Likelihood to Recommend Google Tag Manager is well suited when the marketer or marketing team does not work closely with the developers. In this scenario, it means that the marketer can deploy 3rd party tools such as live chat widgets, advertising pixels, and much more themselves in a timely manner. Google Tag Manager may be less relevant in an organization where the marketer is also the developer or has a strong development background, where they can implement the 3rd party tags directly on the site when they need. But even in this instance, there's still great benefit in using Google Tag Manager.
Read full review Webtrends optimize is a marketing solution aimed squarely at transactional and eCom based websites. I would only recommend a colleague to engage with the solution once the marketing dept is at a point where their website is fully optimized in regards to SEO and all the other fundamentals in order to truly build upon what Webtrends can offer. This shows you an easier way of measuring your ROI and the money you will invest with the tool-moving forward.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review Intuitive test set-up makes for a low learning curve. Ability to create custom data tables which enable exporting of visitor level data for more in-depth analysis outside of the Webtrends Optimize platform. Visual Editor WYSIWYG interface enables non-technical users to easily execute basic tests. Read full review Cons 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. Read full review The cost is a factor. When you're trying to save money, particularly as a startup (a lot of our clients are up-and-comers) it has to be seen as an investment...but the cost to implement the system is fairly large. There's a bit of a steep learning curve, you can't just dive into the program. It's not impossible but it's not as easy as snapping your fingers to easily implement the program cross-platform. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review Difficulty was getting business units to take the time and spend the money to test, and then implement, best options.
Read full review Usability Google Tag Manager is the definition of a learning curve. At the beginning, you can barely do the minimum and it can seem questionable as to why you would use it. However, as users begin to learn its offerings and see how it can do much more, they will have a moment where GTM becomes a tool that empowers their ability to track and efficiently collect data for important business questions.
Read full review Set up of basic tests that do not use segmentation or targeting is an intuitive experience that can be learned quickly by new users. However, as the need for segmentation and other more advanced capabilities arise, the experience begins to degrade.
Read full review Reliability and Availability zero complaints. I'm not aware of it ever failing.
Read full review Performance Zero complaints. It seemed to do its job quickly and accurately.
Read full review Support Rating Read full review The support from the team at Webtrends Optimize is unparalleled. There is always someone to consult should there be any issues.
Read full review Online Training I thought there was a little bit too much emphasis on AdWords stuff, not enough on the generic application of GTM.
Read full review Online training was ok. Because every test is a custom test, there's only so much that can be covered in a generic lesson.
Read full review Implementation Rating 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.
Read full review Implementation was pretty straightforward
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review Webtrends Optimize can be used for much more complex tests, allows better conversion tracking and data collection.
Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) is suitable for smaller, simple projects. Webtrends Optimize comes with an excellent consultancy that could save you a lot of time and resources
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review So far we haven't seen an ROI that we can accurately measure due to only running a couple of tests that haven't resulted in direct, site wide changes. However, we have learnt a lot about how to set up the right processes and documentation. Read full review ScreenShots Webtrends Optimize Screenshots