Hello readers! Welcome back – if you are watching this then most probably you are thinking of implementing GTM for your business or for some clients. Well, this is going to benefit both, Let me just show how –
You will learn in 5 min
- What is Google tag manager?
- Why we need it?
- Best Practices – detailed version
- Best extensions – Bonus tip*
GTM – Google tag manager is a tag management system. What do we mean by that? Suppose you are running google & Fb ads, for tracking the data you need to install global site tags and pixel resp. Conventionally we have to depend on Coders to place the codes at respective positions. But then GTM came and said you can do that without coders also. ( Partially true )
It not only makes the life of a digital marketer like you easier but also improves the site speed. If only one code is placed instead of several tracking codes it will automatically make it easier for Google bots to read it.
Best case scenario – You should paste the GTM code first and the rest of all tags(codes) should be implemented using it only. You can check the same in google tag assistant.
Best Practices
- Google tag manager structure –
GTM has three parts – Account – Container – Workspace. Quite similar to Google analytics, there we have – Account – properties – views.
During my years of experience, I have seen many gtm users making distinct accounts for the same company, distinct containers for the same site.
Ideal practice for Google tag manager structure – Use 1 account for 1 company. If that company is having a demo site then make separate containers for the main & demo site.
What you learn from this –
Accounts = Companies
Containers = Websites.
- Naming convention :
This is just a glimpse, imagine if 20 + tags are installed then how difficult it will become to track – Setup naming conventions to save time.
Look at ( ga – click on page seo & ga – lets talk 2)
Replace that with ( GA – Click on-page SEO & GA – Let’s talk or Fb – Let’s talk). In long run, this will save lots of clutter
- Folders
To organize perfectly, use folders for different purposes. E,g
Folder name = Data layer, now club all the data layer related tags, variables under it,
Folder name = GA, now club all the tags & triggers sending data to GA,
Folder Name = Fb, club the tags sending data to FB. I hope you got the idea.
- GTM control
Make sure to Give access to the right people.
There are 4 types of access available
- Read – if you have an intern, who is learning gtm then give him read access only and suggest he to try making the tags and variables on the mock site
- Edit – This gives the user the ability to create workspaces and make changes but not to publish versions
- Approve – The user has all the right except publishing
- Publish – This gives complete control to the individual – make sure to give publish access to the person who knows GTM at best.
- Workspaces –
Workspaces allow testing different tags on containers. Confusing?
Suppose you opened google chrome. Now you want to search for two things at the same time. What will you do? You will open a new tab right? Then that new tab is like a new workspace on GTM.
Workspaces allow you to test different tags at the same time in different spaces. The new workspace is a new Container Draft that is separated from the latest GTM container version, and this becomes your new Workspace.
It can be useful in 2 situations-
- Test space and final space – If you want that your final space should be well organized then test all the tags, triggers, and variables in the test space, then add the final tags to the final space to avoid the clutter
- Two teams – If there are more than 1 team working on the same client then it makes sense to make separate workspaces
Each Container has one version. When you update a version then each workspace in the container displays a notification that the workspace is out of date, with a prompt to update the workspace.
When another Workspace is turned into a Version, all other Workspaces will get a notification that the Latest Container Version has changed. Any changes implemented in this new Container Version need to be synchronized with all other Workspaces before those can be turned into new Versions.
The workspace must be updated before creating a version and publishing it. If there any conflicts between the changes synced to your workspace while updating and any of the changes already in your workspace, you will see a “Conflict found” indication on the Workspace Overview page. Selecting to resolve the conflicts will bring you into a conflict resolution tool.
6)Tags, variables & Triggers
Tag is something which when triggered gives you the result you wanted
Triggers: It decides when the tag should fire.
Variable: according to Google’s definition, are “name-value pairs for which the value is populated during runtime”.
7) First tags ,triggers & variables to setup
How to connect google analytics with google tag manager.
This will be the probably first question you would be asking while starting GTM.
So every property in GA has a tracking id. Copy the tracking code and paste it into the Google setting variable. Then setup the trigger – (When you want to send the data via GTM to GA) the most used trigger is page view for GA. Setup the tag and use the GA setting variable setup by you in the above steps.
Facebook pixel code google tag manager
This one is a bit tricky as there is no google tag manager custom variable available for it. So what to do?
You have to use a custom javascript variable.
After selecting this variable you have to paste the pixel code into this custom javascript. You have to do it in two parts
- Pixel base code – Assign priority to this tag as this should fire before the pixel page track
2. Pixel page track – This will work as a page view event
These were the basic tags, Variables & Triggers that anyone can start with.
We will be discussing all the variables in the part of the series
Best google tag manager extensions
- GTM sonar –
It enables you to stop the click functionality of the page. What I mean by that is if you want to take click id or click element of the button ( Add to Cart ) then you just have to click on it and your page will not load but you will get the click id & click element
- Data layer inspector+ –
Inspect Google Analytics activity
– Monitor the dataLayer in real-time
– See the Google Analytics hits in the console, as they happen
– Evaluate common dataLayer pushes formats; events and e-commerce
Insert additional resources in the page
– Push a dataLayer message for setup
– Add a GTM container to test it
– Insert code into the page to monitor and modify
– Block scripts from loading and swap with other scripts
3 Copy Css selector –
It will be very useful when you are planning to use an element visibility variable or for something where you cannot use click variables. This extension will help you to the CSS and paste it while setuping the tag. This saves time if you don’t want to click on inspect elements and find CSS manually.
That is it for this blog we will be coming up with blogs on variables with more extensions.
Thanks, guys!
I hope this was insightful for you.