Google Tag Manager Basics
Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a tag management system that stores and maintains all third-party tracking pixels across an entire website. In setup, GTM provides two pieces of code that are placed within the <head> and <body> tags across the entire site to house pixels. Those are the only pieces of code that ever have to be placed. Besides eliminating the need to place multiple long lines of code, GTM has a few other great benefits.
Pixel Management:
Using GTM means all of your pixels are housed in a central location. This eliminates the need to place and edit multiple third-party pixels throughout your website’s HTML code. Instead, they are all stored in your GTM container that is then published to your site through the <head> and <body> tags. Instead of searching for a snippet of code that broke, it is all stored in the GTM container, making it easy to fix a pixel that is not tracking correctly.
Website Performance:
Hard-coded pixels can cause slower website speeds, while GTM does not. When running multiple campaigns, there can easily be 10 or 15 third-party pixels slowing down your site. GTM helps eliminate this issue by only using two snippets of code to make site tracking faster and more accurate. Faster websites also help improve the visitor’s experience and can help keep them stay longer.
Simple Setup:
Setting up GTM is a one-time process. Once you have the GTM code placed on your site, editing or adding pixels to your site is quicker and more efficient. When using GTM, you can avoid waiting days on a developer to correctly add the pixels to your site. Instead, the pixel can be added directly to the GTM container, published and tested within minutes.
Conversion Tracking:
GTM supports almost all third-party pixels, allowing for easy tracking of website conversions, user re-targeting, click-through rate, and other data. Since GTM works with every type of possible conversion, all your pixels can be housed in the same spot.
Starting the Google Tag Manager setup is simple. Simply create an account and follow the steps of placing the <head> and <body> tags. Then grant access to our team and we will add the pixels to your container. When pixels need to be changed or updated, we can quickly edit them for you, eliminating the need for you or your developer to be pasting long lines of HTML code.
