Review of Conversion Optimization Minidegree Program(Pt. 9)

Ivan Iñiguez
4 min readNov 15, 2021

How important do you think it is tracking in your business?

I’m sure you’re thinking this is a silly question… How can you not track everything inside your business. I mean, without tracking you’re just playing a blind game.

And I get it.

The question then becomes not a matter of if, but what are you actually tracking (and are you doing it accurately)?

Look, you could have all the resources and links inside Google Analytics, but if they are not set up properly to help you see more… then what’s the point?

Now, one thing is for sure.

Google Analytics is an indispensable tool for every single business to track everything, but…

have you considered getting even more insights?

You bet knowing when visitors click inside a particular link or how much they scrolled in every page will give you ideas to test.

Well, good news.

You can have these type of data and more… and that’s when the uncle of Google Analytics comes into play.

It’s called Google Tag Manager (GTM), and you’re going to find out how it works and what you can do with it right now.

That’s what I learned this week inside CXL Insitute as part if the CRO Minidegree Program.

So let’s get started.

To illustrate things, here are the basic options you have inside the main dashboard, called “Overview”.

Credit: https://github.com/vtex-apps/google-tag-manager

First, we have the Overview option.

You will be able to see the main tags and triggers you have, along with current changes you’ve made inside since the last version.

And in the green section, you have the current “Live version” of all the changes you’ve made inside GTM.

Next, the first option you have in the left section is “Tags”.

The way you want to think about them is that they help you tell the what you want GTM to do. When you get into this option, you’ll find there are 2 option: Built-in and Custom tags.

After tags, we have “Triggers”.

And a helpful way to think about them is that they tell you when you want something to happen. For instance, when someone views a page or clicks a link, that’s a trigger.

Moving on, the next option is “Variables”.

You’re going to want to see them as information that GTM needs in order to do its job. You can have different variables inside different pages. For example, in “conversions”, you can know not only the type of product you have (if you have an e-commerce store), but you can also know the price of that particular product and the total order value.

Lastly, you have Folders (and Templates). Simply put, Folders are a way to organize your tags… as it can get messy with a lot of tags and triggers. On the other hand, Templates are… well, you know what they are, so let’s continue.

It’s also important to mention that there’s one concept you should know but you won’t find it in the side menu.

That’s what’s called Data layers. This is an important concept to know since it’s like a small cabinet that temporarily stores all the infomration to be able to do what’s needed.

And when you have done any new changes inside GTM, you always need to test and verify… the way you do this is with the “Preview” mode. You’re going to be using this mode very often, so be aware of it and get familiarized.

But let’s get to the nitty gritty.

You want to push that information to Google Analytics so that you can there have it stored and see in reports.

To do that, you need to create your first trigger.

First, go the “Tag” section and choose the ‘Tag Configuration’ option, looking for the ‘Google Analytics — Universal Analytics’ option.

In this case, you’ll then want to track for the number of people who visit the site… so that would be “Pageviews”.

But to do this, you’ll need to use the option to create a new “Variable”.

With that, you go to “Triggering” and choose the built-in option “All pages”.

Once you have saved the Tag, don’t forget to test it by using the Preview mode. Just keep in mind that you’ll always need to first refresh inside GTM and then your website.

As you move along the course, youll find ways to set up tags about tracking clicks, scroll depth, Youtube videos engagement, and much more.

But I’m going to leave the explanation there… As you have read, most of it is very practical.

So me going hours by showing you what’s possible isn’t very helpful from my end.

My point is that you can start seeing how GTM can become your best friend when it comes to tracking pretty much everything inside your website.

And I feel the CXL Course on Google Tag Manager is really the best place to get to know how to not only become familiar, but becoming confident enough to use it.

You’re going to be able to set up triggers based on different events like clicks or scrolls and see them inside GA to know about them.

There might not be a better program that shows you how to know what GTA is, how to use it and how to become good at it.

That wraps up this week’s review.

Originally, I was planning to include the next courses of User research and Personas, but…

I wanted to keep the topics concise and not go off-topic.

That’s why next week, I’ll be sharing those insights and how you can dive deep into these topics… as well as how to use the field of neuromarketing to get to know even deeper your customers and prospects (beyond their awareness).

So get ready to rethink the way you see your prospects.

Ivan

--

--

Ivan Iñiguez
0 Followers

A Direct Response marketer who happens to write copy. Emails, sales pages, Upsells, and VSLs.