Google Tag Manager Learning Tips for Beginners

Kemie Lin
Kemie Lin
Jul 23, 2017 · 4 min read

I had studied “how to use Google Tag Manager” these days because of my work needs. I found that Google Tag Manager is a very useful tool for tracking website data. Google Tag Manager can help marketing person who doesn’t have coding skills to track the user’s further behavior without a web developer.

There are four main structures in Google Tag Manager we should know:

Container

Before you start to use Google Tag Manager, you should set the container. Usually, the container means a website, but you can choose another type like Android, iOS, and AMP. The container just like a box which we can put something in it. In GTM, a container includes many tags, triggers, and variables.

After you created a container, you should install GTM on your website. The GTM tracking code has two part — one has to put in the <head> tag, another has to put after the <body> tag.

Variables

Variables are very important in Google Tag Manager. GTM provides many built-in variables to help users make the trigger and tag quickly. Before you start to use GTM, I recommended you add two types of built-in variables — Clicks and Forms. Both of these two type variables are very useful for help you tracking events, form submits and other settings.

Besides, you can also create your own variables whenever you need, such as price, product name and other types you can choose.

Triggers

The trigger is more important key before you active a tag. Imagining that trigger is like a keyhole and tag is like a key. If you want to open the door, you should put the key into the keyhole, then turned it to open the door.

When you want to add a trigger, you can click the side menu “Triggers” and then click the “New” button.

You need to decide when the trigger starts and set at least one condition in the trigger.

Tags

The tag is the event on your website which can be fired by the trigger. Click the “Tags” on the side menu and click the “New” button, then you can add a new tag.

Choose the tag type as “Universal Analytics”, then you can choose the track types such as pageview, event, and transaction.

If you want to track an event, you can choose “Event”, then setting the category, action, label, and value.

Remember, you should create a variable named “Web track”(or another name which you can recognize), setting the variable type to “Google Analytics Settings” and paste your GA tracking ID. This variable will help GTM link to your Google Analytics account. When the tag is triggered, it will save the data to your GA account.

Conclusion

Google Tag Manager is a very convenient tool to help you use Google Analytics. These tracking settings are very important for GA beginners to track more data from your website. I recommended learning this tool deeply, and it will help you a lot.

Kemie Lin

Written by

Kemie Lin

I’m not only a project director of MacroViz interactive design company, a web development teacher, a full-stack web designer and also a mother of two children

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