Saturday Night Data Party: Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager Fixes

Alright, yeah, we are finally live. So tonight we are doing Saturday night data party on the topic of uh fixing up my poor website. It's um there are spots where it's a little long em tooth um around analytics and tag management. Um so we're gonna go through and check up on things, make sure that the site is is functioning. Uh let's do this first.

Let's go into admin here. Check out our goals. See if the goals I have in here are still relevant. Let's see, don't need visitors. Gumroad.

Let's see. 12 goals total. Okay, so gumroad, that goal is still valuable. Uh let's check the Amazon one here. Event.

Okay, so this is the first thing. Um goals in Google Analytics are they're like buckets more than they are individual things. So this goal here, which is to presumably just to detect that someone has clicked on, if I go to my site here, uh, a link to visit my uh book on Amazon. Let's go see. Appliance, testimonials, yeah, for marketers.

Okay, that goes to the straight to the gumroad version. It's fine. So I don't think I even need that goal anymore, but I'm gonna do this. I have these set as begins with goals. And what I want to do is take out those two things.

A goal in Google Analytics fires when a certain condition is met, and it's it's all minimum condition stuff. So anything saying book add or click in this case would trigger. Now in this case, I think I want to be more specific. The category should be Amazon and click. So I want to validate anytime sending anybody to Amazon.

Uh and the action they're taking is a click. I'm gonna save that. So we'll make a note to revisit that uh at some point. Uh we don't need that on the gumroad is fine as a goal. I'm gonna turn off this one because I don't use that one.

Speaking of page visit is still good, don't need this one. Newsletter subscription is still good. MP3 click, PDF is good. Contact form is good. Uh what is this?

This is the challenge with analytics, trying to figure out what it is you've set things up for. Okay, that's pointless. I'm gonna turn that one off. You cannot delete goals in Google Analytics, but you can uh simply turn them off, the ones you're not using. And it's easiest to see which ones you're not using uh by just whether they have on or off switches.

Okay, MP3. Let's just take a look at this, make sure it's okay. So again, my name and conventions are all over the place. This is stupid. So this is going to be uh engagement.

This is a click. And the type of click it is is an MP3. I am going to let's go ahead and just save this so that I remember it. I recommend having something like a clipboard manager or even just a spreadsheet handy to remember what all your different goal settings are. That way you don't forget them.

So I use uh snag it. Let's go ahead and just snag this. There we go. Just like that. Just to keep an eye on it.

Hi Amanda. Thanks to have you here. Alright. So engagement click MP3. Let's look at PDF.

This is engagement click PDF. I have no idea why that's that's a stupid value. I'll use the event goal. Save that. And we're just going to make a note of this.

Now if I if I was running out of goals, I would actually just have a single goal called engagement goal. And what I would do is set engagement and click as the requirements to meet the goal. But then I could use the label to differentiate in reporting without having to use multiple goal slots. I don't have that problem right now. Um, but it could be something I might want to do.

Alright, let's see. Newsletter subscription. What kind of newsletter subscription destination are we on here? Thanks for subscribing. Okay, that looks good.

Don't need to do anything with that. Okay, so I've got goals. Let's check my channel settings. Uh actually, nope, not here. Channel groupings.

Make sure my channel groupings are okay. Last modified in 2020. Paid search, genetic search, paid social, social email. I'll just double check email. Okay, good.

Okay, so I've updated this recently, which means that it's probably okay. Let's go back and just check in on our custom audiences, make sure those are good. Oh god, some of these are pointless. That one's ancient. Close that audience.

We don't need it anymore. That's from 2016. Okay. Smart list. Generally speaking, if you don't see analytics and ads together, you've got an audience that's probably kind of a dud.

Um this one is a dud. Don't need it anymore. Let's see. What else we got here? Public speaking audience.

That one's a good one. Red belt. Done anything with that book in forever. Let's close that one up. Okay.

Okay, smart retargeting is on. That looks good. Alright. So now the next step is we don't want to. We have some of those goals that we were looking at earlier.

We need to make sure that we they match a tag manager. First place we need to go in tag manager is variables. Make sure we are collecting clicks, click URLs, form URLs, page URLs, all those set and our video things. Let's actually look at our built-in variables and see if there are any here that I missed. I don't use history states very often.

Okay, that looks all good. Let's look at our user-defined variables. I'm gonna sort this by last edited. It's a pretty good bet. If you haven't touched something in like more than a year, it probably you need to go back and take a look at it.

Alright, so I have a few things that are a few months old here, uh, and then stuff way out here that is just crazy. Uh let's take a look at this. Like these these don't need to be here anymore. Delete that. We don't need to collect events.

I don't even use that control anymore. Still don't need that. All my videos on my website are YouTube videos, so I don't need to run the top this JavaScript to get video data anymore. It's all clicked automatically by YouTube, which is great. Go away.

Alright, my website Universal Analytics Code. Let's go ahead and take a look at this. Auto cookie domain, got the correct variable here. Let's check fields to set, don't need to set any no custom dimensions. I don't use content groupings a ton.

