12 Common Tag Manager Mistakes To Avoid

Google Tag Manager (GTM) is one of the tools I use and love very often for my job. I have encountered some problems while starting GTM or still using it from time to time.

There are some pretty detailed articles on the subject but this is my version too. I hope you find some of them useful. :)

1 - Editing The Wrong GTM Account

You have made the changes you need to make in GTM and want to check it in preview mode (I assume you have the habit of checking it in preview mode without “publish” — (live, publish). If not, get it. :))

If you can’t see the preview debug screen, the first thing to remember is that you may be on the wrong GTM account. If you’re following more than one GTM account or container, you may fall into this error from time to time (especially if you are just starting, you will experience this).

To do this, you should first use the Tag Assistant plug-in to check if there is a Tag Manager on the page. If there is, check whether the Id and the Tag Manager account Id you are looking at the match.

If you don’t use Tag Assistant (MUST use it, it will make your job incredibly easy) you can also check it in site codes.

2 - Non-Publish Container

Yes, you’re on the correct GTM account and the changes you made are working perfectly; congratulations! But why can’t you see the changes on your site when you exit preview mode?

If you have not published the container you’re working on and making changes to, you can’t see the changes on your page (duh!). Sometimes you can forget to publish after checking in preview mode. We all did it, nothing to be ashamed of.

3 - Not Refreshing Preview, Debug or Web Page

Thanks to the preview mode, we can see the changes we made on the page. And have the opportunity to test them. If things are on track, we complete the process by publishing.

But sometimes things don’t go well and we want to fix some bugs or make changes in some places. Unfortunately, when we make these changes over GTM, GTM can’t detect this automatically. To see new changes, we need to refresh the preview mode and sometimes even refresh the whole page nicely.

4 - Not Using Preview & Debug Console Effectively

When an event is selected in the left column of the Preview and Debug console (followed by 1,2,3,4…), the tags tab displays the currently available tags. Labels; are divided into triggered (Fired) and non-fired (Not Fired). If one of your tags is not triggered, “Why didn’t it fire?” You can find the answer to the question exactly here.

A tag will only fire if all conditions are met. The red X icon indicates that a condition of the trigger has not been met. Using this section as a hint, you can understand why it didn’t trigger.

If your tag will run in the DOM, don’t worry about why it wasn’t fired in Pageview. First, review what the conditions are and check the events and tags sequentially accordingly.

5 - Not Getting Help From Other Debug Tools

Tag Assistant and GA Debugger are two of the most popular debugging tools. Both are free Chrome extensions that will make your life much easier.

Tag Assistant; It helps you get a lot of Google tag information including Google Analytics, Tag Manager, AdWords conversion tracking.

You can use GA Debugger in your E-commerce debugs. It allows you to quickly view a lot of Analytics data when you enable it.

6 - Not Using Google Analytics Real-Time Report

By checking the Real-Time report while performing the integrations you want to send data to Google Analytics, you can easily check whether the transactions you have made affect the correct account and whether they’re working.

For example, if you have sent an event, you can instantly check whether it’s reflected in GA when you click the events section from the real-time report and perform that operation (button click, scroll tracking, etc.) from your site, and more importantly, you should definitely.

7 - Not Deleting Old Google Analytics Integrations

Deciding to migrate a hardcoded Analytics-integrated site to GTM and doing it smoothly, unfortunately, is not as easy as setting up this sentence. You must complete all the integration steps and activate the account in one and deactivate the other at the same time. If the code you pass to GTM is on the site as hardcoded, it will cause the data to be measured incorrectly.

8 - Not Defining Google Analytics ID as Variable

We need the Google Analytics ID for many transactions we will do at GTM. If you don’t define this ID as a variable and prefer to enter it manually in all transactions you use, you will have to change this information from all tags one by one in case your Analytics account changes.

Do it before you regret it.

9 - Using Too Many Automatic Event Listeners

Since we want to do so much while starting GTM and we have a lot of enthusiasm in this regard, we can activate the audience in every event. But as time goes on, we need to determine how many of these we really need.

If we are using two or three, we don’t need the remaining seven or eight to be loaded. Each event listener is a piece of code that must be executed, and the more code, the longer the console will take to load.

Generally, these code snippets are tiny, but the sum of all of them can slow the opening speed by 1–2 seconds.

10 - Spelling Errors (They’re Everywhere)

If a tag isn’t triggered, you should definitely check for typos. If you use an expression with RegEx, be sure to check whether it is normal or ignore the case.

Check the variable names. Generally, misspellings in Data Layer variables are frequently encountered.

11 - Not Using Folders

If you have a large number of tags, you should switch to the folder structure for both your own use and those who will use the account other than you. Especially if you are doing the account setup, this step is important so that those who will use it after you do not make your ears painful.

For example; If you’re going to make a Facebook Pixel code change, you can follow the Folders > Facebook step to quickly access Facebook-related tags and others can also access it.

It would be best for everyone to make a habit of using folders as much as possible for a cleaner and more convenient account.

12 - Forgetting The Schedule

GTM has a great feature that we can make tags active or passive on certain dates. But as this feature is useful, it can be confusing. When you see that your tag isn’t working while everything you do is correct, this feature may not come to your mind first.

If you are going to use it, this is one of the points you will check when you encounter an error. If you say “I will forget for sure”, it would be useful to write your code including the date.

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If you have different suggestions, I would be happy to update the article.

And if you liked it, I am waiting for your CLAPS. 😊 👏