How to implement Firebase + GTM on a React Native App (step by step procedure for Android build)

There is good amount of documentation on how to implement GTM (Google Tag Manager) on a native android or an iOS app but nothing for a React Native app. There are couple of resources on the web which gives you the steps in implementing Firebase and GTM on a React Native app but there are some catches which no one mentions. First, the reason behind implementing both Firebase and GTM is Firebase acts as a data layer by sending different inbuilt events and the custom ones we implement. On GTM, we can intercept these Firebase events and play with them. So let's go ahead and see how to implement Firebase + GTM on a React Native App. This guide will contain details related to Android app but the process is similar for an iOS build as well.

Step 1 (Optional if you already have a react native app)

Install react native sample app by running the below line to get things started. If you have not installed NodeJS, you need to do that before you run the below command on command line. Also, you need an Android emulator or the corresponding one for iOS to run the app.

npx react-native init MyTestApp

How to track HTML 5 Videos using Google Tag Manager?

If you have a lot of videos embedded on your website which are not YouTube videos, it will be slightly difficult for you to track the video events using in built options of Google Tag Manager. However, we can use Custom HTML tag with few triggers and variables to achieve the tracking for any kind of HTML 5 video. If your video player uses HTML 5 format, then the below library can be used.

Here, we will be tracking "play", "pause", "complete", "milestones - 25, 50 and 75%" with the library and all of these are tracked as events in Google Analytics. Let us zero in the data we want to see in the reports. I want the event fired from the video to contain the below values

How to convert CIDR to IP Addresses Range using JavaScript

Many times, when you work on IP Exclusions in Google Analytics, you are required to create IP Addresses range in RegEx format. We have seen how to write a proper RegEx to exclude or include IP Address range in Google Analytics in our previous post. In this post, let us see how to convert a CIDR notation to a range of starting and ending IP addresses using plain JavaScript. CIDR (Classless Inter-Domain Routing, sometimes called supernetting) is an easy way to put a range of IP addresses in a single expression. Unfortunately you cannot enter a CIDR IP in Google Analytics. You have to create a range of starting and ending IP addresses and then come up with a Regular Expression to set them up in the filter. When you have a list of CIDR IPs and it gets frustrating to convert all of them manually going to some website which has a converter and then write the RegEx.

In this post, I have come up with a JavaScript function which you can use quickly to convert a CIDR IP to a starting and ending IP address which you can further use to form a RegEx.

Google Analytics Filters - How to exclude CIDR IP Ranges with Regular Expressions?

In the last post, we have seen how to automatically add a list of rules and channel groups to multiple Google Analytics views. In the current post, let's look at the Filters in Google Analytics and we will take one specific case of excluding all the traffic given an IP Range (CIDR format) using Regular Expressions.

What are Filters?

This is pretty straightforward. Filters in Google Analytics provide you the way to include or exclude certain traffic which satisfies a set of predefined rules. Let's say you work for a big organization and all of its workforce access the company's website quite often and do a lot of activity. In this case, your data won't look as cool. Your analytics show a very low bounce rate and high page views which are not really true from a business standpoint. So, what you need to do is exclude this traffic from your organization machines. Another scenario where you want to analyze a specific section of people coming from a city alone. In both the scenarios, what you need to do is to create filters and create standalone views where these filters are applied.

What is Channel Grouping and how to automate the rules for multiple Google Analytics views?

Recently I was working on a small requirement where I had to update all the 13 views under a Google Analytics property's Channel grouping rules. The catch here is the updated rules for all the 13 views look the same. I started updating the rules for one view and at the end of updating for one view, I am completely tired. So I was scared about the task that's in front of me. Then, I hacked into the Chrome Developer Tools and wrote some code and boom I was able to automate the processing of entering the rules and save it all in one click.

Google Tag Manager Tutorial #1: The Interface and creating our first tag!

It's been a long time since I have written something here. I wanted to revive this blog for a long time and today is the day! If you are new here, don't mind! Let's dive into the topic. I have written an article on the basics of Tag Management System quite a long time ago. If you are new to Tag Management and are in the Digital Analytics industry, do read the above article before proceeding to get a basic understanding. This will be a series of articles which is completely dedicated towards Google Tag Manager (GTM), a free tag management tool provided by Google. You do not need any prerequisites of programming but should be able to understand the basics of Digital analytics tracking. We will cover various aspects of complex tracking and programming as we go through the tutorials.

High-level working of GTM

In this first tutorial, let us understand how GTM works on a high level and get an overview of the interface and publish our first Google Analytics Tag.

Understanding Digital Analytics / Web Analytics Process Cycle or Framework

Many times people ask me what is the framework you are using when I work on a project for Digital Analytics tool implementation. I often get frustrated by this question. Why do people give so much importance to the framework or process flow? This time I did not want to get frustrated and thought for a while why do people need a framework? Turned out it's very simple. People don't want to re invent the wheel. They just want to follow a procedure which has been working out well for large number of people for a long time. It sounded absolutely correct to me. I realized my mistake and started reviewing the work I have done and splitted a general Digital Analytics project into different buckets or stages which I think are very much essential. Of course this might be a standard framework you can google and get it.

How to Implement SiteCatalyst on Server side using PHP?

