What is Google Tag Manager (GTM)?

Google Tag Manager is a free web-based application that implements and manages tags on website and mobile app.

In this blog we talk in detail about what is Google Tag Manager and how to install and create your first tag in it.

Google Tag Manager account

A GTM account is different from a Google account. Google account is used to manage many Google products like Gmail, google docs, google drive, google maps, and so on.

For creating a GTM account, you just need a Google account. You can create multiple GTM accounts with one Google account.

Let’s have a look at the structure of GTM account.

Structure of GTM

A GTM account can container one or more sub accounts known as Tag Manager account. Similarly, a Tag Manager account can have one or more Containers and a Container can have one or more Workspaces.

To create a Tag Manager account, click on ‘Create Account’ button on the top-right corner as shown below.

Container

Every GTM account has one or more containers. A container represents the type of your digital property. Digital property can be Web, AMP, Android, or iOS. 

All tags, triggers, variables, and related configuration installed for a website or any other digital property is called a container. 

What are Tags, Triggers and variables?

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Every container has a unique ID as the one shown below. It is called a GTM code or a container code.

This container code is installed into the website to enable tracking.  

How to install a container code on your website?

How to create container?

Step 1: On the account page, click on three dot on the top-right corner > Click on ‘Create Container’

It will redirect to ‘Create Container’ page.

Step 2: Provide Container name > Select Target Platform > Click on ‘Create’

If you are a developer OR technical Person then visit this technical definition of container Google Developer - container

How does the container work?

A container can have three states that represent the three events that are pushed automatically:

• gtm.js:  Establishment of connection to Google Tag Manager.
• gtm.dom: The DOM structure of the web is represented on the browser.
• gtm.load: The window is complete and loaded.

Workspace

For a free GTM account, every container has three workspaces.

Workspace is like a draft of the container. Workspace is for managing tag changes in GTM.

A container can have multiple tag changes. Workspace is organized for teams; hence, each member can work on changes in a separate workspace. There are two types of workspace:

• Default workspace, and
• Custom workspace

The version control of the workspace enables revert changes to a previous workspace configuration and helps prevent teammates from publishing someone else's unfinished changes.

Versioning is created when you ‘Submit’ the container as shown in the image below.

A container would have one live version, one latest version, and other old versions. The published container shows the latest live version which is deployed at the website or asset.

The advantage of versioning the workspace is that users can always revert to previous working configurations.

Conclusion

Creating and managing containers and workspaces require technical expertise. This is why people with no-coding experience find Google Tag Manager very difficult.

In such a scenario, you should either rely on developers to track events on your website. Or a low-code GTM automation tool like Tagmate, which helps you set up events on your own. 

Tagmate comes with 40+ prebuilt templates that make event tracking easy and superfast. You just need to select from various templates like e-commerce, form submission, page views, and likes. Push it to GTM. And it’s done!

To find out more about how Tagmate works, visit the website or watch some how-to videos.

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