Thursday, March 28

Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager

How to check if Google Tag Manager is Working?

Google Tag Manager. The thing that makes the lives of marketers and web analysts easier. But the purpose of this blog post is not to convince you to start using it. Today, I assume that you have already decided to give Tag Manager a chance (or maybe even used it once or twice). In this blog post, I’ll show you how to check if Google Tag Manager is working properly. There are several ways to do so but keep in mind that these tips are not alternatives to each other. If possible, you should use them all or at least half of them. To check if Google Tag Manager is working, you need to complete the following steps: Check website’s source code (and use the “Search” feature) Enable the Preview and Debug mode. Did it appear? Is everything working? Check Google Tag Assistant Leverage S...
Google Tag Manager

Use Enhanced Ecommerce Data in Pinterest Tag with GTM

One of the reasons why I just love working with Google Tag Manager is the possibility to reuse data and send them to multiple marketing/analytics tools at once. In 2019, Simo Ahava posted an article that explains how to adapt Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce data and send it to Facebook Pixel. Later, I used his solution as a foundation for my guide, where I do the same thing with Google Analytics Standard Ecommerce. Today, I’ll use a similar principle to use Enhanced Ecommerce data in Pinterest Tag with Google Tag Manager. Table of contents + Show table of contents + A guide on how to implement Pinterest Pixel with GTM #1. Requirements #2. The process #3. Check the data in the Data Layer #4. Custom JavaScript variable that transforms EE product data #5. Data Layer...
Google Tag Manager

Implement Pinterest Tag with Google Tag Manager

When it comes to selecting tracking pixels, Pinterest (in most cases) will probably not reach the top 3. However, if you’re working in a business that’s related to fashion, style, Pinterest Tag might definitely be an option. I recently had my first serious encounter with the Pinterest Tag (because usually, people ask me to help with GA or Facebook Pixel), and … that was something. While it wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t great and streamlined either. Mainly, due to lacking documentation and other resources available online. After playing around with it, here are my findings on how to implement Pinterest Tag with Google Tag Manager. Note: if you notice any mistake, please let me know and I’ll fix it asap. There still might be some parts that I just missed. Table of contents + Show table...
Track Logins and Signups with Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics
Google Tag Manager

Track Logins and Signups with Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics

If your website or ecommerce store has a login feature (for your visitors/customers), you should definitely measure that. Since the tool of choice on my blog is Google Analytics, I’ll show you several options on how to track logins with Google Tag Manager and send it to Google Analytics. Oh, and let’s not forget signups too! Instead of trying to write some compelling introduction that should get you hooked, let’s get down the business and learn how to implement a login tracking setup. Table of contents + Show table of contents + A quick word about the User ID feature in Google Analytics Why should you track logins and signups? There is no silver bullet: the login/signup tracking method depends on your site Method #1. Using popular CMS? Check for GTM plugins Method #2. Track w...
Google Tag Manager

Track Many Forms with One Thank You Page with Google Tag Manager

Here’s a situation: you want to track form submissions on a website. There are multiple forms and they all redirect the visitor to the same “Thank you” page. The built-in Form Submission trigger in GTM is not working, thus you could try implementing the Thank you page tracking method. But how can you distinguish which form was submitted? In this guide, I’ll show several options on how to track many forms with one Thank you Page (in other words, that redirect the same ‘Thank you” page). Table of contents + Show table of contents + Option #1. Using the referrer variable Option #2. Working with a single page application? Use Trigger Groups Option #3. Another option for Single Page Applications Option #4. Store the info of the last submitted form in a cookie Option #5. Can you ...
Google Tag Manager

How To Install Google Tag Manager on WIX website

Updated: September 4th, 2020. I’m not going to dive into discussions about whether WIX is a good platform for creating a website, it has its pros and cons. For example, it enables people to easily create a website but at the same time, WIX is not the best tool in terms of SEO friendliness. Additionally, one of the most annoying things was that WIX did not support Google Tag Manager. From time to time I noticed threads on forums, Reddit, and elsewhere where people were trying to find the answer. No luck. Even though WIX supported Custom HTML widgets, they did not work with the GTM code inside of it. Luckily, those dark times are over because WIX recently released built-in support for GTM. Hooray! Today, I’ll show you how to easily install Google Tag Manager on the WIX website.     Quick Con...
Google Tag Manager

Google Analytics Limits: 10M hits & 500 hits/session. What to do?

If you are reading this blog post, there are two possible reasons for that: you stumbled upon it by following your curiosity or you have recently hit certain limits in Google Analytics (or maybe you are about to hit them). Anyway, here’s a situation. One day, when you are about to make a coffee, you get this warning from Google Analytics (the wording might change eventually): “Your data volume (XXX hits) exceeds the limit of 10M hits per month as outlined in our Terms of Service. If you continue to exceed the limit, we will stop processing new data on XXX.” What to do? You can start panicking but, eventually, you’ll need to take care of this. Just like pretty much any tool, Google Analytics has also some limits. But when you think about the fact that you are using the free version, 10 ...
Google Tag Manager

Introduction to Google Tag Manager Server-side Tagging

In 2020, Google Tag Manager introduced a new level of possibilities – server-side tagging. Even though there were already other tag management solutions that offered this, GTM joined this server-side game just very recently. When the public beta was launched on August 12, 2020, the audience split into several groups. Some people were cheering and shouting “THIS IS HUUUUGE” while others were a little confused asking “I not sure I understand this. Is it good for marketers?”. And this is totally understandable. The topic is not an easy one to grasp. Especially, if you are coming from a non-technical background. That’s why the goal of this blog post is not to give you the “ultimate definitive” guide into how to work with Google Tag Manager server-side tagging. Instead, I wanted to provide an i...
Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager and Multiple Domains: How to Configure?

