Tanner Larsson  0:07  

What’s up everybody? Tanner Larsson here and welcome back to The Optimized Ecommerce podcast. I am your host. And today I’m joined by a repeat guest and longtime member of the BGS staff, Aleksander Nikoloski. So Alex has been with us almost since the beginning, and we’re going to talk about a very data heavy topic, which is GTM, Google Tag Manager. But the reason Aleks is on here to talk about it is because he’s in an unusual situation. And not only does he use GTM, as a revenue optimization expert to extract data and optimize stores. But we recently went through and decided we needed to figure out a way to teach GTM to our Ecom Insider members, because Google’s own training on it, it’s terrible. And there’s really no other training on it for Ecom stores or anything that’s good. And we’re not trying to brag, but there really isn’t anything out there, there’s just a lack of it. So we decided that we were going to create that internally through BGS. And Aleks got the dubious honor of being picked to dive in and create that training. So we’re going to kind of talk back and forth about what he learned as he actually had to create the training because what we did learn was in a lot of topics, we can teach it at a very high level. But with GTM, Alex couldn’t teach it until he first went through and did it at a very, very, very detailed level, the same level that our Google Analytics engineers have to do it. Now our engineers don’t have the capacity to teach or the ability to teach as Aleks does. So he kind of had to bridge the gap between the super techie world and the end-user store world and learn how to do this. So it’s definitely changed his perspective. And we’ve learned a lot from just him going through it as well. And I wanted to bring him on the podcast today to just talk about that experience. Talk about GTM. And I think this will be a really eye opening thing for you guys, especially if you have GTM, but you really don’t use it or don’t really know what it is, or if you’ve been wondering why you should or shouldn’t use GTM. And then also just what it all entails because it’s quite a bit. So Alex, thanks for being here today.

 

Aleksander Nikoloski  2:15  

Thanks for the intro Tanner, as always. 

 

Tanner Larsson  2:18  

Yeah. So Aleks, before we talk about what you’ve learned and everything, why don’t you just kind of give us a high-level overview for people who don’t know what GTM is?

 

Aleksander Nikoloski  2:30  

Yeah, sure. So GTM or Google Tag Manager is basically a platform created by Google, it’s a free management tag, basically, that’s all that it is. And it’s not only for Google Analytics, it can be used for all of your other tracking scripts on your website, like Facebook pixels, Pinterest pixels, retargeting pixels, and all of that stuff. And it’s designed to simplify the data collection process. We’re talking about ecommerce here. So we’re going to focus mainly on that. So it makes it much easier to collect data from your website on how people are interacting with your website. Because Google Analytics, while it’s great, it’s amazing at storing data and is not really that great at collecting data. And that’s why Google had to create Google Tag Manager so that we can bridge that gap because it’s a lot more robust. And it allows you to basically tag every single element on your website, no matter where they click on your website, your visitors, if it’s a clickable element, we can tag it with Google Tag Manager and pass that data on to Google Analytics and see what happens with your user behavior once they click on those elements. Does that make sense?

 

Tanner Larsson  3:48  

Absolutely. Yeah. So Google Tag Manager works hand in hand with Google Analytics. But Google Tag Manager by itself isn’t going to be that powerful to you unless you have a tool that can read it, right?

 

Aleksander Nikoloski  4:01  

Yeah, sure. Because Google Tag Manager is the collector of data. Google Analytics is the store of data. And Google themselves actually created the Google Data Studio, which is all about reporting data. So again, GTM collects it, Google Analytics stores it and Google Data Studio reports it in a very easy to consume manner. I mean, you can still use GA for reporting. It’s great at it too. But it’s much easier for somebody that’s not a tech person to read the data from Google Data Studio.

 

Tanner Larsson  4:35  

Yep. And guys, one of the examples that we always give when we’re talking about GA and GTM from the stage at one of our events or something to kind of solidify people is that Google Analytics is your AM FM radio. It gives you really basic data, a few basic stations, you can listen to music, but when you add in Google tag manager now you’ve got XM Satellite Radio, Sirius satellite radio, multi-disc CD changer, USB and port. All that stuff. So it gives you all that extra data and all that extra poof that you wouldn’t have otherwise. And it’s also not the most user-friendly thing to figure out, is it?

