5 ms·

Echoing what others are saying, I much prefer Google Tag Manager. Many clients use a CMS which make injecting dynamic variables into a page a bit of a pain if i

Echoing what others are saying, I much prefer Google Tag Manager. Many clients use a CMS which make injecting dynamic variables into a page a bit of a pain if it's not done via rules at runtime. The Next Web has open-sourced its Google Tag Manager setup (https://github.com/thenextweb/gtm https://github.com/thenextweb/gtm), which has things like Scroll Tracking, Engagement Tracking (riveted.js), Outbound Link Tracking and lots of other things that are not in the default GA setup. They have recently added support for AMP. In my experience it allows clients to get up and running with a useful GA setup in a couple of hours and means that you as a developer don't get bothered to make trivial changes.

agentgt 10y ago
The only thing I have against tag manager is the documentation is sort of confusing. That is to manually setup GTM is pretty painful. Luckily most CMS have plugins.
aorth 10y ago
Scroll Tracking, Engagement Tracking (riveted.js), Outbound Link Tracking and lots of other things that are not in the default GA setup. I understand why a site owner would want those things, but as a user it is terrifying! This is why I run an ad blocker.
- kristianc 10y ago
  Understandable - and I think people don't know enough of what Analytics solutions are doing behind the scenes for sure. In GA's case, none of this is personally identifiable (Google actively strips info which could be PII out of listings), and the way Scroll Tracking is implemented could only ever be used in aggregate. So that is something.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- opdev8 10y ago
  Tracking & analytics are great, but respect for user privacy should be greater. The current state of analytics is too intrusive to user privacy. Hence we decided to get rid of all analytics from our website (https://ipapi.co https://ipapi.co). </Shameless plug>
  - fuj 10y ago
    lol seriously? promoting your website? How is that relevant? Because you do not use google analytics? So if we talk about html, everyone should do a "shameless plug" because they also use html?!
zimbatm 10y ago
Google Tag Manager is not very practical in cases where you want a secure website. It renders CSP useless because it requires all sorts of permissions like 'self' on scripts and CSS. It's good to have on the marketing webpage where no user content is displayed though.
- shostack 10y ago
  Also worth noting--depending on your setup, GTM essentially allows arbitrary execution of JS for anyone with access to edit and publish containers. I'm a more technically inclined marketer, but I make damn sure to check with an engineer before trying anything fancy with JS, and I make sure to test with QA. But having stuff in GTM more or less means you have separate workflows for code outside of your existing repo. Yes you can dump a JSON export of the container and commit that, but it definitely can cause some headaches when engineers not super familiar with GTM or how it is setup have to touch things that impact it (or vice versa).
  - peter_mcrae 10y ago
    This is a really important point. It can be really helpful to decouple analytics / tracking from the application -- especially in large companies. However you need to fully understand the security implications (don't trust vendor code!), have someone that is technically inclined using it, make it easy for the product teams to debug around it, take ownership of QA, etc.
- codingdave 10y ago
  Can you elaborate on this? I recently had my marketing team ask me to replace GA with Google Tag Manager, and I'm not all that familiar with either, as running the web site is just a minor thing I do on the side of my product work... but this sounds like something I should know more about.
  - peter_mcrae 10y ago
    In the simplest terms, Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a script you load on your site that then loads additional (arbitrary) code based on conditions (which are executed client side). In the case of something like GA, let's say you want to track a new website activity or maybe want to pass data to a new custom dimension. Without GTM, you would update your GA javascript file. With GTM, you would make the update within their interface and that new code would get injected into your site. This enables (for right or wrong) the analytics team to manage what / how data gets collected in GA. Within GTM you have the ability to inject html, javascript, css OR in many cases they have a wizard where someone less technical can put in some info and the code is generated. You can also use conditions to determine which code should load. For example, if page URL matches "orderConfirm" then execute this. Moreover, it gives you the option of when the code should run (immediate, DOM ready, onLoad). Aside from GA, most companies have a shit load of 3rd party scripts that run on their pages, so GTM provides a central place to manage everything. One problem is that anyone with editor access to GTM can inject just about anything (unless you block custom scripts within GTM which has other implications) and those deployments are real-time and done directly within the GTM web interface. I'm a developer on the marketing team, so I'm a fan, but it's risky in the wrong hands.
ndynan 10y ago
+1 - As a product person, being able to quickly spin up click tracking on a feature to measure its stickiness is awesome.

