Today’s custom template ifs for: BrainSINS , a personalization platform based in Spain.
Just import the template into your container and set the Token that you’ll find in your user corner.
Download: https://github.com/thyngster/gtmtemplates/tree/master/BrainSINS
Today I’m releasing a small Custom Template for Google Tag Manager that will take care of notifying the dataLayer about if Google Analytics is currently being blocked by the browser.
Some days ago, I published the following tweet, to get some user’s feedback on Twitter. The approach not really bad, but having to deal with code is not the best solution for most people.
I remember someone asking how to detect if GA was being blocked by user’s browser some weeks ago ( can’t remember who was, I’m sorry ), what about this approach using feach API?. anyone can bring up any handicaps about doing it this way? Gist > https://t.co/jLBRoBOVkM pic.twitter.com/zVvqMDJxGw
— David Vallejo (@thyng) July 8, 2019
I decided today to build a quick Custom Template to take care of checking if Google Analytics is being blocked. We’ll simply using the sendPixel library from Custom Templates. If you didn’t know if sendPixel library allows you to fire an onSuccess or onFailure callback functions.
Then based on these callbacks the template will be push the data accordinlty to the dataLayer. And from there you may do whatever your want, like notifying an external application with an event, or showing the user any alerts ( this was just a dummy idea, please don’t annoy the users on this ).
sendPixel(url, onSuccess, onFailure)The Custom Template has some configurations available to fine-tune que current behaviour of the tracking.
If you’re insterested on trying it, you can DOWNLOAD it from my github repo:
https://github.com/thyngster/gtmtemplates/tree/master/Google%20Analytics%20Block%20Checker
About one month ago I started to work on a Google Tag Manager Custom Template for Yandex Metrica, I must say it was my first contact with it apart from installing the default snippet some years ago on this same blog.
In order to ease my testings for the template I ended building a Browser Extension which I’m releasing today for Chrome, Firefox and Opera.
I tried to cover all the differents hits that Yandex may send, but of course I may be missing some of them ( more likely to be on the beta JS library ). The extension currently support the following hit types:
It may happen that the extension is not able to detect the hit data type, and it will be shown as undetected row:
Don’t worry about this kind of rows in the reports they will be gone gradually as long I continue learning about Yandex Metrica Protocol and API.
I’d define the current extension status somewhere between Alpha and Beta. So have in mind that you may find bugs while using it in your sites. Please don’t hesitate to contact me so that way I can improve the extension functionality. 🙂
CHROME WEB STORE ( INSTALL LINK ) : https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/yandex-metrica-debugger/ehppjfimmbekmmponndiiiofmmdmgjlp
Algolia is a company that offers a Search_as_a_service tools. They offer a Real Time services, which can be improved by sending events about users interactions over the products your site like add to carts, adds to wishlists, clicks after search, filters use, or conversion.
For this task they offer a the Search Insights JS library.
This library currently allows to track 3 main types of events:
– Clicks (clickedObjectIDsAfterSearch , clickedObjectIDs, clickedFilters)
– Conversions (convertedObjectIDsAfterSearch, convertedObjectIDs, convertedFilters)
– Views (viewedFilters, viewedObjectIDs)
From now on you can setup your Algolia’s Search Insights, via Google Tag manager using a Custom Template.
At this first Release the following functionality is implemented on the Custom Templates
Download: https://github.com/thyngster/gtmtemplates/tree/master/Algolia%20Search%20Insights
Barilliance, is a eCommerce personalization tools for eCommerce including cart abandonment/retargeting emails and personalized product recommendations.
The tag setup is pretty easy, just add your account id into the unique available place in the tag configuration 🙂
Where can I download the custom template
Download: https://github.com/thyngster/gtmtemplates/tree/master/Barilliance
The following custom template for Google Tag Manager, will help adding Sleeknote to your sites.
Sleeknote is a customer engagement tool, mostly focused on Ecommerce Websites.
The setup is pretty simple, just add your account ID within the Account ID textbox in the tag.
Download: https://github.com/thyngster/gtmtemplates/tree/master/Sleeknote
It’s been a while since my last post ( Shame on me!) , but the new Custom Templates feature has been a great addition to Google Tag Manager the last week.
If you don’t know what the Custom Templates are, please do yourself a favor and read Simo Ahava’s great guide on them.
I’ve been playing the last days with this new feature, trying to build a more complex template, so I decided to try to implement a full Yandex Metrica Custom Template for Google Tag Manager.
What’s supported:
Method ( track types )
Tracking features supported on the tracker:
I’ve included some advanced features ( I’m new to Yandex Metrica, so I had no time to properly test them yet )
Upcoming features
You can get the template from the following URL: https://github.com/thyngster/gtmtemplates/tree/master/Yandex%20Metrica
Screenshots
Waiting for your feedback and request 🙂
Today is a big day!, I finally managed to put some of my internal debugging snippets within a single Chrome Extension and I’ve just released it on the Chrome Webstore so everyone can try and use it.
