Google Tag Manager – How Does It Work, It’s Benefits and Components

Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a web-based Tag Management Platform by Google. It is an incredible and valuable tool that can assist in collecting and keeping analytical data organized. By retaining track of all the codes you are disbursing on your site, it will save time from laboring with costly developers. In short, a strong measurement method associated with Google Tag Manager can assist you to organize your pixels, tags, events, conversions, and motives to guarantee that you are compiling the right data and are equipped with the understandings you require to make promising data-driven business rulings.

How does Google Tag Manager work?

Google tag manager includes a piece of container code that one has to put on every page of the website. This erases the necessity of having to position multiple different codes within a website. This code is solely a javascript code that is put on the head and core areas of the source code. The code positioned on the head is a script, and the one on the body is iframe code, which works as a tie-up for the code positioned inside the head tag. 

Frame code assists to trace the non-Javascript users, that is, when a person visits the site from a non-javascript aided browser, this code tracks such visitors. It will also enable you to govern the tags you have on your website so that you don’t have to participate in all the additional work.

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What are the components of Google Tag Manager? 

• Container Snippet

This allows you to update the web page automatically. Rather than copy-pasting your latest tracking tag to a web page, you can alter the tag in Google Tag Manager. Also, when you build a GTM account, you will require to have at least one container snippet.

• Tags

Your tags illustrate what you want to trace, as well as send to third-party website analytics tools, such as Google Analytics. Most of the time, you will have a range of tags.

• Triggers

With triggers, you notify Google Tag Manager when your tags should compile and deliver data to various applications. For precise tracking, you can develop multiple triggers for a single tag. Accordingly, this can have a huge influence on your digital marketing and even advertising technique.

• Variables 

Variables assist as placeholders for values. It encompasses both Built-in variables and user-defined variables. While built-in variables comprise pre-configured GTM variables, user-defined variables accentuate custom GTM variables. Mostly, these variables illustrate purchases, form completions, and more.

• Values

Values assist you personalize your triggers and data collection further. With values, you stipulate a value through a text field to test against your variable. Banking on your operator, your variable may require an amount to your value to initiate the trigger. Or else, it may require a lower value.

• Operators

With operators, you clarify the connection between a variable and a value. This connection deduces when a trigger can fire, which impacts when you compile data through a tag. Also, you need to experiment with this characteristic to assure you trace the right data.

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Benefits of Google Tag Manager 

1. Site Speed

With fewer lines of code to run and asynchronous loading of the tag, there is an increase on the overall speed of the site page. Before GTM, the only way to monitor events was to set the event-specific javascript code. Therefore, to track the number of events, many lines of code were necessary, which affected the speed of the site. As the speed of the site was a major ranking factor, webmasters were wary about using it.

2. Ease of use & efficiency

With such an easy interface and few guided clicks, tags can be easily configured and deployed without writing a single line of code.You can constantly add, update, or remove the tags, triggers, and events as whenever necessary without even touching the codebase. Effectiveness can be augmented several folds if a marketer can control most of the implementation on their own.

3. Support Third-Party Tags

GTM supports third party tags, notably Facebook pixels, Twitter, Crazy egg & Hotjar. At present, it supports over 80 third-party tags making it one of the most popular tag management platforms.

4. Less Dependence upon the Developer

With the use of a tag manager, the need for the participation of the developer has been diminished considerably . However, you always need developers to roll out the code in the back-end and to define the data layer. GTM has also enabled developers to concentrate on core tasks instead of writing, inserting, and optimizing the code on each page.

5. Preview and Debugger mode

Auditing for errors has never been easy. You can cross-verify your tag in preview mode to see if the tag retrieved the data or not, prior to deploying tags on the website. Checking for errors is crucial as incorrect deployment or tag errors can interfere with data collection. Although the data is collected, its reliability will be questionable.

6. Version Control

One of the main characteristics of the tag manager is a version control mechanism. When you add, remove or update tags, triggers, or other variables, a new workspace version is created with new settings. This version is submitted for making amendments. However, you can revert to your previous version at any time and submit the earlier setup for the current use. Version control has given the webmaster a lot of flexibility in the terms of editing and implementing tags.

7. Google Tag Assistant

Google Tag Assistant is basically a Chrome extension available on the play store. It is primarily used to identify the number of tags present on the website, it can also be used for validating and troubleshooting the installation of the tags. You have to activate the tag assistant to see the tags present on the website. The tags are represented in a unique color format. It specifies whether they are functioning properly or not. The green color indicates that they are ready to operate. The Blue represents something missing within the tag and the missing details highlighted.

The Red colour corresponds to a label that does not pull at all. This may be due to a significant error that may require an immediate correction. Tags can also be recorded while browsing the site for a thorough analysis of the implementation and validation of the Google Analytics configuration.
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