agentgt 10y ago

The only thing I have against tag manager is the documentation is sort of confusing. That is to manually setup GTM is pretty painful. Luckily most CMS have plugins.

aorth 10y ago

Scroll Tracking, Engagement Tracking (riveted.js), Outbound Link Tracking and lots of other things that are not in the default GA setup. I understand why a site owner would want those things, but as a user it is terrifying! This is why I run an ad blocker.

kristianc 10y ago
Understandable - and I think people don't know enough of what Analytics solutions are doing behind the scenes for sure. In GA's case, none of this is personally identifiable (Google actively strips info which could be PII out of listings), and the way Scroll Tracking is implemented could only ever be used in aggregate. So that is something.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
opdev8 10y ago
Tracking & analytics are great, but respect for user privacy should be greater. The current state of analytics is too intrusive to user privacy. Hence we decided to get rid of all analytics from our website (https://ipapi.co https://ipapi.co). </Shameless plug>
- fuj 10y ago
  lol seriously? promoting your website? How is that relevant? Because you do not use google analytics? So if we talk about html, everyone should do a "shameless plug" because they also use html?!

zimbatm 10y ago

Google Tag Manager is not very practical in cases where you want a secure website. It renders CSP useless because it requires all sorts of permissions like 'self' on scripts and CSS. It's good to have on the marketing webpage where no user content is displayed though.

shostack 10y ago
Also worth noting--depending on your setup, GTM essentially allows arbitrary execution of JS for anyone with access to edit and publish containers. I'm a more technically inclined marketer, but I make damn sure to check with an engineer before trying anything fancy with JS, and I make sure to test with QA. But having stuff in GTM more or less means you have separate workflows for code outside of your existing repo. Yes you can dump a JSON export of the container and commit that, but it definitely can cause some headaches when engineers not super familiar with GTM or how it is setup have to touch things that impact it (or vice versa).
- peter_mcrae 10y ago
  This is a really important point. It can be really helpful to decouple analytics / tracking from the application -- especially in large companies. However you need to fully understand the security implications (don't trust vendor code!), have someone that is technically inclined using it, make it easy for the product teams to debug around it, take ownership of QA, etc.
codingdave 10y ago
Can you elaborate on this? I recently had my marketing team ask me to replace GA with Google Tag Manager, and I'm not all that familiar with either, as running the web site is just a minor thing I do on the side of my product work... but this sounds like something I should know more about.
- peter_mcrae 10y ago
  In the simplest terms, Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a script you load on your site that then loads additional (arbitrary) code based on conditions (which are executed client side). In the case of something like GA, let's say you want to track a new website activity or maybe want to pass data to a new custom dimension. Without GTM, you would update your GA javascript file. With GTM, you would make the update within their interface and that new code would get injected into your site. This enables (for right or wrong) the analytics team to manage what / how data gets collected in GA. Within GTM you have the ability to inject html, javascript, css OR in many cases they have a wizard where someone less technical can put in some info and the code is generated. You can also use conditions to determine which code should load. For example, if page URL matches "orderConfirm" then execute this. Moreover, it gives you the option of when the code should run (immediate, DOM ready, onLoad). Aside from GA, most companies have a shit load of 3rd party scripts that run on their pages, so GTM provides a central place to manage everything. One problem is that anyone with editor access to GTM can inject just about anything (unless you block custom scripts within GTM which has other implications) and those deployments are real-time and done directly within the GTM web interface. I'm a developer on the marketing team, so I'm a fan, but it's risky in the wrong hands.

ndynan 10y ago

+1 - As a product person, being able to quickly spin up click tracking on a feature to measure its stickiness is awesome.