We do need to enable these features. Do I need enhanced e-commerce? I don't need enhanced e-commerce. Cross domain, I don't have any cross domains. Okay, save this.

Pointless. Let's see. I use that which tag do I use this in. Oh, this was my attempt a few years ago to try and do the client ID sending for Google Analytics. There's no point in doing this.

I'm gonna actually wipe that out. Cookie domain. I don't need to set cookie domain auto anymore. That's that is ancient. Save that.

And I can get rid of this now. Let's see. Check JavaScript, that one's an important one. Timestamp. Why do I have this?

Ah, this is for custom dimensions. Uh don't need to do this anymore. This is old from a long time ago. One of the things that you're seeing is that you're seeing a lot of cruft. Um specifically.

There we go. You're seeing stuff. I've been using tag manager for a really long time. And as a result, uh some stuff like this, like tracking YouTube watches on site, it is really, really, really old. And we don't need these things anymore.

So let's go ahead and remove this entire thing. And then we can get rid of this. So you're seeing stuff from like tag manager version one from like eight years ago. I don't need it anymore. So now things are looking much more clean in here.

We've got our custom UTM captures. We've got a check JavaScript, so triggers look good. Variables look good. Let's go triggers. I can already tell I've got something here, like for a Black Friday blog post.

I have absolutely no need for this anymore. Get rid of this tag. Get rid of this trigger. Alright, all pages. That's a standard page you want.

Blog post is to look specifically at blog post clicks for all elements. Facebook marketing content pages. I don't remember why I have that. Let's look at the dates. All click.

YouTube video. I don't know that. Yeah, let's double check that YouTube video tag to make sure it is. Okay. YouTube video triggers, start complete.

So this all looks correct. I have it set for. I don't need. So remember that earlier JavaScript. Um this here now takes care of that.

So I don't need that early JavaScript. Yeah, tag manager takes care of it for me. PDF click, MP3 click. So PDF click, we're gonna make sure that is the correct syntax. Matches regex ignore case.pdf.

So any dot PDF. We want an Amazon link. So we want Amazon engagement trigger. Recall that from earlier, we're gonna trigger this on links, and we're gonna do some links, and we're gonna do the click URL matches, regular expression, ignore case.to is Amazon's link shortener. Amazon dot com.

And so this trigger will fire when someone clicks on an Amazon outbound link. We want to keep that around. Do we want to? No, let's keep it simple for now. Alright, so that's uh triggers.

Let's move on to tags. Holy crap. It's a ton of stuff here. Okay. First things first.

Anything that's paused should probably just go. Because it's paused, is how it has no benefit. I'm sure I paused these for a good reason sometime, a year, two years ago, but there is no reason for it to continue to exist. Okay, AdWords remarketing looks good. Hotjar.

Let's do our sort here. LinkedIns Insights, website survey, Twitter tags, Firebase. I don't use Firebase. Get rid of that. Modic self-hosted, Google Optimize, Webmaster Tools, Stack Adapt, Event Clicks for Tags.

Yeah, no. Alright, so this is we're gonna read we're gonna redo this. We're gonna do let's check. MP3 goal. There's my PDF click.

Alright, so let's check this out. Download PDF. And this is where the screenshots that we took are gonna come super in handy. Event, our category is engagement. Our action is click, our label is PDF.

It's a non-interaction hit. Got the correct UA tag here. No advanced settings, PDF click. And we're gonna rename that also so that it's there's a common syntax, because again, this is engagement. Download PDF.

Save. And now let's do the same thing for an MP3. MP3 event category engagement. Action is click. Label is MP3.

Non interaction hit, got the UA, got MP3 click. And let's rename that. Okay. So now those two are taken care of. There's our customer image hotjar.

Why do I have a virtual page view for an MP3? What was I trying to do? Right. So this exists. If somebody clicks on an MP3 file, I want to count it as a page view, even if it's not necessarily on my site because you're listening to a piece of my content.

PDF virtual page view, same thing. Matomo, I never installed Motomo. That was stupid. Alright. I also have not used HubSpot on my website in two years, so let's get rid of that.

JSON LD. Oh god. Uh yeah, that needs some updating. So let's do JSON LD generator. Use Joe Hall's generator.

They're all good. Schema we want is person, job title, achieve data. And this is my personal website. I don't know that I want that in my JSON. City of State is fine.

Let's do sales at trust insights.ai. United States. I don't feel like anyone call me. I'm certainly not going to put my birth date in. And so what we've got now is a nice bit of JSON.

This goes into tag manager. And what this will do, if you look at it, is this will essentially tag every page on my site with the appropriate uh details so that Google understands uh schema. Hi, Jen. Um, so my JSON LD is up to date. Things like JSON are important to do to keep updated because the formats change over time.

And as you can see, that one I hadn't updated in three years. The format was out of date. And so I was not getting the the SEO benefit of having my JSON LD because it was frankly out of date. Alright, Facebook marketing content. What do we got here?

