5200 4338
Bounce rate 72.13% 71% 50.89%

The data for the second date range(GA4 inaccurate because it wasn’t implemented) :

11 JULY- 11 OCT Universal Analytics Squarespace GA4
Page view 9736 10185 //
Vistis(Sessions) 5623 5900 //
Unique visitors(Users in GA) 4403 5200 //
Bounce rate 72.13% 71% //

I want to ask how to deal with this inaccuracy with the data and talk with clients about that when they are asking about this issue. I tried to follow all advice to make sure that my analytics is working properly, but I became not confident in those analytics which leads me to underestimate their value. Any thoughts or experiences that are similar to that?

P.S: I’m using Hotjar script as well as google tags manager.

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This is a great question @gh_bennaceur

We experience regularly discrepancies small and large between tools. I believe this is entirely normal as each tool would have different methods of collecting data but also slightly different definitions.

It maybe worth investigating exactly how they are defined on each platform, but the numbers are close enough that to my eye it looks within an acceptable range from a product point of view.

For example the one that Id be most curious about is bounce rate as the difference there is 20% which is significant.

Others may have different opinions here. Perhaps @pablo or @leandro_griboff have some input?

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Hey @gh_bennaceur – it might pay to dig into how Google Analytics and Squarespace actually calculate some of these metrics. That’ll help you talk knowledgeably about the base differences between platforms.

For example:

Bounce rate is defined a bit differently between UA and GA4, so I’d guess that’s why you’re seeing the wide difference between the two.

What has me really interested, though – your metrics for each period seem to be identical??

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Thank you, that is the explanation for the issue.

For the two date ranges, they appear to be identical; yes, those two date ranges are three months before the landing page redesign and three months after. I wanted to try to understand the changes after the landing page changes, but it seems that I cannot get any difference using Analytics. To improve the landing page that was redesigned by a non-professional, I need to dig into Hotjar heatmaps, user recordings, and surveys, as well as the live chat that I implemented over the past few months, to see what can be improved in terms of the website copy, the information hierarchy, etc.

Even if the data is not qualified to be accurate, I think I need to try to squeeze all the information to get some useful insights, and this is the other issue that I’m facing with this low-traffic website.

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