We recently did a tech training for our team at Traffic Builders on the basics of Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. While the Ad-Ops products are the meat and potatoes of our services, all of the data and metrics usually comes back to being able to track the performance of those products, and for that, we use Analytics and Tag Manager. Here’s a link to our Slide/Deck, and some quick snippets are outlined below.
Google Analytics
- Access – Account / Property / View
- Create New Account
- Create New Property
Google Tag Manager
- Access – Account / Container
- Create New Container
- Add Tag(s)
Installation Into WordPress
- Admin Level User Access
- Using the GTM Plugin
- Google Tag Assistant / View Source
Inside GA, there are 3 main parts, the Account, Properties, and Views. The Account is the Primary ‘bucket’ that all Properties will be managed under, while the Property is the Website or asset you will be monitoring. A View is a specific set of criteria to track certain performance metrics, etc.
Google Tag Manager has a similar setup, in that it has the Account which manages all of the Containers which are what tracks the Website or asset, similar to the Property in GA. The primary purpose of GTM is to be able to add and manage any/all of your 3rd-party resources in one platform, instead of individually loading that code onto your website. You can also create Tags that have the ability to ‘Fire’ based on a specific event or Trigger, for example, sending Pageview data to GA, or firing your Facebook Pixel when a visitor lands on a certain page.
Once you have created your Analytics Property and added the UA ID to GTM, now you need to get GTM into your website. There are many ways to do this, either by placing code into the HTML of the site, or using a Plugin (if using WordPress let’s say) to make it super simple to get GTM added to your site. Login to your website and navigate to the Plugins section of the website. Click on ‘Add New’, and then search for ‘google tag manager’, Click Install, and then Activate. Click the Link to enter your GTM ID and then Save. It’s really that simple
- Google Tag Assistant / View Source
- Once you have added the GTM Plugin and saved your ID, using Google Tag Assistant, we can now see that both GTM and the GA UA ID we added to GTM are both showing on the website.
- Another way to check to see if the GTM has been added to the site is to ‘View Source’ and look for it in the HTML Code. You can either right click and click View Page Source, or press CTRL-U on your keyboard.
So, that’s a wrap on another article. We will be doing additional training sessions in the future. Stay tuned…