 

Aleksander Nikoloski  5:13  

Yeah, it’s definitely. It’s definitely complicated. So you gave a little bit of a backstory on how we went about doing this. In all honesty, GTM is probably the most complicated thing that I’ve done in recent years. And the thing that confused me the most, I’m all about learning on a daily basis and improving that Kaizen lifestyle. And I always do that, but this was on the next level. And when our Google Analytics engineer recorded this course, for me to re-record it for our students, to bridge that gap. I was lost, I had no idea what he was talking about. Even though I knew how to do this, I mean, how to read Google Analytics data for years now, as a revenue optimization expert. I had no idea how to actually tag a website with Google Tag Manager because it was not in my lane. I’m a Revenue optimization expert. And I was sticking to that lane because we have people that do that. And so when I watched these videos, for the first time, I was like, I have no clue what’s going on here. I have no idea. And as our Google Analytics engineer thought he was talking pretty basic to me, but it was way over my head right? At that moment, I was like, I have to understand this at an expert level before I can teach it to somebody else. And that’s what I did for like, I believe it was like six straight weeks or eight straight weeks of getting on calls with him and tagging a website practicing for three or five hours a day. And the end result is pretty, pretty good. I gotta say, and it’s a lot more complicated than I thought it was. I mean, like everything else. It’s easy once you get it, right. But until you get to that point, it’s very complicated, unless you have somebody to teach it to you at a bare bones beginner level, because this is what this course is about. It’s about teaching business owners how to tag their website, not GTM experts. Most of the courses out there are tailored to GTM experts only, they’re very high level, this one speaks at the business owner level that probably never even logged into their GTM account before, which is what I did. I never logged in to GTM. Before this.

 

Tanner Larsson  7:36  

So you mentioned that most of these courses are designed for GTM experts. After going through it, I know, we were kind of surprised. But what do you think of Google’s own training on GA and GTM?

 

Aleksander Nikoloski  7:48  

I was excited to go through it. And I was pretty disappointed because I got that certification within 30 minutes, probably. And there was virtually nothing on it about ecommerce. It was an example from some booking websites. And they didn’t even show you how to actually go and create the triggers and the tags and pass that data on to Google analytics. It was just some random theory example. And I believe the video was from 2015 or 16. So Google Analytics looks nothing like that today. It looks pretty funny.

 

Tanner Larsson  8:24  

So guys, realistically, not realistically. But just as a caveat, we’re not even pitching you our GTM course, like it’s not even for sale. It’s only available to our Ecom Insider Members but what we really wanted to talk about was how important you know GA and GTM is and that there’s a deeper level understanding now from our RO side of what it looks like when a store owner goes into their GA because it’s different when I go into GA or Aleks goes into GA because we have an entire GA team that does all this behind the scenes ninja stuff. And we get the results of that. But the average store owner, number one doesn’t even know that they might need it. But also how do they do it? So Aleks, before we get into more of that part, we talked about what GTM is, but why do you need GTM and why is it so powerful for Ecommerce?

 

