What Is Google Tag Manager & How Does It Work?

104

Google Tag Manager makes it easier to manage and handle different code tags on your website or mobile app. If dealing with small pieces of code that track visitor actions was causing you trouble, GTM is here to make things easier for you.

What Is Google Tag Manager?

Google Tag Manager is a tag management system through which adding, updating, and managing the tags on the website or mobile app can be done without having to touch any code directly. In general, tags are in great demand for performing tasks like analytics tracking, monitoring user behaviors, and implementing marketing tools. Instead of managing each tag with the code individually, GTM offers a single interface to manage them.

How Does Google Tag Manager Work?

To understand how GTM works, it’s helpful to break it down into its essential components: tags, triggers, and variables.

Tags

Google Tag Manager has some important elements that work in concert to track information on your website. Tags are little pieces of code that send data to tools, including Google Analytics. Using Google Tag Manager gives you the ability to manage tags on your site without having to add the code to each and every page. In fact, this enables tracking of user interactions out-of-the-box. Google Tag Manager will also notify you in case something is wrong with your code so that you can fix the issues more easily.

Triggers

In Google Tag Manager, triggers are important since they are events taking place on your website. Once those events happen, the tags will collect information and store it where you want. One thing to note is the application of Google Tag Manager together with Google Analytics. Some of the common trigger types include when a user clicks buttons, views a page, scrolls down for more, downloads something, submits forms, and makes purchases.

Variables

In Google Tag Manager, variables are used to determine whether or not the conditions set for a trigger have been met. They are important because, with them, certain information is relayed. You can use customized variables to track particular actions, such as clicking on a certain URL, scroll speed, quantity of purchase, and time spent on certain pages. The use of variables with triggers and tags ensures that only very important and relevant information useful for either marketing or usability is collected. This would, in turn, filter out unimportant data and provide just exactly what is needed at the right time.

Setting Up Google Tag Manager

The following section is going to walk you through how to set up GTM step by step:

1. Create a GTM Account: Create a Google Tag Manager account and create a container for your
   website or mobile app. A container is a logical grouping of tags, triggers, and variables.
2. Add GTM Code to Your Website: Once a container is created, GTM gives you a snippet of code to implement on your website. This snippet is usually added in the head and body sections of your website’s HTML. For mobile apps, you will implement GTM through an SDK.
3. Configure Tags: Once the code is implemented, you start configuring your tags through the GTM interface. You’d select the tag type, Google Analytics, for instance, or AdWords conversion tracking, and add the necessary information, such as tracking IDs or the value of a conversion.
4. Configure Triggers: Identify under what conditions each tag should fire. It may involve some user activity, like clicks or page views, or more detailed events, such as form submissions or video plays.
5. Apply Variables: You will want to configure variables to collect dynamic values so that they can then be used in your tags and triggers. A good example of where you might do this is when a variable captures the value of a transaction for Google Analytics.
6. Preview and Debug: Before you go live with your changes, GTM provides an inbuilt preview and debug mode to let you see your tags, triggers, and variables at work. This will make sure everything is how it should be and also pave the way for troubleshooting issues.
7. Publish Your Container: Once you’re all done with the configuration, click on the publish button. That will take your tags live on your website or app and get them rolling into active duty for the collection and processing of data.

Benefits of Google Tag Manager

• Usability: GTM offers a user-friendly interface; it is easier to manage tags with a little less technical experience. Marketing teams can deploy and update the tracking tags themselves without involving developers.
• Flexibility: GTM allows different types of tags to be used within the interface, from third-party services and custom HTML tags to many more. This flexibility enables extensive customization and integrations with various tools and platforms.
• Efficient Testing and Debugging: The preview and debug feature in GTM makes testing of the tags and their troubleshooting pretty easy before going live, reducing the possibility of errors and making the data more accurate.
• Version Control: GTM will keep a history of all changes and versions so that one can revert to earlier setups if something goes wrong. Such version control helps manage and track changes over time.
• Website Performance Improvement: Because GTM allows the management of tags from a single interface, this cuts down the number of direct code changes, which again can improve website performance and further boost the load time.

The Bottom Line

Google Tag Manager is a game-changer for every digital marketer, web developer, and data analyst. Its ease of managing tags in one go and, at the same time, powerful with triggers and variables will make it indispensable in modern-day digital operations. Utilizing Google Tag Manager for eCommerce SEO purposes can greatly improve website visibility and performance.