In Using Google Tag Manager, Part 1, you learned how to set up Google Tag Manager, which is a system for adding and maintaining marketing tracking codes (called “tags”) on your site.
Now it’s time to learn some more advanced features of Google Tag Manager that will improve your digital marketing efforts.
HOW TO SET UP TRACKING FOR WEBSITE ACTIONS
You can track many actions on your website, including button clicks, file downloads and outbound link clicks. In each case, you will need to set up a trigger and a tag. Here are the basic steps for setting up a trigger:
- Go to Triggers, then click “New”
- Name your trigger, e.g. “E-book download”
- In Trigger Configuration, choose “Just Links” for file downloads and outbound link clicks or “All Elements” for button clicks
- For button clicks, choose “Some Clicks” for “This trigger fires on”
- In the first drop-down, choose Page URL. In the second, choose Equals. The third is a text box in which you’ll the exact URL
- Click Save
Now you need to create a tag that is activated by the trigger:
- Go to Tags, then click “New”
- Name your tag, e.g. “E-book download event”
- For Tag Configuration, choose Universal Analytics
- For Track Type, choose Event, then name your Category (e.g. “Clicked on Item”) and Action (e.g. “Add to Cart”)
- For Label, choose “Page Path” to see where the event occurs
- Check the box for “Enable overriding settings in this tag,” then add your Google Analytics Tracking ID
- In the next box called Triggering, choose the trigger you just created
- Click Save
When you’re done, click on the Submit button in the upper right, then click the Publish button.
HOW TO VIEW YOUR TRACKING DATA
To view your tracking (event) data, log into Google Analytics and choose the property (website) for which you created the trigger(s) and tag(s). On the left-hand side, go to Behavior > Events > Overview.
You will be able to see data such as the pages where the event occurred, the navigation path visitors took and how many sessions had an event occur.