Aleksander Nikoloski  9:20  

Yeah, so GTM there are three reasons if I can number them. So number one, as I said, is very robust. And it’s amazing collecting data, everything that can be clicked on your website, we can drop a little tag on it. And when somebody clicks on it GTM passes data to Google Analytics saying, hey, this person clicked on this element. That’s the main overarching reason there are  two deeper ones. The number one is GTM allows you to consolidate all of your tracking pixels on your websites, speeding it up into the process. What I mean by that is, you know how you have, Facebook pixel on your website, Pinterest pixel, retargeting pixel, all of these different pixels from all of these different platforms that you’re running ads to. When you have all of those just copied and pasted in your store’s code, they’re all loading synchronously. Did I say that word correctly? Synchronously, meaning at the same time. And that can cause one script to block another and it can prevent elements from rendering on your website. Basically, in layman’s terms, it slows down your website when all of those scripts are loading together at the same time. When you consolidate all of them on GTM. Only the GTM script loads now you only have one tracking script and script. And they’re kind of piggybacking on that GTM script. And they’re loading when they need to. Meaning asynchronously they’re not loading at the same time, they’re loading asynchronously and that effectively speeds up your website, which is crucial, a site speed is crucial. So that’s the number one reason there or I guess number two. And on top of speeding up your website GTM makes it a lot easier to manage all of these tracking pixels like when they’re not on GTM, you will keep adding these pixels one after another. Let’s say you’re trying an ad roll, and then you’re trying another different retargeting platform. And most people just add all of these tracking pixels in their code, and they forget to remove them. And over time, you may have dozens, if not hundreds, of tracking pixels. And we know what happens after, right? Your website slows down completely. And on top of other reasons, like apps and a lot of other stuff, this is how your website gets slowed down and bugs happen and all of that stuff. So it’s very hard to maintain and clean when these scripts are not in your Google Tag Manager. And also, it’s much easier to manage with Google Tag Manager because you see them all on one screen. And with a click of a button, you can activate them, disable, and delete them without needing to be a developer. Versus on the other hand, if you don’t have them, then you will need to search for them. Basically, you need to hire a developer every time you need to remove a script from a website unless you know how to do that yourself. And then yet another reason is, it is very easy to share access with third parties like ad agencies and stuff like that share access to these pixels through GTM. And appropriate access, only read access, for example, without needing to give them edit access to your store’s code, which is something that you don’t want to get into practice off. You don’t want to give edit access to your store’s code to anybody if you can avoid it. And GTM helps you do that also with a click of a button. That’s the main second reason, I guess it consolidates all of these pixels, and makes it very easy to manage them and share access with them. And number two reason for this is GTM simplifies the tagging of your website, which is what we’re talking about today, tagging every single element of your website, which also speeds it up in the process. Without GTM, you could potentially tag every element of your website with Google Analytics. But you will need to drop a custom like five line code on every single element on your website in the code itself. So you have to do this manually for every element and copy that code and paste it in your website’s code.

 

Aleksander Nikoloski  13:55  

And this is also as you can see, very hard to maintain. If you do this for every single element like 50 or 100 elements, depending on how many clickable elements you have on your website, it’s very hard to do. First, it’s a very arduous, very time consuming process, the margin for error is super high. And it’s very hard to maintain. Like, if you put a new banner on your website, let’s say on the homepage, and you put this tracking code manually, and then you remove that banner, that tracking code will stay there. And the same thing is with the tracking script. The more you do this, the more you bloat your code with leftover unnecessary code, and that slows down your website even more and eventually causes bugs and all kinds of issues. And on the other hand, what GTM does is you don’t need to do anything manually you just copy your GTM tracking script and paste it on every page on your website, which is super easy by the way. You do it in two minutes, and then GTM automatically tracks every single click on your website and passes that data to Google Analytics, you will just need to manually create the tags in Google Tag Manager that are pulling that data from the data layer. I don’t want to get too technical here. But it’s a very simple process of just creating these tags that pass the data from GTM to Google Analytics, but there’s no coding involved. You don’t need to be a developer. Okay, so to summarize two reasons, it allows you to consolidate all of your tracking pixels and speeds up your website in the process, and it simplifies the tagging on your website, also speeding it up in the process.

 

Tanner Larsson  15:38  

How does the tagging impact your ability to optimize?

 

Aleksander Nikoloski  15:43  

It’s everything really because that’s how we see what happens when people go through your store’s shopping journey only when you tag every single element in your store. Can you see what actually happens when somebody interacts with the navigation, for example, or with a certain video, let’s say you have a video on your product page, and somewhere near the bottom of the page, and you see that when people watch that video with the help of Google Tag Manager, they convert much higher than people that don’t watch that video, well, then it would be a smart idea to move that video up the product page higher so more people see it hence more people watch it, hence they convert higher. That’s just one simple example.

 

Tanner Larsson  16:24  

Gotcha. So like we already knew but just for everybody who’s not sure, it’s absolutely critical for your ability to optimize. And when we talk about it, data is the key. That’s how we get the detailed data that allows us to do the magic on the stores that we can do. But Aleks, the other thing I wanted to have you touch on is after going through this, I mean, obviously, you have access to a full GA team that can do all this for you, which makes it nice. And you’ve also been a store owner before you came to work with BGS. So putting your store owner hat on and after having gone through this. Do you think that this is something that a store owner should learn how to do?

 

Aleksander Nikoloski  17:08  

In all honesty, as you said, I’ve been a store owner. I myself had multiple stores in the past. Even though I know how to do this, I wouldn’t do it myself, because as a store owner, not the best use of your time for you to do the heavy lifting of learning how to do this, and actually doing it yourself. You can if you want if you have a lot of free time on your hands. But I would doubt that you have that much time on your hands to actually do this. Because it’s a lot I believe this course specifically will be over 15 hours of video material like intense technical stuff. And I do not recommend that you do this. There are a lot of different activities that you can do in your store that move the needle, then learn how to tag your website. But again, if that’s what you want to do, this is why we created this course after all.

