Website tracking setup implementation basics

Published: 2022-12-20
Updated: null

Here’s a brief – and hopefully understandable – desciption of what a basic website tracking setup is made of.

This text if written for those with little previous knowledge of web analytics,

so here I’m not going into details about consent management, ecommerce tracking, dataLayer or other topics that might only interest other analysts.

Tag management

Having a tracking tag management system in place is not absolutely mandatory, but life is much harder without one. Therefore, this is the first thing I check when I begin with a new web analytics project.

A Tag manager is implemented to the website via a code snippet or two, after which tracking tags that send data to different analytics tools can be handled in the UI of the tag manager. This has at least the following benefits:

  • Makes it possible to control tracking scripts from one place, with an easy-to-use UI.
  • Detaches the web analyst from the website code (for the most part at least), so he can be kept away from breaking anything critical.
  • Easier to set tracking according to user consent.
  • Easier to transfer tracking setups to a new site (such as localised site versions, or when building a completely new site).
  • Frees the web developer from the mundane tasks requested by the web analyst.

In practice, we most often use Google Tag Manager (GTM). There are others around, but it’s hard to beat GTM in usability and compatibility.

Analytics platforms

The bread and butter of website analytics is the actual analytics platform; the tool that collects, stores, structures and displays the website usage data.

There are a few relevant options for the platform, but Google Analytics is the by far the most used, because

  • It’s free (there are paid options for very high-volume data needs)
  • It’s relatively easy to implement
  • It integrates easily with other Google tools (Google Ads and other advertising platforms, Search Console, Looker Studio).

Recently, there’s been an increasing amount of discussion about other options due to the EU-US data privacy hassle, and Piwik Pro and Matomo seem to be the most significant contenders.

If you’re worried about the privacy of your data or the legality of storing it, I can help you decide between these tools.

Implementing a basic setup of any analytics tool is pretty quick and easy, especially if GTM is installed, but there’s some configuration that you should be aware of to get your data rolling in properly. And by properly I mean that the data is right, it’s collected and stored according to user consent, and that it is organised systematically so that it’s easily usable for analysis.

Especially in the new version of Google Analytics (GA4), the new flexible event-based data model requires some thought to have the data organised systematically

Other tracking scripts

Along with the main analytics platform, many sites use other tracking tools or need to send the data to other platforms for analysis or marketing purposes. All these tools and platforms require their own implementations (and tags in GTM that fire with the right user consent):

  • Heatmap collectors and other website behaviour analytics tools
  • Ad platform tracking scripts (Meta/Facebook tracking, Google Ads, LinkedIn etc)
  • CRM tools
  • Website testing/optimisation tools

Setup project workflow

All (well, most) websites are unique, and so are the needs for analytics. The decisions and tasks listed above are just a broad framework, and the actual implementation project is planned case-by-case.

If you wish to know what your site tracking setup would need, get in contact and I’ll draw you a more specific tracking plan.