The benefits of using Google Tag Manager to track conversions

Conversion tracking is often something you’d prefer to set up, then leave to do its thing – and that’s fine… We get it!

Setting up proper conversion tracking can be a hassle, though you should always be prepared for tracking issues down the road. All it takes is a dodgy plugin update or change to your theme, and it could completely break!

In this blog, we’ll be touching on why using Google Tag Manager can help you track your conversions, and make it easier to fix if you happen to run into any emergencies.

GA4’s shortcomings

Google Analytics is an essential tool for tracking and analysing your website’s traffic, but it still has its limitations, especially when it comes to conversion tracking. Without a deep understanding of web development practices or coding, it can be quite difficult if not impossible to manually implement tracking events.

Google Analytics will also primarily focus on pageviews, sessions and basic interactions such as clicks and form submissions. This is useful for general insights, and building up an understanding of how users interact with your site, however it falls short if your goal is to track more advanced actions. This could be;

• Scroll Length
• Video Interactions
• Calendly booking tracking
• Many more

What is Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager (Often referred to as GTM) is a powerful tool primarily used by marketers and web developers with the ability to manage tags (snippets of code or tracking pixels) on a website or mobile app, and will provide you with a user-friendly interface that simplifies the tagging process.

All it takes to install Google Tag Manager, is manually installing a single piece of code into your website. Once this container is in place, you can manage all of your tags from the GTM interface, saving time and effort logging into your website each time you need to make a tweak or add a tag! This could be a Google Analytics tag, Google Ads tag, Facebook Pixel or many other tags from a variety of third party marketing tools.

It’s important to remember that Google Tag Manager isn’t a replacement for Google Analytics, just a helpful tag management tool that can help you enhance your website tracking!

It’s not just for conversion tracking

While GTM is a great way to track your conversions, its abilities go far beyond that. You can use your tag manager installation to track other user interactions such as video plays, position on page and more. As well as this, there are other analytical tools such as Mouseflow, that allow you to precisely see how users interact with your site that can be installed with a simple google tag manager tool.

Another feature that’s possible to add with Google Tag Manager is the ability to add third party scripts such as chat widgets – allowing you to add features to your site, without adding plugins (or even WordPress!)

A neat version history feature

Every time you make a change on your website, it needs to be published before it can be seen by the public. Because of this, Google Tag Manager will build up a backlog of all of your version histories.

There are many scenarios where this can become greatly useful – for example. You could’ve been using a trial from a third party analytical platform, but want to remove it now your trial has ended. All you’d have to do is set the version before you added the code (as long as you haven’t added anything else since!) and just like that, the old version of your site is back!

Integration with Google Tag Assistant

Google Tag Manager is closely-tied to another Google property, Tag Assistant! This powerful tool makes it easier than ever to ensure tags are working as expected on your website (in real time!).

This can help you diagnose issues with your conversion tracking while you’re setting it up. This could be just for checking everything works as expected, or deep data-layer investigation into why your triggers/events aren’t tracking correctly.

If you’re looking for proper conversion tracking to be set up on your website, contact us today. Our team of Tag Manager and Tracking experts will be able to help you set up tracking for any event on your website!