Companies We Work With
National Geographic - Google Tag Manager Case Study
We were tasked with migrating an in-house Tag Manager to Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics on the huge National Geographic website. We only had 3 months to complete this task!
Additionally the project was international and required the use of Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics within a global context.
The result was the project’s successful implementation in record time!
GOOGLE TAG MANAGER CONSULTING & TRAINING
Google Tag Manager is a great tool for business owners or marketing teams to see how their website is performing—what areas are working, what is underperforming, what functions are not being used like you thought, etc. We see it as a great way to collect live user experience data points on your site from real customers.
Our Google Tag Manager Specialties Include:
- Website audit and tag mapping
- Set up and configuration
- Application and monitoring
- Training
Tag management is an essential component of any tracking deployment. The most common reasons it’s used include:
- Agility & Control
- Remarketing
- Deployment Cost
- Site Speed
- Privacy
Source: econsultancy.com/reports/tag-management-buyers-guide
Additionally, it standardises data capture, by using a common set of object names across multiple websites. This significantly simplifies installations as generic configuration files can be used (click below to see my 3 cheat sheets).
#digitalData JSON object names cheat sheet
GTM DataLayer cheat sheet (Enhanced Ecommerce version)
GTM DataLayer cheat sheet (App version)
Why you should hire us...
At MeasureMinds, we have had some of our most successful jobs with companies where all the materials were present on the website – what we had to do was streamline how that material comes together. Our tailored experience with Tag Manager will be used to ensure that your strategically-chosen tags are maintained in a refined order, that will be most applicable to Google Analytics and Google Ads, and most likely to maintain a steady flow of traffic.
Growth And Adoption Of Google Tag Manager
GTM is rapidly being adopted and it is used by some of the largest websites on the internet.
The Google Tag Manager Book
We’ve worked on 15 enterprise level GTM installations so we know how painful it is to start from scratch. Phil wrote this guide for developers, analysts and project managers like you, to share what we’ve learnt and give you a template to work from.
We’ve assumed a basic level of knowledge of Google Analytics and JavaScript. This resource is a summary of lessons learnt; if you want more specific examples, then watch this video playlist.
If you have any suggestions please contact phil.pearce@measuremindsgroup.com
Guide Contents
- Growth & adoption of GTM
- Reasons for Growth
- Cheat sheet of #digitalData JSON Object Names
- GTM DataLayer cheat sheet (enhanced ecommerce version)
- GTM DataLayer cheat sheet (app version)
Executive Summary
- Installation Plan
- Common GTM set up mistakes to avoid
- Comparison of GA setup vs GTM setup
- Tag scanning & mapping: pre & post migration
- Installation Questions
- Straight deployment: GA classic to GTM migration
- Parallel deployment: GA classic to GTM migration
- Universal migrations: ecommerce 3Dsecure non-iframe referrals
- Plugins vs custom coding
- Plugin: GTM for Magento
- Plugin: GTM for WordPress & WooCommerce
- Plugin: GTM for Drupal
- Plugin: GTM for Joomla
- Planning account structure
- Position of the dataLayer and gtm.js
- Planning the setup of development environment
- GTM-xxxx account ID for DEV and LIVE
- Cascading lookup tables for UA-xxxx-x
- Deciding on a thank you page trigger method
- Deciding on a rule trigger position (onload, onready or page footer)
- Seamless migration of Tags to GTM
- Deciding on a dataLayer schema
- Deciding on a dataLayer naming convention standard
- Clean page mark-up and avoidance of use of inline code
- jQuery vs GTM auto-events
- Logins & permissions
- Debug process
- How to debug video
- Chrome Tag Assist Plugin – MUST be installed
- GTM scripts examples
- GTM configuration – dont use inline configuration
- Adwords dynamic remarketing custom categories
- Ecommerce Transactions on sale complete pages
- Social Measurement: Social actions buttons
- Item page tracking
- Inline page error tracking
- Modal and Ajax box tracking
- Manual Video tracking
- Onsite search
- 404 Error Tracking
- Custom dimensions: registered logged-in users
- Custom dimensions: Customer Groupings
- Auto-event PDF & outclick tracking examples
- Auto-event JavaScript Error detection
- List of QA test
Appendix
- Links to other resources
- Security checklist
- More debugging tips
- GTM settings screenshot
- Note about Bing & Omniture document.write code
- Plugin: prevent GA ecommerce counting twice (Courtesy Brian Kuhn)
- Plugin: mapping Qubit dataLayer to GTM ecommerce dataLayer
- Plugin: Adwords custom/dynamic remarketing
- Work-around for tag firing dependencies
- Plugin: CustomHTML fallback script for dc.js (legacy script)
- Plugin: Civic cookie consent notification script
- GTM & Flash videos
- GTM & iFrames
- GTM & noscript tracking
- Downloadable digitalData layer object names in HTML & Excel
- Map W3C names to GTM names – used to pass validation
- Map W3C digitalData ecommerce to legacy GTM ecommerce
- Map legacy GTM ecommerce >> new enhanced GTM ecommerce
- Map new enhanced GTM ecommerce >> legacy GTM ecommerce
- W3C digitalData.privacy meta data & serverResponseForDNT
- JSON-LD: One to watch for the future
- Enhanced ecommerce process summary
- Release notes for Google Tag Manager
Installation Plan
To successfully implement GTM you need to cover 9 planning steps.
