Google Tag Manager vs. WalkMe

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.

Incentivized

• New system implementation - if you're switching or upgrading systems, you can ease users through the transition by providing in-system contextual guidance, extra tips, and automating clicks they don't need to worry about.
• Data integrity - if you have users making mistakes in the system, you can add validation with WalkMe without the need for developer time and reduce those errors and upstream problems, and related costs
• Reducing support tickets - if you have support tickets coming through about how to do tasks in a system, you can reduce the time and cost of your support staff answering these tickets by addressing the queries with WalkMe content
• Change management - ease users through change with guidance and provide in-system surveys
• Onboarding - bring new users quickly up to speed with onboarding tasks
• Automation - automate your regular processes and cut system time, freeing users up for more important tasks
• Process/system analysis - use the analytics to track where users are dropping off in processes and making errors and address these with WalkMe content
• User experience - make your system more user friendly

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Ease of use and getting up-to-speed in a few days only. WalkMe can be used by new users easily and quickly, yet provides a many advance features for power users to keep exploring and creating innovative solutions--there are always some things that you have not used earlier
• Great analytics on our platform, usage and adoption by users, and surveys
• Very friendly community of users who help each other all the time and structured upskilling programs, weekly tips keep the learning going

• 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.

Incentivized

• Firefox plugin: The only time I use Firefox is when building a walk-thru. I would like to be able to use Chrome to build the walk-thrus.
• Logic: Walk-thrus, Launchers, Shoutouts and walk-thru steps use different logic. I can't always fire something based on a click or URL when sometimes I would like to.
• Design: You can use CSS to customize the look of your walk-thrus, but there isn't a way to remove the sidebar color of the walk-thrus.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

WalkMe has done a great job of making their tool easy to use. However because it is a Firefox plugin it causes me to need another browser and sacrifice the left 2 - 3 inches of my display, when working on a laptop this makes it a bit painful. Also when publishing you can organize your list of walk-thrus, the window size is small and limited to the constraints of the WalkMe tool.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

The WalkMe Support Team was phenomenal. My support rep made a genuine effort to ensure my success with using the WalkMe Software. She was kind, patient, and very knowledgeable on the software. If there was a question she did not know the answer too, she would find the answer and get back to me as soon as possible

Incentivized

I thought there was a little bit too much emphasis on AdWords stuff, not enough on the generic application of GTM.

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

My understanding is that WalkMe was selected based on its capability to support our requirements for our enterprise software. We wanted a product that allows us to provide help at the point of need, provide as little or as much help to guide the user to successfully use the product, and a product that is scalable and can support our growing capabilities.

• 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.

Incentivized

• With a promise to help onboard, we found that as people interacted with the walk throughs they didn't get any significant value. Self-service wasn't improved, in fact, we got more complaints from the walk throughs than help from them.
• NPS surveys were a nightmare to try and integrate with our CRM so we could action the results. Lost time and energy without much support from the WalkMe team
• No improvement to our Product Adoption, so all cost and time and energy spent on implementation was a loss.