How to set up Google Tag Manager

This article will walk you through how to set up Google Tag Manager (GTM) and link it to your website and Ticketsolve. If you’ve never used or heard of GTM before, you may want to read Google’s own overview here along with their article on the different GTM components here. 

Before You Start 

What is it?

GTM is basically a solution provided by Google for free that allows you to add tags and triggers to your website. By using GTM you will no longer need to ask us or your web developer to add tags such as conversion pixels or remarketing pixels onto the website. Ticketsolve uses GTM to track all activity on your website through all the different Google Analytics tags we have added into the GTM container. 

Why should you use it?

We understand how busy you are and that you want things done quickly. By using GTM you are in control of adding your bits of code to the website. You can also choose what pages the tags fire on and in what order for example, if you wanted to add a facebook pixel onto a specific page, you can do that easily by using URL based rules. There are also some more benefits that come from using GTM:

1. Effortless tracking code management: With GTM, you can add, update, and manage all your website tracking codes from one place, eliminating the need to tinker with your website's code.
2. Increased flexibility: GTM works with any website platform, so whether you're using Google Analytics, AdWords, or other tracking tools, it's a breeze to add and update codes.
3. Richer data collection: GTM is not limited to tracking pageviews, you can also use it to track button clicks, form submissions, and other interactions on your website.
4. Improved accuracy: GTM makes it easy to ensure that your tracking codes are installed correctly, which means you can trust the data you're collecting.
5. Better collaboration: With GTM, multiple team members can access and make changes to your tracking codes, so you can work more efficiently together.

The best bit!

Ticketsolve has done all the heavy lifting for you. We have set up all the tags and triggers that you need to make a start with GTM and tracking. We’ve added all the Google Analytics tracking tags as well as the base Facebook pixel and conversion pixel. As well as the tags, we’ve also created specific triggers for you so that you can fire any new tags on specific actions such as add to cart, checkout form and purchase. 

GTM Setup

IMPORTANT

Our Google Tag Manager (GTM) container is optimally configured for integration with Ticketsolve pages. It can also be utilised on your own websites. However, to ensure seamless functionality, you may need to add an additional GA4 Configuration tag (for tracking page views) on your website. This tag would operate in conjunction with any cookie consent manager you may have on your website and should be prevented from firing on the ticketsolve.com domain to avoid double-counting and not following the user's cookie preferences. For more information on this, please take a look at our help article here.

Step 1 - Create a GTM Account 

Go to http://www.google.co.uk/tagmanager and either login (if you have a Google account) or sign up. Click in Create Account and complete the following steps:

Account Setup

• Account Name - add in your organisation name 
• Country - Select the country that your organisation resides
• You can share data with Google if you wish by ticking the share data anonymously with Google and other

Container Setup

• Container name - add in your main website URL e.g www.mytheatre.com
• Target platform - Select Web, as we will be adding GTM only to your website in this instance 
• Click Create 
• Agree to the terms and conditions

Step 2 - Uploading Ticketsolve’s GTM Container 

Luckily, our development team have kindly provided us with a JSON file that contains all the tags and triggers that you need to get the most out of the new Google Analytics tracking.  Follow the steps below (or you can download the correct file at the bottom of this article):

• Go into your container
• Click on Admin in the top menu
• In the container column, click on Import Container
• Choose the container file that can be found at the bottom of this article or click here
• The workspace is Existing and choose Default Workspace
• Import option - if your GTM container is brand new, you can choose Overwrite, but if you already had GTM set up previously and you don’t want to lose the original tags, you can choose Merge and then overwrite any conflicting tags.
• Click on Confirm

Step 3 - Adding Your GA4 IDs (can be done later if you have not set up GA4 yet)

The measurement ID can be found in the admin section within Google Analytics 4. Follow the steps below to add your unique tracking ID.

In Google Analytics 4:

• Go to the Admin section
• Click on ‘Data Streams’ in the right-hand menu
• Click on the data stream for your website
• Copy the measurement ID (it will start with ‘G-’)

Go to your Google Tag Manager container:

• Click on ‘Variables’ in the left-hand menu
• Scroll down until you find ‘GA4 Configuration Tag’
• Add your measurement ID in the box as shown below
• Click ‘Save’

Step 5 - Facebook Pixel (not essential)

Some of you may already have Facebook set up and want to add your pixel to your website. Find your pixel ID within your Facebook account and follow the below steps:

• In the variables menu 
• Click on Facebook Pixel ID
• Add in your Facebook Pixel ID to the value field
• Click Save 

Step 6 - Non Iframe or Iframe 

As some of you maybe using iframes on your website, you need to tell GTM about it. Just follow the steps below:

• Go to variables
• Click on iframed
• In the value type in 'no' for non iframe accounts and 'yes' for iframe accounts

Step 7 - Add GTM to Ticketsolve 

You now need to add GTM to Ticketsolve so that the container is in place on the website to start tracking. To add GTM to Ticketsolve follow the steps below:

• Copy your GTM ID, which can be found towards the top of your container screen. Your ID will include the letters GTM followed by the ID number e.g. GTM-12345
• Open your Ticketsolve account 
• Go to Settings
• General Settings
• Type in GTM
• Open the setting - Gtm container id
• Type in your GTM ID but make sure there are no blank spaces before and after the ID
• Click Update 

Top Tip

If you have multiple subdomains and want to track each one separately using a different Google Analytics tracking ID’s. Add the container ID into the subdomain settings.

Step 8 - Publish the Container 

The next step is to publish the container so that all of the tags and triggers can start to work on your pages. Follow the steps below:

• Click the Submit button which can be found in the top right hand side of the GTM dashboard
• You can add any notes in here if you want to track all the changes you add to GTM, your can skip past this by clicking Publish in the top right hand corner
• Click continue again
• Your container is now live 

Note

you can test your GTM set up to make sure that it’s all working as it should by clicking on the Preview button next to Submit. More details on how you preview GTM can be found here

Step 9 - Add GTM onto Your Own Website 

The steps above only relates to adding GTM onto the Ticketsolve side of your website. If you would like to track your customers on your website too, you will need to either ask you web people to add some code to your website, or you can do it yourself in your CMS. 

Go to the workspace in the GTM account and click on the container ID, which will start with GTM-followed by numbers and letters. This will open a pop up window with some code. Copy the code from the top box and ask whoever looks after your site to add the following code to every page of your website, as high in the head as possible.

Google Analytics 4 

Now that you have set up GTM, you can now integrate GA4 with Ticketsolve. We've created an article here that takes you through the set up and changes that need to be made with GA4 for the integration to work seamlessly. 

More than Just Analytics

Now that GTM has been set up on your Ticketsolve pages you can reap the benefits of this integration. Please see below some of the cool things that you can do using GTM:

• Add remarketing pixels so that you can target all your website visitors with Facebook, Twitter and Google ads
• Add conversion pixels so that you can track conversions from other social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter
• Add Mailchimp goal tracking allowing you to utilise the automation feature within Mailchimp
• Create specific goals or events such as tracking if a customer has clicked on a specific part of the page

As you can see, the possibilities are endless. If you have any problems with the set up, please get in touch with support and they will be more than happy to help. Happy tagging.

Remember

This guide is only for Ticketsolve pages. If you would like to set up GTM on your side of the website, you will have to insert some code into your CMS.