It’s impossible to fix or improve something if you don’t know it’s wrong. This rule applies to all aspects of life, whether work, family, hobbies, or business. Today we’ll focus on the latter. Anyone who starts a business does so hoping for success and profitability. As in the second quarter of the 21st century, many companies have moved to the digital world, making problem areas and potential issues less obvious. Website’s tracking customer data has become a valuable solution. Still, to ensure the information received is up-to-date and as complete. as possible, it’s necessary to review and re-review the setup constantly. How can this be achieved? This is the question that brought us together today.
Different ways to audit the website tracking setup
There’s no perfect tool or method for checking the proper functioning of your tracking system. A web crawler to find tracking resources would be an excellent solution, but there aren’t many options yet. We’ll share four of the most effective methods to clearly identify the deficiencies in your tracking system and begin working on resolving them. You can combine several methods to achieve the best results.
Use a third-party tracking checker.
Some third-party tools allow you to review your website’s tracking settings and identify vulnerabilities. While each tool mentioned may work differently, the idea is the same: to offer recommendations for improving tag activation, cookie usage, data collection, and more.
- Website Tracking Check. Stape, a popular GTM hosting company, recently launched a free Resource Tracking Check. This tool examines your tracking settings and offers recommendations for improvements. To start using it, paste your website’s URL into the search bar, and within a couple of minutes, you’ll see a detailed report of all the issues, some of which you may not have been aware of, along with suggestions for improvements.
- This platform specializes in auditing and validating digital analytics solutions on virtually all platforms and devices where they can be deployed. Its use ensures the proper functioning of all tracking tags, pixels, and data collection processes and the reliability of the data transmitted to the analytics platform. Unlike Stape, the website tracking validation tool only identifies issues and does not offer possible solutions or ways to improve your tracking system. However, it identifies problems quite accurately.
- Tag Inspector. This tool is designed to check that all tags on your website are working correctly. It provides detailed reports when it detects a tag that isn’t working properly; if it doesn’t, it’s considered missing or faulty. One of its most essential features is real-time auditing while the website operates normally.
We can’t offer definitive recommendations on which tool to choose. You can use all three separately if possible, as they don’t conflict. We’d say “no audit is too many.”
Inspect the tags manually.
Manually reviewing all the tags running on your website is probably the easiest, but most time-consuming, way to verify that your tracking setup is working correctly:
- It’s free (unless you hire someone to do it for you).
- While it’s not easy and requires some skill, it requires the least amount of additional resources and may be the most reliable.
- It provides direct and immediate feedback.
To use this method, you basically need a browser. Open the page and examine its code. Tags are usually in the header, so focus your attention on the top portion of the code. Remember that the more complex the configuration, the more time you’ll spend reviewing it and the greater the likelihood of errors.
Use the Google Tag Manager preview mode.
GTM Preview Mode is a feature designed to diagnose all your tags in real time, before they go live. You can observe how tags are fired and interact with your site by enabling it. This allows you to determine if specific user actions trigger the correct tags and if any configuration is missing. You can also see detailed information about the triggers, data layers, and variables used for all events on a selected page.
Preview Mode allows you to test and identify issues instead of trying to guess what might have gone wrong with your configuration. This reduces audit time and improves its quality, as you can test your live configuration without running it live. This means it doesn’t impact your traffic or your customers’ user experience.
However, its advantages also have their drawbacks. While it’s always helpful to perform long-term testing, Preview Mode only works during the current session, meaning that debugging will start from scratch when you start a new session. However, it is an excellent development and quality control tool.
Using validation tools
- Verification tools are a fairly broad term, which in our case primarily includes tag verification tools and server-side tracking verification tools.
Tag validation tools verify that all tags are fired and deployed correctly. Popular tools in this category include Google Tag Assistant, Facebook Pixel Helper, and Tag Manager Injector. These tools provide detailed information about tag behavior and firing, and alert you about discrepancies.
- Server-side tracking validation is a process that ensures data is delivered to the platform without loss or interference. GTM’s built-in server logs and debugging tools serve this purpose as more companies migrate to server-side tracking.
You may use the first or second category depending on your system configuration. Validation tools are easy to use and provide clear information about your system. Therefore, use client- or server-side monitoring to understand your monitoring system’s effectiveness better.
Conclusion
Never neglect auditing your tracking setup, as only by reviewing all tags and configurations will you know if everything is correct or there are any issues. Some tools, like GTM’s Preview Mode, are great for checking your settings in a single session. Others, like the web tracking testing tool Stape or Tag Inspector, are ideal for a more in-depth analysis of your setup’s effectiveness. The bottom line is to use multiple tools, compare results, and choose the best one from all the sources. All methods are suitable for improving tracking results and making your business more successful, right?