Google Tag Manager: Why It’s Essential for Modern Website Owner?

Comprehensive website analytics is a control part of its development and promotion. And the future of your resource directly depends on the tools you use. But, as you already know, even a basic website analysis is a complex, lengthy, and not always the same process. But now there is a tool that will enhance and increase its efficiency. It is called Google Tag Manager.

Now, you will learn what Google Tag Manager is, why a modern website owner needs it, what opportunities it provides, and how developers, marketers, and directly owned online platforms use it.

What is a Google Tag Manager?

Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a tag management service. It allows you to add and configure tags to identify the user activity of different system analysts and place advertising scripts on the site without the help of programmers.

The main advantage of this tool is speed. It significantly introduces any changes to advertising campaigns and experimental hypotheses.

Purposes of using Google Tag Manager

So, what functions work with GTM and what can they be used for:

• To collect information from Google Analytics, KISSMetrics, and other analytics services.
• To set up remarketing for Facebook, Google Ads, AdRoll, and other services.
• To place HTML scripts for further split and A/B tests or displaying banners.
• To change tags placed on the site in the shortest possible time.In addition, the GTM tag manager allows you to track the dynamics of advertising in social networks (clicks on buttons), enable micro-markup, track external traffic channels, control transitions to the site via external links, monitor the sending of bounces, and much more.

 

Thus, the tag manager answers some relevant questions in promotion:

• Where is it best to convert traffic?
• Which advertising campaigns are not effective enough and are they worth worrying about?
• How can you effectively allocate your advertising budget across the primary channels?
• How to adjust click tracking in GTM, reduce the cost per click, but still attract more customers? When is Google Tag Manager most effective?

 

Tag Manager The main advantages of this tool:

1. Saves your time. To add or change a tag, you will need much less time than to draw up a technical specification for a programmer. At the same time, you do not need to wait until the specialist is free and can start your task. Often, this saves several working days;
2. Easy to use. Most of the settings consist of a couple of steps. At the same time, most of the functionality is automated, so you do not have to enter mountains of data yourself;
3. Saves your marketing budget. Using this service, you do not need to constantly contact developers or hire a programmer to change the analytics settings. This significantly reduces costs, especially if you regularly test hypotheses and make changes;
4. Suitable for many services. With its help, you can manage tags of any tools that use labels to track user activity;
5. Allows you to manage multiple projects. You can work with multiple accounts at the same time;
6. Collects analytics from different sources. For example, from mobile applications and corporate sites;
7. Saves your previous settings. It’s possible to swiftly undo changes and revert to previous settings;
8. It does not impact site functionality. When installed correctly, the service doesn’t slow down page loading or interfere with the display of site elements.

When used correctly, GTM becomes not just a useful, but an indispensable tool for Internet marketing.

Advantages and disadvantages of Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager has a lot of advantages that we did not mention above:

• Google Tag Manager is entirely free and requires no additional investment.
• GTM has a lot of integrations with third-party resources and platforms – both directly from Google and from third-party developers.
• Tag Manager allows you to significantly reduce the site code, which has a positive effect on its speed.
• For convenience, you can use the built-in debugging mode.
• In GTM, you can view and, if necessary, roll back any changes. Even if an error is found in the code, this will not be a serious problem.
• You can open shared access to work with Google Tag Manager, which will be very convenient for teams of employees.

Since we are considering the pros and cons of the tag manager, we should also mention some of the disadvantages of the service. There are a few of them:

• If you accidentally damage the GTM container code during your work, this is fraught with trouble. Because it will “break” all the tags you’ve set up, locating and fixing errors can sometimes be a time-consuming process.
• Installing the GTM code on a website requires you to have at least some knowledge in the field of layout and programming. If you don’t have one, you’ll need to consult a knowledgeable specialist.
• The lack of online support and reports directly inside Google Tag Manager can also create certain inconveniences.

Google Tag Manager is an effective tool for analyzing advertising campaigns, testing individual website elements, and adjusting brand promotion strategies.

Google Tag Manager works great in conjunction with Google Analytics, importing analytics data directly into it or any other service of your choice.

Currently, GTM is an indispensable tool in the following cases:

• you use several analytics services and integrate third-party services into your site;
• you do not have a developer on staff and do not plan to hire one yet;
• you want to record the maximum number of user interactions with the site and use this for more effective promotion;
• you actively use remarketing and regularly conduct A/B testing.

Google Tag Manager is also a convenient tool for those who manage several projects at once. It significantly simplifies and speeds up many work processes, while reducing the risks of making mistakes at different stages of work.

How Google Tag Manager works

To help you better understand how GTM works, let’s first talk about the structure of this service.

So, to register an account, you will need Gmail. You can link several accounts to one email, which is very convenient for Internet marketers and owners who are developing several projects in parallel.

Each account includes one or more containers. The latter is the main service code. By connecting it to the site, you can manage all the tags placed on it. The container stores all the tags of the Internet resource or application. Within the account, you can add several containers at once for different Internet resources and applications.

Tags in GTM are fragments of code from various services that are executed if an Internet user performs a certain action. Using the service interface, you can add and edit the tags you need. They allow you to:

• track behavioral activity – visited pages, transition paths, visit time, viewing depth, conversions, etc.;
• configure remarketing ad impressions;
• show the user the desired content option for A/B testing or call tracking;
• customize the display of advertising banners and other advertisements on the site.

A condition that activates or stops a tag from executing is a trigger. These are actions performed by users: visiting a specific web page, following a URL, conversion, etc. They are also set through the Tag Manager interface, which does not require directly changing the page code.

Triggers are also used to stop tag execution. GTM provides the following triggers:

• page view – when the page loads in the user’s browser;
• Element visibility – activates the tag when the element appears on the user’s screen;
• Click – starts tag execution if the user clicks on the specified element (button, link, etc.);
• form submission;
• History change – the tag is activated when the URL fragment changes;
• A JS error allows you to capture and save information about errors in your analytics, helping you track issues and troubleshoot effectively;
• Scroll – tracks the scroll depth;
• timer – after the specified time has elapsed;
• YouTube video – interactions with YouTube videos located on your site;
• Custom event – tracks types of interactions for which other triggers are not suitable;
• Trigger group — activates a tag if the user has fulfilled several conditions.

Variables are parameters with variable values.

In GTM, they are used both in triggers and in tags. In triggers, variables help to set more precise conditions for tag activation. In tags, they are used to collect dynamic values. The service provides built-in variables, and it is also possible to set your own.

What tasks does Google Tag Manager solve?

This tool is indispensable when performing the following tasks:

• detection of errors in JS;
• flexible setup of E-commerce for an online store;
• setting up remarketing;
• tracking the use of filters on the site by users, checkboxes, forms, and so on.

With all this, you can make changes to tags really quickly and at any time, which makes GTM a really convenient, versatile, and practical tool.