Re: Manage analytics through tag manager?

On Tue, Jun 30, 2020 at 2:22 PM Dave Page <dpage(at)pgadmin(dot)org> wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, Jun 30, 2020 at 1:07 PM Magnus Hagander <magnus(at)hagander(dot)net>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 30, 2020 at 1:55 PM Dave Page <dpage(at)pgadmin(dot)org> wrote:
>>
>>> We currently use Google Analytics for analysing traffic on the website,
>>> and have done for many years. Whilst discussing some ideas to improve the
>>> user experience with Jonathan, it became clear to me that ideally we need
>>> outbound link tracking, i.e. what link did a user click that took them away
>>> from our site. This is useful to know so we can tell, for example, what
>>> download option a user ended up choosing, which can better inform us on how
>>> to improve the layout of the download pages.
>>>
>>> Whilst it is possible to do outbound link tracking directly in Google
>>> Analytics, it can be invasive, requiring onclick attributes on every link.
>>> It is (in theory) possible to dynamically add those using a script in the
>>> base template or similar, but I've never actually been able to get that to
>>> work when I've tried.
>>>
>>> Instead, I'd like to suggest we change to using Google Tag Manager
>>> directly in the site in place of Analytics. Tag Manager uses a couple of
>>> similar JS snippets to Analytics so would require minimal changes to the
>>> site. However, it can then be used (amongst many other things) to enable
>>> Analytics site-wide as it is now, and to automatically send outbound link
>>> clicks to Analytics globally or for subsets of pages and target URLs with
>>> no further code changes.
>>>
>>>
>> Given the number of sites that completely break and fall over when one
>> blocks GTM, I have to ask: I assume this can be done in a way that has zero
>> impact on those who are sensible enough to block it?
>>
>
> I just tested on a couple of sites using it, and blocking didn't seem to
> affect use of the sites at all.
>
>
That's good.

I'd still say we need a very clear reason for it if we're going to collect
more information about our visitors. That is, we need a plan for what we're
going to do with the data. If we don't have that, we should not collect it.

(Same applies to Google Analytics of course -- and I think at some point we
said we were going to re-evaluate our use of that and see if we already had
enough information "on our own" for the things we actually do (since most
of the details from GA I don't think we use), but I don't think we ever got
around to it..)

--
Magnus Hagander
Me: https://www.hagander.net/ <http://www.hagander.net/>
Work: https://www.redpill-linpro.com/ <http://www.redpill-linpro.com/>