Move your tags to Google Tag Manager

In our previous post, we talked about EUGDPR compliance and one of our suggestion was that you should move all your tracking tags to Google Tag Manager. A lot of users asked us how they can do that, so in this blog post we are going to discuss some of those tags.

A lot of web-based traffic tracking tools ask users to add some code snippet to the head, body or footer of their site and pages. These code snippets are called 'Tags' and they are responsible for collecting and sending data to their respective service platform. These tags are used for alot of purposes now a days, like for tracking traffic to your site, monitoring and recording user navigation on your pages, how users use your forms or buttons, or what links they click and which all pages they visit or drop-off from. The tags send all this information to their system, which you use further for your analysis.

A lot of website and CMS platforms allow you to add these tags from back-office easily, but many don't, and if you have a custom developed site then you will have to depend on your web-developers to add these tags correctly.
This is where the Google Tag Manager (GTM) comes handy. Once implemented in your site, you can use GTM to add, edit or disable any tags without changing anything in your source code.

Following is a list of some major tools that are used now a days and if you use any of them, you should consider moving their tags to GTM:

1. Google Analytics

It is one of the most widely used platform for tracking, analysing and reporting website traffic. It is probably the first step that any website owner takes when they launch their site.
Since it is also integrated with AdWords, you can review your online campaigns by tracking landing page quality and conversions as well.
You most probably use it in your site. You should move its tag to Google tag manager. You can find the official instructions here: Deploy Google Analytics

And don't forget to anonymize visitor IP. To set IP anonymization:

• Open the tag that fires the GA pageview click the pencil at the top corner to edit the tag
• Expand "More settings" (if you don't see it check Enable overriding settings in this tag)
• Expand "Fields to set"
• Click on Add a field and configure it like this:
• Field name: anonymizeIp
• Value: true
• Save and publish the changes

Note that when you anonymize the IP your IP filters won't work. So you should either change the last octet of your IP filters to 0 (which may filter more IPs that you need) or use a dynamic way of filtering your internal traffic, for example, using cookies.

2. Bing UET

In some sense, is the Microsoft version of Google analytics and it works with Bing Ads.
Advanced: UET Custom Event and Variable Revenue reporting via GTM
Setting Up Bing Ads Tracking with Google Tag Manager

3. Facebook Pixel

Facebook Pixel is created to measure the effectiveness of your Facebook advertising campaigns. You can make sure that your ads are being shown to the right audience When visitors arrive at your site and places an order, the Facebook pixel records this action and hence you will be able to show Facebook Ads to that person in future. In this article, Facebook explains how you can move its Pixel to GTM.

4. Zendesk chat (formerly Zopim)

It is a live chat support, web analytics and online marketing tool product and is used by alot of websites to communicate easily with their visitors and customers. In this article, you can find all the information about Zendesk chat and GDPR: Zendesk chat - Transparency and Accountability
You can also add its tag via GTM: Installing Zopim for Google Tag Manager

5. Hotjar

This All-in-one Analysis and Feedback tool is gaining alot of popularity and hence is being used by alot of website owners for visitor recording and form analytics, along with other features.
These are the official instructions from Hotjat explaining how you can move its tag to GTM: Hotjar - Google Tag Manager setup guide.

There are many other tools whose tags are supposed by GTM. You can read the full list here.

Note that you should not not remove the existing tags from your site unless you are ready to move it to GTM right away.

Feel free to contact us if you need any advice or assistance with making your site EUGDPR compliant.