Our Common Google Tag Manager Tracking Setups: Try Them Yourself

Paul Koch, Former Data & Analytics Director

Article Categories: #Strategy, #Data & Analytics

Posted on

Updates

The code for "Events Tracking Using Existing Inline Data Attributes" is now more airtight, with fewer caveats -- hat tip to Mitch.

As Viget continues to set up clients' Google Analytics through Google Tag Manager, we've found that we can use common ways to measure particular elements. Here are some of the most common tracking setups we've used so far.

Special thanks go to our FED team who wrote this JavaScript, especially Nate, Doug, Tommy, Dan, and Jeremy. We'll cover:

Full Tracking Setups

Useful Macros

Great Setups Others Have Built

Four caveats --

First, this is a work in progress. We're continually updating our tracking internally, so this post just captures a snapshot of some current setups.

Second, while this tracking automatically works for a lot of sites, it also doesn't automatically work for a lot of others. If any of these setups doesn't work for you, hopefully, you'll at least have a better starting point.

Third, some of these setups use Classic Google Analytics, and others use Universal Analytics. You'll want to make sure you adapt each to the setup you're currently using.

Fourth, if the tag uses an HTML tag to push events to _gaq, make sure that all other built-in GTM tags use empty tracking objects if you're using this tracking. (On the tag, choose More Settings > Advanced Configuration > Check "Tracker Name" but leave the field blank.) Otherwise, you'll need to replace the _trackEvent call with an event pushed to the dataLayer, then use that event as a rule to fire the standard GTM GA event tracking.

Full Tracking Setups

Scroll Tracking

Triggers events when visitors scroll a certain percentage down the page. It's great for understanding whether people see your elements further down the page.

Conditions and Caveats
  • jQuery must load somewhere on the page (the placement does not matter).
  • The event will be non-interaction by default.
  • At the bottom of the Scroll Tracker tag below, change the event to your needs. Change this depending on the percentage thresholds you want to trigger: progress -= 0.25;. By default, this will trigger events at 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%. For example, changing this value to 0.5 will fire events only at the 50% and 100% marks.
Tags
Rules
  • DOM Load: {{event}} contains gtm.dom

Viewport Dimension Tracking

Tracks the browser viewport as an event on each page. GA tells you screen resolution by default, but what about small browser windows on big screens? You can fiter these events based on regular expressions to understand the percentage of pageviews that fall within certain viewport ranges. This solution is for Classic Analytics; if you're using Universal Analytics, use Custom Dimensions as a better option.

Conditions and Caveats
  • jQuery must load somewhere on the page (the placement does not matter).
  • The event will be non-interaction by default.
  • At the bottom of the HTML code, change the event to your needs. We're firing after 10 seconds to make sure GA has loaded first and to avoid any slowing of the original page rendering. Soon, GTM will include tag ordering, so this approach won't be necessary anymore. If you load GA with a custom HTML tag, you can push an event to the dataLayer once GA has loaded, then use that event as a condition for firing this tag -- this would remove the need for a 10-second timer.
Tags
  • Custom HTML tag "Viewport Dimensions," fired on "10 seconds after Page Load" rule
  • Timer Listener, fired on "All Pages" rule -- choose a tag type of Timer Listener with these settings:

Rules
  • 10 Seconds after Page Load: {{event}} contains gtm.timer

Events Tracking Using Existing Inline Data Attributes

On many of our sites, we add data attributes to elements to more easily identify what is being tracked and name what we want to measure -- for example, data-track-event="Top Nav,About". With this tracking setup, we can look for a particular attribute and use its values in other tags (such as a GA event tag).

Conditions and Caveats
  • The tracking assumes you already have "click" and "link click" listeners set up in Google Tag Manager. If you don't, you can add them by selecting New > Tag, drilling into the "Event Listener" category, and firing the tags with an "All Pages" rule.
Tags

These tags will be standard GA event tags that reference in the Category, Action, and Label fields. These fields will reference the macros described below: {{Event Category from Data Attribute}}, {{Event Action from Data Attribute}}, and {{Event Label from Data Attribute}}.

  • Event with Link Click, fired on "Link Click with Data Attribute" rule
  • Event with Click fired on "Click with Data Attribute" rule
Rules
  • Link Click with Data Attribute: {{event}} contains gtm.linkClick. {{Has Data Attribute}} contains true.
  • Click with Data Attribute: {{event}} contains gtm.click. {{Has Data Attribute}} contains true. {{Element Is Link}} contains false.
Macros

Pageviews onhashchange

Registers a new pageview when the URL hash changes without a hard page load (for example, domain.com/page#hashchange).

Conditions and Caveats
  • Tag should be added in addition to standard page-level code (the script will not fire a pageview on initial load of page).
  • All other GA tags should use the {{URL with Hash}} macro value any time a document path is passed to GA. For example, add {{url with hash}} to the Document Path field for the GA pageview and event tags. Additionally, add {{URL with Hash}} to ga(send or _trackPageview -- e.g. _gaq.push(['_trackPageview', {{url with hash}}]);.
Tags
Rules
  • On load of all relevant pages
Macros

SoundCloud Tracking

Taps into the SoundCloud API to track embedded widgets on your site. The tracking tracks events for Plays, Downloads, and reaches of 50% and 100%.

Conditions and Caveats
  • Change the position.relativePosition if-statements if you'd like to measure other percentage thresholds.
Tags
Rules
  • On load of all relevant pages

Useful Macros

Sometimes, you need a quick macro to accomplish what you want. We find these especially useful when making Google Analytics event tracking.

Element Has Parent Class Matching Value

 // Change REPLACE to the parent class name
function crawlByClassName () {
 var el = {{element}};
 while (el && el !== document.body && el.className !== 'REPLACE') {
 el = el.parentElement;
 }
 return el.className === 'REPLACE';
}

Element Has Parent Id Matching Value

 // Change REPLACE to the parent id name
function() {
 var el = {{element}};
 while (el && el !== document.body && el.id !== 'REPLACE') {
 el = el.parentElement;
 }
 return el.id === 'REPLACE';
}

Parsing a Common Part of a Href

 // Replace "REPLACE" with the pattern you want to match
// For example, if the URL were: 
// http://domain.com/pages/prices.asp?SKU=12345
// and we wanted to parse 12345, we would replace REPLACE with:
// /\?.*SKU\=(.*?)(\&|$)/i
// To match a different part of the URL, you may also need to change the number within "match[1]"
function() {
 var href = {{element}}.href;
 var pattern = REPLACE;
 var match = href.match(pattern);
 if (match) {
 return match[1];
 } else {
 return false;
 }
}

Visitor Using Specific Browser - e.g., IE7

This matches part of the user agent string.

 // This macro matches IE7. 
// To change, replace "MSIE 7" with the browser you want to target.
function() {
return (/MSIE 7/).test(navigator.userAgent);
}

Great Setups Others Have Built

Here are a few setups that other Google Analytics Partners have created -- we've found ourselves using these quite often:

Hope this has given you a good foundation for tracking your site with GTM! If you have any other interactions you track, please comment and share them.

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