So, you have probably landed on this article because you are working with multiple domains (e.g. domain1.com and domain2.com) and have some doubts on how to handle Google Tag Manager. Should you use one GTM container on all domains? Or should you use one container per domain? In this guide, I’ll show you how to handle Google Tag Manager on multiple domains. These tips apply to subdomains too.   Google Tag Manager does not care about domains or subdomains As the subtitle of this chapter has already spoiled, GTM container does not care about how many domains you use it on. If you want, you can use the same container on 5 related websites (that are hosted on different domains or subdomains). Even though (most likely) this will cause you some headaches, there are no technical limitations. Wh...
Google Tag Manager

How and Where To Get Google Tag Manager Help?

Updated: August 3rd, 2020. (Although Simo Ahava has posted a blog post of this very same topic long before me, I feel like this needs to be addressed multiple times.) Stuck with Google Tag Manager? Relax, we’ve all been there. Not even once. Not even ten or twenty times. It’s not easy to master GTM and if you are determined to do that, many questions will definitely arise in the process. Luckily, there is a whole bunch of ways how you can get Google Tag Manager help and resolve your GTM issues. All options are listed in no particular order. Additionally, I’ll give you tips on how to be more cooperative and improve the process of getting a quicker GTM help. It’s a two-player game where both parties are equally responsible for solving issues. The Underrated Power of Google Search First,...
Google Tag Manager

How to Reduce Direct Traffic in Google Analytics

Direct traffic in Google Analytics is often misunderstood. If you think that direct traffic is the one that enters your website’s address in the address bar or accesses it via bookmarks, I have some bad news. In reality, that is just a fraction of what direct traffic really is. The first reason for this confusion lies in the name itself. Direct. Is it really direct? In Google Analytics, direct traffic really means “I don’t know where that visitor came from”. It might be from the address bar, from bookmarks of your browser, from email, from chat/messengers, etc. It should be called “unknown” instead. But this rant is for another time. There are many reasons that affect this type of traffic and I wanted to address the ways how to reduce direct traffic in Google Analytics. Also, in the seco...
Google Tag Manager

Extract a Price from a Page with Google Tag Manager

While DOM scraping is not recommended (because it’s quite fragile) in web tracking, sometimes you just have no other choice. Asking a developer to push a certain data point to the Data Layer is always the best practice but in some projects, you have just two options: try to fetch a certain value from the page by yourself or do nothing and continue without that particular data point In this blog post, I wanted to show you several little scripts that will help you fetch a price if it is a visible element on a page. This is not designed to fetch all of the prices on a page and build complex-ish objects, etc. Let’s take a step back. This blog post is for those situations where you want to work only with one price. Where can it be useful? Maybe you want to track an impression of a...
Google Tag Manager

Two Recent Changes in Google Tag Manager Debug Console

I wasn’t planning this post but several people have contacted me regarding several recent changes in Google Tag Manager. They were seeing different things (compared to my course videos or the screenshots of my blog posts) and were thinking that they have configured something incorrectly. That’s why I wanted to quickly address those issues. #1. Pageview event is now renamed to the Container Loaded event For many years, the first default event that you see in the GTM preview mode was Pageview. This is the earliest moment when the tags can fire on-page. This is the moment when Google Tag Manager container loads. And that’s exactly why this event is now renamed to the Container Loaded. It’s more precise. Also, all three default events now have little tooltips that explain what do they mea...
Google Tag Manager DataLayer Explained
Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager DataLayer Explained

The Data layer is one of the key concepts in the world of Google Tag Manager. It ensures maximum flexibility, portability, and ease of implementation. Remember, GTM works best when deployed alongside the data layer (in fact, broken data layer = severely crippled GTM). At first, Google Tag Manager Data Layer might seem like one of those mysterious concepts that no one really understands (by saying “no one” I mean non-developers). But if you stay focused, it’s a concept that’s definitely possible to grasp on. Understanding and leveraging the data layer is the key to unlocking GTM’s potential so be attentive. Of course, it takes a while to understand how everything works, but once you get the idea, you’ll start putting puzzle pieces together. It just requires some time. The purpose of this ...
Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Assistant Tutorial

If you’ve ever used Google Analytics, Google Adwords, Google Tag Manager, or any other Google’s analytics/marketing tools, chances are that you’ve at least heard of Google Tag Assistant, or, most probably, even used it. That’s no surprise because it’s a really handy debugging tool! Even though many of Analytics Mania’s readers use this Chrome’s extension, the majority of them do not reach its full potential. But that’s about to change because, in this Google Tag Assistant Tutorial, I’ll give you a bunch of tips on how to make you + Google Tag Assistant = super team. Table of Contents What is Google Tag Assistant anyway? #1. How Does Google Tag Assistant Work? #2. Google Tag Assistant Colors #3. Session Recordings #4. Tag Assistant Report #5. Google Analytics Report #6. Repla...