 

Tanner Larsson  18:04  

Absolutely. And guys, I’m not trying to lead you into one thing or the other. But I wanted you to hear from someone else besides because I also believe that even before Aleks went through this, I knew it was a technical topic. And as a store owner, you already have 10,000 other things that you have to do on a daily basis to run and grow your store. The data is something you absolutely need. But it’s also not something that is the best use of your time to set up, to collect the data. You want to interpret the data and use the data. But the setup and the technical side, just like learning how to do development and coding in Shopify or whatever is not your best use, you’re better off just hiring somebody and hiring somebody good. But Aleks, the other piece I want you to touch on and explain a little bit is if you do it yourself, and you set your tags wrong, what happens?

 

Aleksander Nikoloski  18:53  

You will basically collect wrong data, you will think you’re correcting something accurately, but it will just be inaccurate data, it’s like garbage in garbage out, basically.

 

Tanner Larsson  19:01  

Because Google won’t tell you that the data is incorrect because it thinks that you set it up the way you want it to be, correct?

 

Aleksander Nikoloski  19:01  

Yep. I mean, Google will send you something but the question is, WHAT. And only if you know how to do it right. Will you know if it’s accurate or not?

 

Tanner Larsson  19:17  

And this is something that we face with all of our amplified clients, our EI members, like we’ve never had a store come to us, even the ones that say, oh, man, our data is perfect. We’ve never had a store come to us that has not had at least some errors in their data. And they were making decisions on stuff that they thought was completely accurate. And it wasn’t. So that’s why it’s worth hiring a professional, hiring someone who’s really good at it. And guys, we do this as a service, of course, you can reach out to BGS and we can help you with that if that’s something that you want, but we’re not the only ones that can do it. I’m not saying we’re the only people on the planet who can do GA or GTM but I will tell you there’s a lot more for lack of a better term half-assed GA experts out there than are good ones. And we’ve had several of our members who come to us after going to a different, quote-unquote expert, paying lots and lots of money and finding out that their data is still corrupt and having to have us come in and fix it completely. So, something to consider when you’re doing it. But I wanted you guys to hear it from Aleks and hear the kind of the complexity and a deep dive of it, but also the importance because it is critical. Aleks, any last thoughts you want to throw out there on GTM? Or what you’ve learned or any takeaways that you want to share?

 

Aleksander Nikoloski  20:33  

Yeah, I mean, it definitely is critical. Again, as you said, we cannot do what we do without Google Tag Manager, you can get some level of data with Google Analytics. It’s all buddy, can I get super granular with it? This is like the pro level of data gathering. And yeah, you can do it yourself if you want to. But even for a pro that’s been doing this for years, for example, our GA packaged our service, it takes our engineers at least eight to 10 hours to fully tag a website. And if you want to learn this yourself, I mean, it took me like six to eight weeks doing it three to five hours every day. So if you have that much time, go for it. But if not, hire somebody and get this done right. And again, we’re not selling this course as Tanner said, but this is probably the best GTM course in the industry for business owners. There is good stuff out there for experts. But for business owners, I haven’t seen anything else.

 

Tanner Larsson  21:33  

Absolutely. Well, guys, that’s all we got for you. Today, I wanted to just talk to you about GTM. If you haven’t got into GTM, and you’re still wondering more about it, I highly recommend you do a little bit of reading on it, feel free to reach out to our team, you can talk to one of our RO experts, and they can kind of help you walk through where it’s at. Or another thing you could do is if you’ve already got GA and GTM set up, we actually do an audit where we can just audit your store, it’s not very expensive. We can audit it and we can give you a report that will tell you, hey, here’s where your data is good, here’s where it’s bad, here’s what’s missing, here’s what needs to be fixed. So you can actually get a good view and feel because otherwise, you’re just trusting what was done for you. And we do like to trust but we prefer to trust and verify at the same time, right? So if you need that, feel free to reach out to BGS. We can help you with that. But other than that, guys, we will see you in the next episode. Thanks for joining us and have a great day. See ya!