Imagine setting up comprehensive analytics without extensive coding—sounds ideal, right? In this article, a Software Engineer and a Chief Marketing Officer share their expert insights on navigating the hurdles of Google Tag Manager. From ensuring accurate event tracking to highlighting integration challenges with server-side analytics, we’ll cover seven essential insights. Get ready to explore the first key takeaway and the final expert opinion to make your tracking more effective.
- Ensure Accurate Event Tracking
- Requires Technical Knowledge
- Debugging Complexity
- Usability Issues for Non-Technical Users
- Integration with Server-Side Analytics
- Doesn’t Natively Track All Custom Events
- Debugging Accuracy Varies by Website Type
Ensure Accurate Event Tracking
One limitation I’ve encountered with Google Tag Manager is ensuring accurate event tracking for dynamic web pages or single-page applications. Since the content updates without full page reloads, GTM sometimes struggles to trigger tags at the right moment. To address this, I’ve implemented custom event listeners and JavaScript solutions to capture user interactions more effectively.
Another challenge is managing a growing number of tags across complex projects. Without proper organisation, tags and triggers can become difficult to track, leading to redundancy or conflicts. To overcome this, I developed a structured naming convention and regularly audit tags to maintain efficiency and accuracy. These strategies have significantly improved the reliability of our tracking efforts.
Anjum Nisha, Software Engineer, BigOhTech
Requires Technical Knowledge
Google Tag Manager is a fantastic tool, but it’s not without its quirks. One limitation I’ve encountered is that while it simplifies tag management, it requires a fair amount of technical knowledge to get it right. If your implementation isn’t spot-on, you can end up with tracking errors or missing data—things you often don’t notice until much later.
Another challenge is debugging. When something doesn’t fire correctly, it can take a bit of time to dig through the preview mode and figure out what’s causing the issue. And let’s not forget the occasional frustration when third-party scripts or tools don’t play nicely with GTM, leading to compatibility hiccups.
That said, the benefits of GTM far outweigh the challenges. My advice? Take the time to plan and test your setup thoroughly before rolling it out. And if you’re not confident in handling it, get help—it’s worth having a clean and accurate implementation from the start!
Tom Jauncey, Head Nerd, Nautilus Marketing
Debugging Complexity
I’ve encountered several limitations with Google Tag Manager (GTM) that can affect its overall effectiveness and lead to complications in specific scenarios. Below are some of the unique challenges I’ve faced:
- Debugging Complexity: While GTM offers a Preview mode, debugging issues—especially JavaScript conflicts or errors—can be difficult. The information provided isn’t always sufficient, requiring me to rely on browser console logs for deeper insights, which isn’t as intuitive as I’d like.
- Learning Curve for Advanced Features: GTM is easy to use at a basic level, but mastering advanced features like custom JavaScript variables or the data layer requires significant expertise. These advanced setups are essential for handling complex tracking but can be time-consuming.
- Performance Issues: Poorly optimised tags can slow down page load times, particularly when dealing with a large number of tags. While GTM runs asynchronously, it’s still critical to regularly monitor site performance, especially on mobile, to ensure a seamless user experience.
- Tag Firing Dependencies: Managing tag firing sequences can be challenging. I’ve faced issues where one tag fails to trigger due to missing conditions or dynamic content loading, requiring constant adjustments to ensure proper tracking.
- Event Tracking Limitations: GTM’s built-in event tracking features are often insufficient for more complex user interactions. For advanced tracking, like dynamic form field changes or single-page apps, custom JavaScript or additional tools are needed.
- Data Layer Integration: Seamlessly integrating and populating the data layer across different platforms can be tricky, especially when working with developers unfamiliar with GTM. This often requires close collaboration to ensure accurate tracking.
- Cross-Domain Tracking: Managing cross-domain tracking can be complicated, especially when dealing with multiple sites or subdomains. Ensuring proper cookie settings and session continuity across domains requires careful configuration.
Despite these challenges, GTM remains a powerful tool. With the right expertise and proactive optimisation, these limitations can be mitigated, ensuring accurate tracking and enhanced performance.
Vishal Shah, Sr. Technical Consultant, WPWeb Infotech
Usability Issues for Non-Technical Users
From the very beginning, one of the major constraints we’ve faced with GTM has been its usability issues. Simply put, the average non-technical user tends to find the interface rather overwhelming or cumbersome. GTM is indeed a powerful tool. But creating more advanced tags and triggers as well as macros may be quite difficult for people who do not have coding experience or thorough understanding of JavaScript.
Also, at times it can also cause some headaches when multiple scripts on a particular site are not ideally coordinated. This can cause several nonsensical situations where the loading time for a web page is retarded for no reason. Or tags fail to fire as they were configured to do so. We have seen some shortcomings in the ability of GTM to effectively track dynamic content especially in locations such as single-page applications where the said content is loaded on demand.
Under such conditions, it would be prudent to recommend that appropriate training and documentation be prepared in advance for the given team. With such complex setups, it would be better if the end-users were to utilise a technical specialist as that would enable the correct application of GTM without inducing heavy stress on the optimised website.
Khurram Mir, Founder and Chief Marketing Officer, Kualitatem Inc
Integration with Server-Side Analytics
One limitation we’ve encountered with Google Tag Manager (GTM) is its integration with server-side analytics, particularly when DNS settings are overlooked. In one instance, our CDN setup inadvertently affected SEO performance by introducing delays in tag execution. We had to optimise our infrastructure to address this, ensuring seamless communication between GTM and server-side configurations. This highlighted the need for technical oversight to align GTM implementations with broader operational requirements. Without this, even minor missteps in infrastructure can cascade into larger issues, affecting performance and data reliability.
Mike Zima, Chief Marketing Officer, Zima Media
Doesn’t Natively Track All Custom Events
Using Google Tag Manager (GTM) can sometimes feel tricky when you run into its limitations. One frustrating issue is that GTM doesn’t natively track all the custom events you might want to monitor on a website. Sure, it handles standard clicks and pageviews well, but when you need to track more advanced interactions, like specific button clicks that don’t navigate away from the page or custom form submissions, things get more complex. This requires additional setup, including custom JavaScript and data layers, which not everyone is comfortable using. A lot of teams find themselves relying heavily on developers to implement these solutions, which can slow things down if you’re aiming for a swift deployment.
Another common snag is preview mode quirks. While GTM’s preview mode is essential for testing new tags and triggers, it can be unreliable or fail to show what’s being loaded correctly. Sometimes changes don’t even show up, causing confusion and making it hard to ensure everything is right before going live. This often happens due to caching issues or conflicts with other browser extensions. Disabling conflicting add-ons or using an incognito browsing session can sometimes provide a more accurate preview environment.
For those custom tracking needs, using the GTM’s data layer properly can be a lifesaver. Instead of catching valuable data with event triggers alone, push key variables and information into the data layer script on your site. This practice allows GTM to pull exact details about what’s happening on your site without additional custom tags or rely too much on a developer’s time. It organises your data collection, bridges communication between the front-end actions, and GTM itself. Having a clean and well-structured data layer can streamline your analytics setup and even enhance accuracy in reporting.
Jean Chen, COO & CHRO, Mondressy
Debugging Accuracy Varies by Website Type
Debugging in GTM doesn’t seem to be accurate. It also varies from the type of website or web app. For instance, a single-page application (SPA) may interact differently from a CMS-based website.
In some cases, we have also experienced incorrect debugging, either due to server response or GTM’s failure to respond in a particular fashion.
Third-party integrations and features may not respond as expected to be responded to in a live environment.
Rakshit Panchal, SEO Manager, Sydney Digital Agency
