Am pretty sure that you’ve heard of Google Tag Manager and maybe even tried using it and got a turbulent experience. That is because you were not familiar with how it operates. Today, am going to help you understand the tool better and at the end of the day make it your favorite Google tool. This post will give you a complete overview of GTM and how it can help you manage your website. Read through for more insight.
Before diving to it lets understand what a tag manager is. Tag managers were created to solve an enterprise level problem. They are used to give the marketing team ways to update their site and, at the same time, relieving the IT team to focus on more important projects. Think of it as a dashboard that helps the marketing team to accomplish anything related to tracking marketing results.
This is what drove Google to develop their very own Google Tag Manager in 2012 and ever since it has grown in both users and features. GTM has made it possible to literally see every single click that happens on your site. And that’s not all, it is very easy to set up and I’ll show you how to do exactly that in just a bit. One small thing I need to clarify is that the Google Manager account does not in any way replace Google Analytics. What it does is complement it.
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What the Google site manager does is give Google Analytics a better and more specific data. Once the data is fed to GA, the built-in reports become much more useful. The Google Tag Manager WordPress tool gives marketers, as a marketer a whole new perspective of tracking ability. Once you understand how it operates, GTM makes it simple to place pixels and tracking scripts on your site. You can also customize the data that gets reported to Google Analytics for better insight.
Quick Features of GTM
The Google Manager account enables you to bypass your developer and makes it much easier to tag specific actions that your visitors are taking. You can access any metrics from reporting page views to specific button clicks. Just like any new tool, you need to get acquainted with how it works and may take some time. But ultimately, GTM will save you time.
Now that you have grasped the tool’s concept, it’s time we sink our teeth in the juicy parts of it and see how we can use them to send data like page views and link clicks to Google Analytics. But first, we have to create an account.
Creating GTM Account
The account creating process is straightforward. All you have to do is visit the Google Tag Manager Data layer page and sign in and follow the steps to create your first account and you’ll be asked to set up something called a “container”. This container will be created for every website you’ll want to track. GTM will give you a snippet of code, once you’ve
created your account and your first container. Just copy and paste this code so it’s right after the opening tag of your site. You can use a WordPress theme like OptimizePress 2.0 which makes it really easy to do. For your WordPress site, you can also use a plugin like DuracellTomi’s Google Tag Manager Plugin.
See more: Analitify Review: Google Analytics Plugin for WordPress
Now that you have successfully installed your tag management system, it’s time to create our first official tag. Since this is the first tag, we will keep it very simple and intuitive. Say for example we want GTM to report a Page view to Google Analytics tag manager every time someone visits one of our pages. To set that up you will have to:
- Create a New Tag – You can create a new tag by clicking on “Tags” on the left menu and then “New”. You need to inform Google Tag Manager which type of product you would like to create a tag for. Select “Google Analytics, ”since it is deeply integrated with GTM.
- Choose Your Analytics – You will be prompt by GTM, whether you want to use Universal or Classic Analytics. I recommend Universal Analytics since it’s the newest version of GA. You’ll need to give GTM a little information about where it should send the Page view information, after clicking “Continue”.
- Configure Your Tag – To configure your tag, type in our Property ID. For example “UA-12345678-9” but you must make sure you have entered your own ID.
- Define Your Trigger – After clicking “Continue”, we’ll need to define the Trigger. The trigger indicates to GTM when to fire this particular tag. Here, since we wanted to report page views, whenever the page is visited, we’ll select “All Pages” from the list of built-in Triggers listed.
- Create & Name Your Tag – Once After selecting “All Pages”, you ’ll click “Create Tag”. You will have to provide a new name for the tag. For instance “GA – Page view”. Note that GTM will list out all of the tags in alphabetical order. That’s why we added “GA” to ensure that all Google Analytics tags are grouped together for easy access.
- Publish Your Tag – Now that you have finished creating the tag, the last step is to publish the tag Google Tag Manager won’t instantly push your changes live. Instead, you’ll need to “Publish” your changes before they become live. The upper right corner of your page shows you how many changes are currently waiting to be published plus the “Publish” button. By clicking “Publish, ” your changes are live and your newly created Page view tag will officially be passing data to Google Analytics. Always avoid duplicating data.
Quick video review on Google Tag Manager
Source: Measureschool
Final thoughts
Google Tag Manager WordPress tool allows you to set up everything from basic page view information, all the way to more advanced things like e-commerce and User-ID tracking. It’s a remarkable tool that can help you manage your website analytics easily. The process is a bit complex, but there is no need to rush. If something isn’t making sense, you can always refer to a quick Google search which will reveal lots of resources available to help you.
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