5 Reasons Why You Should Use Google Tag Manager
In the ever-expanding world of sites and mobile applications, a very important need has arisen: understanding user behavior.
Gaining insight into what your users are doing, when they are doing it, and why they might stop using your services are all key data points to collect, interpret, and act upon. To accomplish the goal of understanding user behavior better, a new application is rising to the task, and it’s called Tag Management Solution.
Now, you might be thinking, “Wait a minute… Forget about tag management solutions, WHAT THE HECK IS A TAG?!?” That is a great question.
A tag is a snippet of code that sends information to a third party, such as Google.
What information do they send? Well, tags can be setup to track anything you want from page analytics and button clicks to how long a user’s mouse hovers over an image. Now, hopefully, the gears are turning in that brain of yours and you’re thinking about how fantastic it would be to know exactly what people were doing on your site before they left.
While many tag management solutions are “homegrown” and built by site developers, Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a standardized, easy-to-implement system with only two pieces of code to install. Standard tags, like Google’s Universal Analytics, are already built in, but GTM also has very powerful “trigger” logic that allows you to easily trigger (fire) custom code for anything you want to track. For example, a custom tag would be Facebook’s Conversion Pixel and the associated events they can track.
Still not sure about whether or not your marketing and IT department will be on board?
Here are 5 reasons why you should be using Google Tag Manager on your site today:
1. Modernize and future-proof your site
Hopefully, you are already using GTM to track analytics of your site traffic and basic user behavior. Hopefully, you’ve already upgraded to Universal Analytics, which is the new standard in site tracking. If either of those is a “no” for your organization, I highly recommend implementing both, and at the same time!
Upgrading to Universal Analytics can be a major pain if you have to do a lot of coding, testing, releases, etc. Instead, use Google Tag Manager to make the switch and it will be a much easier process. You’ll be able to have much more control over what analytics you get out of the system in the future.
2. Implementation at hyper speed
No more waiting for your IT team to get something done. You can do it yourself! GTM will speed up the entire implementation process around adding new tags and tracking to your site. You can manage all of your tags from a single location and create triggers, which define where and when the tags activate. When you are ready, you can publish the changes to your site with the click of a button.
3. IMPROVED SECURITY AND STABILITY
Two big concerns about maintaining a site are usually security and the possibility of the site malfunctioning. Rightfully so! If your user data gets compromised or the user gets blocked because of bugs, then you’re going to be out of business quickly. GTM will not crash and burn your site, nor will it open any new doors for future vulnerabilities.
4. SIMPLICITY AND FLEXIBILITY, THE LIKES OF WHICH YOGA GURUS HAVE NEVER SEEN
Never took a programming class in your life? Not a problem! For most tag implementations, GTM requires a minimal (if not zero) amount of coding—even for more complex tags. This makes Google Tag Manager a great tool for marketers and allows developers to focus on bigger projects.
Conversely, developers and more code savvy IT staff will love GTM for the robust, extremely flexible features, and extreme customization options.
5. BUILT-IN TAGS
GTM has built-in “cookie cutter” tags for Google Analytics, Google AdWords conversions, retargeting, and many other third-party applications. This is very helpful for marketers just starting with GTM with little coding experience. Of course, you don’t have to accept those tags as-is either. You can easily customize any built-in tag with a few pieces of information entered through the management system and, as always, without having to code.
Honestly, there are many good reasons to use Google Tag Manager, but these are a few of the best.
Don’t believe me? Still have questions? Get in touch with Astra and we’ll walk you through everything.
