In 2023, we have all sorts of new innovations & helpful tools to make our work look its best in marketing & analytics. Unfortunately we are still seeing some ancient issues and fixable situations in tracking setup. Check out the top 5 mistakes we are seeing – even on some industry leading sites
Manual Injecting Tracking Codes Without a Tag Manager Like Adobe or GTM
It is generally considered bad practice to place Google Analytics snippets (i.e., the JavaScript tracking code) outside of a tag manager for several reasons:
Maintenance: If you place the Google Analytics snippet directly in the source code of your website, you will need to update it manually every time you want to make a change to your tracking configuration. This can be time-consuming and error-prone, especially if you have multiple websites or a large number of tracking events.
Collaboration: If multiple people or teams are responsible for managing the tracking on a website, it can be difficult to coordinate changes and ensure that everyone is using the same version of the tracking code.
Quality control: A tag manager provides a central location for managing all of your tracking and marketing tags, which can help you ensure that your tracking is consistent and accurate. It also provides tools for testing and debugging your tags, which can be helpful for identifying and fixing problems.
Overall, using a tag manager can make it easier to manage your tracking, improve the accuracy and reliability of your data, and make it easier to collaborate with other teams.
Multiple instances of Tracking code
here are several problems with creating multiple instances of the same tracking code (i.e., the Google Analytics snippet) on a website:
Duplicate tracking: If you create multiple instances of the tracking code on a single page, you will end up with multiple copies of the same data being sent to your Google Analytics account. This will result in inflated and inaccurate data, which can make it difficult to understand your website’s performance and user behavior.
Performance: Loading multiple copies of the tracking code can slow down your website, which can negatively impact user experience.
Debugging: If you have multiple instances of the tracking code on your website, it can be difficult to troubleshoot issues and identify the cause of any problems.
Overall, it is generally best to avoid creating multiple instances of the same tracking code on a website. Instead, you should use a single, centralized tracking code that is placed in the source code of your website or managed through a tag manager.
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No Coherent Organization
Nothing is worse than a tag management setup with no organization that is cluttered and disorganized, with tags being added haphazardly without any clear structure or hierarchy. This can make it difficult to understand how different tags are being used and what impact they are having on the website.
Red flags include:
No grouping or categorization of tags: All of the tags may be listed in a single, unstructured list, making it difficult to understand the purpose and function of each tag.Often times multiple agencies build on top of each other leaving the container looking like an archeological dig site. Leaving the next lucky analyst to ask around “What does this code even do?”
No clear naming convention: Tags may have descriptive or confusing names, making it difficult to understand their purpose or relationship to other tags. Deciding on a naming convention and sticking with it is key, especially when exporting containers for analysis. It is hard to understand exactly what each tag is supposed to do especially with complex custom code that can create – shocker! – a security vulnerability.
Updates are not documented and isolated, they are simply published!
There may be multiple versions of the same tag being used on the website, which can lead to conflicting or duplicate data being collected. During QA issues are harder to isolate, requiring extra effort to comb thru what is wrong and more intensive rollbacks. By creating separate environments in Adobe and separate workspaces in GTM for each code change many of these types of issues can be avoided
Launch Code or Google GTM Snippet Not Placed Correctly
You would think this is common knowledge but it is still a BIG problem in 2023! Code is seen missing the head or the body snippet, placed at the bottom of the page, including wrong measurement ID etc. The nightmares continue.
It is important to place the Google Tag Manager (GTM) snippet in the correct location in the source code of your website to ensure that it works properly. If the GTM snippet is not placed in the right place, it may not function correctly and you may not be able to track the data you want.
The GTM snippet should be placed as close to the opening <head> tag as possible in the source code of every page on your website. This is because the GTM snippet loads asynchronously and does not block the loading of other page elements. Placing the GTM snippet at the top of the page ensures that it is loaded as early as possible and can begin tracking data as soon as possible.
If the GTM snippet is placed too far down in the source code, it may not be able to track certain types of data (e.g., pageviews) or may not be able to track data at all. This can result in incomplete or inaccurate data being collected, which can make it difficult to understand the performance and user behavior on your website.
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