Your website becomes more prosperous and complex over time. This makes you insert more and more pieces of code into your source code. GTM is the critical tool to manage them. We explain why you will love it and how to use it.
Google Tag Manager (GTM), what is it?
Tags are pieces of code you insert into your website’s source code to enrich it with various functionalities. Managing your site becomes a complex and technical task as you multiply them. Not to mention the risks of errors and the impact on the site’s performance. Google Tag Manager is the primary tag management system tool. It allows you to manage these tags in a centralized way easily.
Your website’s source code indeed contains a certain number of them. Tags are code that you insert to enrich your site with various functionalities.
- Data collection forms;
- satisfaction surveys;
- measuring the site’s audience (and behind this objective are numerous tools);
- display of advertisements
They also allow you to collect a whole bunch of data that will be useful later on.
Every time you install a tool or plugin on your site, you add a tag. And sometimes, you’ll need to edit them. This means diving back into the source code and finding where this piece of code was inserted.
That’s why the essential tool for website editors is the tag management system. Google Tag Manager is the primary example of this. What is it? It’s a tool that allows you to manage and deploy tags on your websites and mobile applications without touching the source code—the ultimate happiness for those who don’t have developer knowledge.
Why install Google Tag Manager on your website?
The answer is simple: a tag.
One or two interventions in your website’s source code to install GTM is done; you won’t touch the site’s source code again.
The benefits are compelling.
- Finally, tag management is simplified. So you can afford to use a classic web analytics solution and other tools (such as Hotjar) that will allow you to collect more data and have a finer follow-up of your audience’s behavior. Google Tag Manager is a tool designed to facilitate data collection in itself. It’s a genuinely essential tracking tool.
- You don’t need a developer diploma since everything is managed from the GTM console. Beware, I’m not saying you won’t do any more development. But your need to lift the hood to tinker with the code will be much more limited.
- Tag management is incredibly streamlined. And easy. No more waiting for a developer to update your tags hard-coded into the site every time your data needs evolve. No more unexpected interventions causing errors and malfunctions on the site. No more tension between marketing and development. Finally, at least for primary use. Because for advanced needs, you’ll need to call in a developer.
- Everything is cheaper. What GTM takes care of represents as many hours of IT development that you won’t have to pay for. And in addition, GTM is a free tool.
- Inserting tags hard-coded into the source code has a tangible impact on the loading time of your pages. Using a TMS allows you to optimize the performance of your website from this point of view while allowing you to use the tools that are essential to you.
- Long live collaborative work. You can give access to the account to several users by defining their levels of authorization. In other words, you can delegate this work to an agency or a service provider.
- But also, several internal services can work on the tool simultaneously.
- The tool is reliable. It will allow you to test before going live. Error detection and correction are greatly facilitated.
- With GTM, the Data Protection Officer becomes your best friend. The TMS provides an actual brick, centralized knowledge, and management of all tags inserted on your site. You have to install a cookie management module (have we talked to you about Axeptio?), and you will be able to comply with the legal requirements for collecting and tracing consent. And thus, you must complete the GDPR compliance of your website.
How to install Google Tag Manager on your website?
Installing GTM on your site is not complicated. You create the account, deploy the GTM tag on your site, and configure tags, events, and trigger variables. Here are the steps to implement.
Create a Google account and install the GTM code
Start by creating a Google account. It’s free and easy.
You will then retrieve a tag, a code that must be implemented on your site’s pages. This may be the last time you get your hands dirty for novice users or those with limited needs.
Google provides you with code to copy into the site’s pages.
Configure a tagging plan.
If you use a tag management system for the first time or change tools, this is an opportunity to put in place or review the fundamentals.
In other words, it’s time to formalize a tagging plan. What is it?
You have needs related to evaluating the performance of your website. This evaluation will be done by following several indicators (KPI).
The tagging plan helps you technically formalize this aspect to facilitate the installation and proper configuration of your web analytics tool on your site.
Deploy your tags
Script, pixel, tag… there is a whole vocabulary to designate pieces of code that need to be installed on your site to use a tool.
The task will be more straightforward. You deploy your tags using Google. You will choose the labels you need from a pre-defined list. You will configure the labels on the GTM dashboard.
The comfort trick of the day? Use GTM templates and standards provided and maintained over time by Google unless you have specific needs requiring a custom tag.
Define trigger criteria
For each tag, you will define triggers. This will allow you to indicate that such a tag is triggered on a given event. For example, when the user:
- clicks on a button;
- scrolls;
- loads and navigates on a page.
The activation of a tag, therefore, depends on the trigger(s) you define. With this, it is functional.
You can further specify things by conditioning the activation of a tag by the occurrence of an event presenting such a variable. For example: when the user orders an amount greater than $1000.
A tag can be activated for all site pages or only for certain ones.
You can naturally define a priority order for activating tags on the same page.
Conclusion: Google Tag Manager is the must-have tool for your website
Ready to define and apply a more effective policy for managing your tags? Want to improve your practices in collecting and exploiting data? Need to optimize your GDPR compliance?
GTM is a simple-to-use Swiss Army knife. It opens the doors to enhanced performance.