This is oh uh pushing for a Facebook uh for my Facebook pixel. You know what? I'm gonna nuke this because I haven't done Facebook advertising in two years and I have no intention of doing it anytime soon. My Facebook pixel I'll keep in place. Facebook tag, optimize adwards remarketing, event clicks.

What is this? I don't know why I'm storing this data, but I'm going to get rid of it because that I haven't ever looked at it. Let's see. Okay, so we have drastically thinned the herd here in terms of uh Google Analytics for what uh I am or I'm not tracking on my website. And by doing this, I'm gonna go ahead and submit all 26 changes.

This is also going to um reduce the amount of cruft that runs on my site um and uh makes you know things like ad blockers and stuff work uh better with my site because there's less garbage there's less garbage that's being fired. In terms of things that I still probably need to take a look at I'm gonna sort this here uh like this LinkedIn insight tag um visit your LinkedIn ad account I don't run LinkedIn ads okay that's gotta go website surveys I still run those let's take a look at the tag just make sure it's okay yep that looks good all pages um let's think about that. Do I want a website satisfaction survey on all pages? The answer is probably not. There's some pages that I don't want you to see that survey on uh I probably don't want you to see it on the unsubscribe page, right?

That would be a bad place to have it. Because you're not there for a happy reason. So we give some thought to the experience we're trying to give to people. Modic self-hosted. Let's just double check, make sure that's working.

Yep, that's working. That's the correct JavaScript, the correct domain. Let's see, Google optimize. Yep, optimize tag settings are all correct in there. Why do I have that running on the only blog posts?

That's dumb. Okay. Stack adapt retargeting. Bing. Alright, so we have thinned the herd here.

And now if I reload my site. Oops. Let's do almost full screen. Ah. I now have nine trackers.

I used to have way more. A couple of video players and some analytics stuff. So my site has much less crap running on it, makes for a better user experience, less likely to flag ad blockers, etc. Other things that you might want to do. One thing you might want to do is you might want to track all your outbound clicks to see where people are clicking out to.

If they're clicking on a URL that is not to your site. So do that, let's do a custom dimension. Oh, those two things I had here, I'm going to go ahead and delete those because we decided we don't need them anymore. Actually, let's reuse this. So this is going to be a session level.

And it'll be outbound click. Wait, is a click a session level event? No, a click is a hit level event. Alright, so we're going to store the information there. And then this is something that we'll be able to report on later.

So we'll call it this outbound click. Let's go ahead and go back into our workspace. And we're going to make a trigger called outbound clicks. And it's specifically where the click URL does not contain my website. And now I'm going to create a tag.

GA out. Click. Custom dimension. And for this, we're going to send to Google Analytics. Let's see.

Doing an event. Hmm. Well, do I want to do it? If I do it as a page view, you know what? I'm going to do as an event instead.

So we'll ignore that. Or do I want to do it that way? Hmm. Let's do the page view. UA.

And enable override settings. More settings. Custom dimension. Index is one, which is our index here. And our dimension value is going to be the click URL.

This is going to then take that data and push it into Google Analytics so it's trackable. Oops, add trigger. Outbound clicks. Yeah, for now, until I figure out whether there's value in in tracking that, I'm going to make it a custom dimension. I can always set it up as an event later if I feel like it's valuable.

Submit those changes. Actually, did I configure that? I think I set the trigger, didn't I? But uh yeah, Amazon engagement trigger. Did I set up a goal for that?

This is why the cobblers kids have no shoes, kids. Yep. Amazon engagement. Yep, Amazon click. So I set everything except the actual tag.

I was dumb. So attack configuration. This is Google Analytics. It's going to be an event. Amazon click.

Okay. Select website UA. Trigger. Amazon engagement trigger. And now we have data tracking for specific clicks out to Amazon.

Now, if you want to get super fancy, which we're not going to do tonight because it's a big hairball to do it. Um, you can provision a separate Google Analytics view to track the specific pages uh for that you're sending people to as page views in a separate view so that you can see um like what product pages on Amazon you send the most traffic to. Again, not going to do that tonight because that is an extensive setup, but it's it is a doable thing. If you do a lot of like Amazon affiliate work, you would want to know where you send traffic to, and you want to double check Amazon to make sure that they are reporting properly. So that was uh 20 some odd minutes here of uh going through my website and fixing up all the cruft that uh I had frankly been letting accumulate for a bunch of years.

Uh this is something you need to do. Uh, you need to do it on your website, you need to do it on your company's website, etc. Keeping it clean uh so that it works better, uh, and you're not sending data to places you don't mean to be, you're not doing things that you shouldn't be, etc. And that all of your tracking is working properly. If this was a paying client, I would actually have a whole worksheet that I would be going off of because as you can see, I forget things uh if I don't have you know the worksheet in the process set up.

Uh but I wanted to just get it done for myself because I've been letting it lapse. Um if you want help doing this and happy to have that conversation, just drop me a line and stuff that we do uh as as Trust Insights. But thanks for watching. Uh, hope you have a great rest of your Saturday night and uh and and uh stay safe and well. Take care.

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