From Google, the Google Tag Manager is a tag management application that facilitates creating, embedding, and updating tags across websites and mobile apps, thus gaining the benefits of data standardization and speed of deployment. Google touts an agency friendly system with multiple user access, and tools to improve tags performance like debugging, and rules, macros or automated tag firing. The Google Tag Manager also integrates with Google product DoubleClick. Moreover, Google Tag Manager is…
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Pendo.io
Score 8.4 out of 10
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Pendo.io is a product engagement platform with features for in-app analytics, surveys and feedback, and guidance.
Firstly, using GTM doesn't mean you can't use these other products if you choose. GTM is free, so there is no real "cost" to using it. The other products are meant for a slightly less technical audience, and they tend to do a better job of hand holding. The advantage for tag …
I use Google Tag Manager (GTM) daily and create tags/triggers for all of our client's websites. It is easy to set up but for some of my tasks, the process does get repetitive so it'd be nice to have a default setting I can use when I have to create accounts, and then tweak/add things to them as needed. It is a great way to collect data and have code on the site without having to log into the site builder all the time. It makes it convenient to make edits or add code after our client's sites go live with us.
Pendo.io is useful in generating great dashboards that present user analytics in the best possible view that could be used for analysis & derive key insights on what could be done if there's a feature that's not being recognized by end users or if there are any pain points where users are struggling more around a workflow which is technically not that difficult. Pendo.io also can be used to create impactful guides where intercatoin of a user with the Guide can be created in less steps & have relevant information about that workflow that the user is completing. Pendo.io's resource center can act as a one stop hub to present any sidewide updates which could be information of Prod releases, New KB Articles, Register to any event, & much more. Segments can be created in as many variation as one can. In fact, Segments are the ruling property or feature that works so handy, which reduces a lot of iterative work.
Selecting elements on a site [object, class, cookie, etc] (to later fire an event, send some data, etc) is very easy with triggers. Want to add an event when someone clicks on a button? Super easy. It was many many DOM selectors and you can even add custom functions if you need to do something more specific
In general, firing events in different circumstances is very easy mixing triggers and tags. You can track almost any element of the DOM and do whatever you want with it.
Testing is a great functionality. Only you can see what's on the site and you can debug it easily by seeing which events or tags were triggered and all the DOM elements involved (and why they matched the trigger).
Working in environments (staging, production) and versioning is easy to do, deploying changes in 2 clicks.
There are several good integrations, but there can always be more. Native tracking for call tracking solutions, analytics providers, non-Google advertisers would be top of my list.
Documentation is just dreadful. Luckily there are some awesome folks out there doing crowdsourced tutorials (shout out to Simo Ahava) but by and large the Google Tag Manager instructions are worth what you pay for them.
Preview is problematic if the Pendo.io user doesn't have access to the target environment or application where the guide is going to display
It would be ideal to have a gallery of thumbnail images of previously used guides to select from, either to pull a screen capture or to use as a template. It's cumbersome to go to the guides, find the one you want, click on Preview, etc.
Google Tag Manager makes tracking traffic to our websites effortless, which enables our developers to focus on other tasks. Setting up a new instance takes only minutes and additional scripts can be added/modified without touching the source code of a site in production. This enables our marketing directors to coordinate tests and experiments with minimal effort.
We have had an excellent experience with Pendo. When we've had questions or concerns, Pendo is very quick to respond and communicate with us. We have experienced top-notch customer support and customer engagement. We have actually modeled some of our implementation and product processes after Pendo's examples.
No difficult obstacle to overcome but Google Tag Manager can still be difficult for many users to deploy. Sure the basic HTML script can be deployed quite easily, but when you start to require triggers, variables, etc, it can be a little daunting.
It is intuitive for core tasks like tracking feature usage, building Guides, and viewing dashboards. The interface is clean and well structured, making it easy for product managers and operational teams to get value quickly without heavy technical support. However, there is a noticeable learning curve when setting up advanced custom events, reports, or integrations, which can take some time and internal knowledge-sharing to master.
Every time I have logged into Pendo, the service has been available for me to use. The page has never been down when I am trying to get info from there.
GTM does not provide support. This is one of GTM's biggest issues but it's due to the level of customization for each website. If your team thinks they would heavily rely on the need for a support staff it is probably better to invest in a paid service with a team that can support your needs.
They've been great anytime that we have needed help with something. They also have some really great help articles. We're able to figure most things out through their articles, but when we've had to call in they've been very helpful and we haven't had any problems. I'd highly recommend working with them.
The training schedule was well thought out and tailored to meet our needs. Chantelle stayed with us through the whole implementation and made sure that we were good to go.
Planning and communication will help greatly with an in-house implementation. If there are large teams, try to limit the number of people involved to 1-2 developers (back-end dev may be necessary depending on your platform), one analytics marketer and one project manager.
We moved to GTM from a standard Google Analytics implementation. GTM is much more flexible and easier to make changes, especially as the changes relate to multiple sites and environments. While there is a learning curve when figuring out how to use GTM, I believe the change has been worth it because it helps us understand at a more fundamental level how our tracking works and gives us a lot more control over what we track and how.
I have just very superficial experience with Google Analytics but I do believe that Pendo.io is a much much better tool in pretty much all aspects of it. It has a ton more features and capabilities and even for the capabilities where there is overlap, Pendo seems to come out ahead easily. There are aspects that Pendo could improve for sure such as what metadata it captures from the users; an example of this is screen resolution which Google Analytics captures but Pendo does not.
GTM is very useful to determine if a particular element on the site is useful (i.e. is it being watched, is it being clicked, does it help customers navigate through more pages). As an SEO person, I can use this information to decide what to optimize for but also to track progress and see improvements in engagement.
With the use of Google Tag Manager, I was able to easily inject an A/B testing tool which lead to several improvements in lead generation.
Reducing development time with in-app guides and resource center, with product management being able to agilely create guides in real time, this could be as much as 1 full time developer in savings.
Reducing business time scoping "rock fetches" than are proven to be invaluable based on analytics, each time 1 single piece of analtical data saves around ~20 hours across multiple resources.
Increasing user satisfaction with in-app guides and resource center
Increasing usage of key features through targetted messaging, those key features either drive costs ou of our business or add value to customers business.
