Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager

What is Google tag manager?

Google Tag Manager (also known as GTM) is a free tag management tool provided by Google.

Google Tag Manager is a free tool that makes it easy for marketers to add and update website tags -- including conversion tracking, site analytics, remarketing, and more—with just a few clicks, and without needing to edit your website code on your website backend or mobile app.

Google Tag Manager

What is a Tag?

A tag is a bunch of JavaScript code which is used to collect measurement and marketing data from your website/mobile app and then send that data to a 3rd party service when the corresponding trigger evaluate to true at run time.

The third party service could be: Google Analytics, Google Adwords, Twitter, Facebook, Comscore etc.

Google Tag Manager

Example of tag: Google Analytics Tag (also known as Google Analytics Tracking code)

<!-- Google Analytics --><script>(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');

ga('create', 'UA-XXXX-Y', 'auto');ga('send', 'pageview');</script><!-- End Google Analytics -->

This is Google analytic code which we use for tracking analytics data on the website.

Google Tag Manager

Tag is just a snippet of code. You can add this snippet of code (or tag) directly to your website, by copying-pasting it, in your website template files (like header.php) or you can add the tag indirectly on your website, via Google Tag Manager (GTM).

Google Tag Manager

Benefits:

• GTM removes the need for editing the website code over and over again just for adding, removing or editing tags.

• Through GTM you can test and deploy tags faster without hardcoding the tags each and every time on your website.

• GTM makes advanced tracking possible (GTM provides many in-built tags and functions through which you can implement advanced tracking in short amount of time).

• GTM makes tag management very efficient• By using GTM, you can improve website speed

Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager Container Tag:

<!-- Google Tag Manager --><noscript><iframe src="//www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-TXHBPD"height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden"></iframe></noscript><script>(function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='//www.googletagmanager.com/<strong>gtm.js</strong>?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','<strong>GTM-TXHBDR</strong>');</script><!-- End Google Tag Manager -->

Once you have added the container tag on your website/mobile app, you don’t need to keep other tags (like Google Analytics tracking code, Google Adwords conversion tracking code, Facebook pixels, hotjar code etc) hard coded on your website. You can track all information through this one tag.

Google Tag Manager

Structure & Layout of GTM:

• Accounts• Containera. Tagsb. Triggers

• Publishing & Versions• Admin

Google Tag Manager

Accounts:

The top-most level of organization. Typically, only one account is needed per company. Tags for all the company’s websites can be managed from this account by creating new containers.

You will be asked to fill in the account name (use the company name) and whether it will be used for Web or Mobile Apps; then you will be asked if you agree to the Service Agreement. Once you do, your account will be created with a container.

Google Tag ManagerContainer:A container holds all the tags for a specific website; as a best practice, it should be named after the website it is being used for. To create a new container select an account and click on the Create Container from the accounts menu. Once you have a new container, you will get a screen similar to the following.

Google Tag ManagerTags:Once you create a container, you can start creating tags for your website. Google provides templates for its own tags and other commonly used third party solutions (e.g. Marin, ArRoll, LinkedIn etc), but it also allows custom tags to be usedIn order to add a tag to a container, navigate to the container, choose the tags section and click on the New Tag button on the top-right corner of your screen. See the top left box on the screenshot above.

Google Tag Manager

Triggers:

Once you decide which tag to add, you will be prompted with a few details to fill for each tag type: e.g. Conversion ID and Conversion Label for AdWords Conversion Tracking or Web Property ID, Cookie Path and Track Type for Google Analytics.

You will also be able to add a trigger to fire the tag. Below is a very simple setting showing how the Google Analytics tag would be configured.

Google Tag Manager

The Fire On section above will define the triggers under which the tag is fired. For tags that should appear on all pages of the website (like Google Analytics), you would use the default All Pages.

Google Tag Manager

Publishing & Versions:

Once tags are added to a container they are not automatically published, they must be "manually" published. Publishing is always linked to a container version, which is a snapshot of the container that can be made at any time.

If you click on Versions at the top of your screen, you will see a short summary of your current version and you can click through using the Action button on the right of any version to preview, share publish, export and others. This is an excellent way to keep track of your change history.

Refer next slide for versions window:

Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager

Admin:

Users are added to accounts and should be added on a container basis. For each container, there are four types of user access:

No access: user does not see the container listed in the account.View only: user sees the container listed and may browse the tags, rules, and macros in the container, but cannot edit them.View and Edit: user may add and edit tags, rules, and macros in the container.View, Edit, Delete and Publish: user may add, edit, and delete tags, rules, and macros in the container as well as publish changes to the live site.

Google Tag ManagerConclusion:

via GTM, you can very easily: add, remove, enable or disable any tag on your website. You can very easily change the functionality of almost any tag.

If you are using Google Tag manager, you can complete this task in a matter of minutes. Without using GTM, you will have to add, event tracking code, to each and every external link, which is very time consuming and prone to errors.

The biggest advantage of using GTM is that, it makes advanced analytics tracking possible for your website. GTM provides many in-built tags and functions through which you can implement advanced tracking in short amount of time.

When you use GTM, you can add, edit, enable, disable and remove all website tags from one central location. This ability of the GTM, makes tag management extremely efficient esp. when you have got dozens of marketing and analytics tags on your website.

When you deploy tags via GTM, they are deployed asynchronously, meaning a slow loading tag won’t block other tags from being fired (executed).

Google Tag Manager

References:

https://woorkup.com/complete-google-tag-manager-tutorial-8-scripts-1/https://www.optimizesmart.com/beginners-guide-google-tag-manager-v2/http://infotrustllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Implementation-and-Advanced-GTM-Final.pdfhttp://online-behavior.com/analytics/google-tag-managerhttps://www.gravitatedesign.com/blog/google-tag-manager-setup-analytics/https://www.google.com/analytics/tag-manager/capabilities/

Google Tag Manager