Macro level – migration planning
- Review existing GA installation
- Tactical planning
- Technical planning
- Conversion trigger planning
- Getting IT buy-in & determining client development resources
- Naming conventions plan
- Quality assurance process
- Reducing human errors (IT dept on-boarding & training process)
- Security planning on Google Account
Tip: A Google quick start implementation plan is shown here.
These 9 steps are covered in the next sections. Additionally, the outcome of each phase such as technical planning, could have micro phases. For example using “parallel” deployment micro phases:
Micro level – deployment planning using a parallel tag
- Create empty GTM container and add the code to global header of ALL pages.
- Deploy parallel deployment of Universal via GTM, with GA classic running via hardcode.
- Find & replace GA classic code with event called onload_ga_pageview.
- Add ecommerce dataLayer to checkout thankyou page
- Replace inline code gaq.push with equivalent dataLayer.push code and add GTM event tags within GTM settings, so there is a seamless migration.
- Add better dataLayer for product pages and user-interactions.
Installation Questions
Is this a new installation and thus GA universal? If yes… Jump to B). If no….
A) it is an existing GA installation with historic GA classic data, then:
- Has the account been auto-migrated to Universal processing already? You in settings you will see "upgrade complete" or "start upgrade".
Only GA premium acconts have not be auto-migrated. - Is the client currently reliant on GA data? (or is an existing system such as Omniture
et-al being used primarily for business reporting) - Does the client need to integrate with widgets such as Google+, AddThis, ShareThis, Disqus, Optimizely, LiveChat or PhoneCall tracking providers which currently only support legacy GA.js
- Is native GooglePlus button tracking needed (not native in GA universal yet).
- Is js being migrated or just ga.js? The Urchin sessionisation counts are different to GA universal calculation; hence parallel installation will be needed.
- Is a local copy of utm.gif enabled for ABC publisher auditing using _setLocalRemoteServerMode and _setLocalGifPath? (easier in GA Classic, but possible via a custom script for Universal).
- Is resetting of customVariables as they are translated to over to a new customDimensions field a problem? (Both are stored, but historic comparisons are trickier due to moving to the new customDimensions field).
- Is custom code for reading GA client-side cookie values utmz or getVisitorCustomVar (1); on form submission being used?
- Is retaining returning visitor cookies a problem? (analytics.js will piggyback returning GA classic utmx cookies on the first hit, unless legacyHistoryImport is disabled)
- Is integration with offline CRM required? (universal only)
- Does the client have a requirement to track multi-device journeys from registered users who are logged-in from Website to logged-in within App, and is a userId exposed on the login page? (universal only)
- Is GTM for app part of the migration?
- Is cross-domain or iframe tracking required? (easier in Universal)
B) Are multiple currencies tracking within localCountryTracker needed for Adwords ROAS reports? And is client planning to use rolled-up trackers or localCountryTracker?
C) Are any legacy analytics.js or ga.js script present? If yes, a clientnameTracker rather than pageTracker is necessary.
D) Is the client within ecommerce vertical?
E) Who is going to take-over the installation once the migration is complete?
GA Outcomes
- Both GA.js AND Universal analytics.js in parallel (most likely outcome)
- Universal Analytics.js only straight
Remarketing Outcomes
- Native GA remarketing in Universal (most likely outcome)
- Adwords remarketing (Only needed for RLSA: AdWords Remarketing Lists for Search Ads)