To install it you will need to visit the extension page on the Google Chrome Webstore, you can there just clicking on the screenshot below:
NOTE: The first time you open the extension panel. It may be show an empty report, just click F5 to start seeing data. This will be fixed on next release.
The extension focuses on debugging Google Tag Manager implementations ( most information reported is related to dataLayer information ), and it does also offer some information about Google Analytics hits being sent from the current loaded page ( ok folks: only Universal Analytics is supported, if you’re using the legacy GA library (ga.js) please give your implementation/client a bit of love and upgrade to Universal Analytics ).
The current extension release provides the following information:
Along with the pieces on info abouve the following features are available:
The current GTM Debug Extension is somewhere between Alpha and Beta stages, so don’t be so hard with it. I’m already aware of it having some weird behaviour over some websites and it would be really helpful if you could take 5 minutes to report these bugs to me. I’ve opened a Google Group in order to be able to get feedback and bugs reports. You can find it on the following link: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/gtm-debugger-extension
If you are working on a client website and want to expose the website, you can reach me through twitter or use this website’s contact form :).
Looking forward for your comments in order to improve the extension! 🙂
Install Extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gtm-debug/ilnpmccnfdjdjjikgkefkcegefikecdc
I’m finding a lot of people lately complaining about their Facebook Pixels throwing an infamous “duplicate pixel” error:
fbevents.js:9 Facebook Pixel Error: Duplicate Pixel ID: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXThis error is thrown because we’re trying to initialize a pixel ID twice and therefore FB complains about it. And nope you are not alone 🙂
For example you may have a FB pixels that fires on the page load like this:
fbq('track', "PageView");And then you may have another Add To Cart event like this:
fbq('track', 'AddToCart'
, {
brand: 'Apple',
sku: 'MN4L2LL',
content_ids: 'JET BLACK',
content_name: 'Iphone 7 Plus',
content_type: 'product',
value: '1130.33',
currency: 'EUR'
});
fbq('init', 'MY_FB_PIXEL_ID');
fbq('track', 'AddToCart'
, {
brand: 'Apple',
sku: 'MN4L2LL',
content_ids: 'JET BLACK',
content_name: 'Iphone 7 Plus',
content_type: 'product',
value: '1130.33',
currency: 'EUR'
});
The code above will show that ugly error into your browser console, despite you didn’t do anything really bad at all. ( I don’t really get why the FBEvents.js doesn’t just silently ignore the init if the pixel Id is already initialized :X )
This said, let’s explain how Facebook Pixel works:
As you can see each ‘init‘ method call, puts that pixel id into an internal array. And then each track call will loop through that array firing a hit for each already “initialized pixel id” on it.
Yep, this means that after a pixel has been initialized any call to the “track” or “trackCustom” method will forcedly be sent for all current initialized pixels !! Meaning that you won’t be able to control which pixels should be sending the current action. I can’t really understand why each pixel doesn’t own their own namespace to have a better control.
Now let’s see which would be the best way to setup our Facebook Pixels using Google Tag Manager.
Another way of fixing this error is checking if the current pixel we’re using is already initialized before calling the “init” method. As usual some coding may help us, we can check it using the following JS snippet:
if (window.fbq.__fbeventsModules.fbevents().getState().pixels.map(function(pixel) {
return pixel.id;
}).indexOf('MY_FB_PIXEL_ID') == -1) { // PIXEL NOT INITIALIZED. DO YOUR STUFF }I know … It’s been a while since my last post, but I’ve been saving myself for something big. Over the last months I had the chance to run a big migration from Google Tag Manager over Tealium that had taken most of my time.
Along with this extension release I want to say that I might start a new series of blog posts related to Tealium, based on my experience with this Tag Manager System.
One of the biggest problems I had when working with Tealium, is that debugging it was some kind difficult, specifically when talking about the utag.link calls . So I coded a extension for Chrome that was throwing all the debug info I needed to the browser console in order to make my daily work easier.
This past week I decided that I was going to release it, since I think it could be useful for some other people. So I spent the last week building a new UI for the Tealium Debugger instead of having to swin around all that flood of console debug output.
You’ll be able to easily check the values types. Inclusing the arrays values preview when hovering them ( there’s no need to expand them to view what data they hold)
The extension will kept the previous visited pages data in place
You can easily see what account, profile and enviroment had been loaded for the current page. And of course the publication time for the current profile.
You will be able to check which assets/tags had been loaded through tealium for each visited page. This feature is currently in Beta, and it’s likely going to be improved in a future.
Please have in mind this is my very first Chrome Extension and that it may be buggy or it may not be working fine for some websites. If it’s not working for your site please let me know so I can take a look to it. And of course any feedback will be gratefully welcomed.
Tealium Debugger Extension: INSTALL IT