This is an adhoc post I am writing on SiteCatalyst implementation, I will write a detailed series on SiteCatalyst implementation soon. Most of the Web Analytics implementation that's been done on the web is using JavaScript but there might be situations where you will not have that luxury to implement an Analytics tool using JavaScript instead you need to use a Server side approach to do that.

Web Analytics Tutorial #1 - What is Web Analytics?

I have been writing about Tag Management and Web Analytics on an Adhoc basis from some time here. For someone who is new to Web Analytics, the random posts I write may not make much of a sense. So I thought it would be nice if I start a series of posts explaining every detail I know about Web Analytics from scratch in a more organized way. Since most of my work has been on the technical side so far, my posts will have more of a technical tone rather than a qualitative tone unlike Avinash Kaushik's posts.

I will try to give as many as real world examples to explain the concepts. So let's begin by understanding what exactly is web analytics and why do we need such a technology in the first place?

Background
Jack is a movie buff who always decodes and analyzes each bit of the movie and explains to his friends. One of his friends suggested him why don't he start a blog where he can put his thoughts. Impressed by this idea, Jack created a free blog from one of the top blogging platform and started writing interesting articles. He started receiving nice comments as well.

Usage of Google Tag Manager on the Web

It's always interesting to know how many people are using a technology, isn't it? Yes, it is. Even though I have been using different Tag Management systems from a quiet an amount of time, I am really not sure how many people/businesses are using a particular Tag Management solution.
I have been searching about this on the internet and came to know about a cool website called builtwith.com which is exactly what I was looking for. It gives out the number of websites which uses a particular technology. So as for the Google Tag Manger goes check out the below infographic which show cases the number of Top 10K, 100K and Million websites which uses Google Tag Manager and the trend over the time.

Surely, Google Tag Manager is being adopted quickly and as expected the 3rd tier of websites are the quickest to adopt it. Tier one websites are slowly making the transition to GTM. It can be due to the presence of Enterprise level Tag Management solutions like Ensighten, Tealium etc.

The builtwith website also gives an approximate number of total websites on web which use Google Tag Manager. It comes around 616,000+ which is huge but a long way to go though.

Usage of Google Tag Manager | Create Infographics

Source: http://trends.builtwith.com/widgets/Google-Tag-Manager

What are the features missing in Ensighten Manage 2.0 that can make tagging much peaceful?

Ensighten as I have written in my previous blog post Ensighten The most robust Tag Management tool has some great features which takes the tagging experience to next level. In this post I would like to post some features which if present can help and make the tagging process much more peaceful.

1. Versioning for Conditions
Though the present Conditions tab with all the awesome features to generate Regex is cool in creating a new condition I recently had a situation where I kept on changing the condition and after sometime I thought I would stick to the original logic which has been there already but I was pretty lazy to keep track of what the logic was at the beginning and finally I ended up wasting good amount of time what I have written. There can be other situations where the account has more than one user and if one of the user modifies the condition and messes up and he/she doesn't remember what the original logic was, it will be really cool to switch back to the previous state.

Ensighten: The most robust Tag Management tool

Note: The views of the present post are solely mine and not my employer's.

A while ago I have written a post on Tealium and how is it different when I was little new to Tag Management and found some of it's features useful to beginners who are not well versed with JavaScript. I have been using Ensighten since a good amount of time and I am in love with the tool, its robustness in deploying tags and the way the tool works. With the advent of Manage 2.0 (the second version of Ensighten Console) the tool became way cooler than ever, more robust, modern and lot quicker.

So, in this post I would like to tell you what are the features that make Ensighten stand apart in the market and how it makes your life peaceful while tagging. Most of the features I will talk in this post will be about Manage 2.0. Since I do not have access to Ensighten tool for my personal use, I wouldn't be able to provide screenshots.

Way Ensighten Works:
Ensighten works on a very simple concept "Deploy the required tag on to a desired page". So if you want to deploy Google Analytics to your website, you will be creating a tag for Google Analytics and tell Ensighten to deploy the tag on all the pages of your website. It's simple, no Nonsense. All you have is your tags and conditions where to deploy the tags.

Why Hour of Visit is an important metric? How to track it using Google Tag Manger in Google Universal Analytics?

Last week I have written an introductory post on Google Tag Manager explaining how to implement Google Universal Analytics using Google Tag Manager. You might have observed how easy it is to implement the Google UA base code with GTM. It's just a simple plug and play operation. But that's not our whole aim, isn't it? We need to understand what kind of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are we looking for considering the website on which we need to implement the tool and there by come up with perfect Metrics which can be translated into our needed KPIs. This is the whole purpose having a Web Analytics tool at place, to understand the most needed KPIs and how they are being affected by different things.

So, let us consider one such KPI in our present post and simultaneously let's see how to implement them using Google Tag Manager and what all configuration needed to be done on Google UA.

Most of the web is filled up with Content based websites. For example, my blog comes under such category. I just write some posts related to Web Analytics. So, what am I interested in? What patterns am I looking for? How much can I change my marketing pattern or writing pattern?

How to implement Google Universal Analytics using Google Tag Manager (GTM) on your Blog or Website?

So, you have decided to track your website or blog (blog in my case) and started to searching for free web analytics tools and found that none other than Google provides one. Now you are under confusion that Google has two versions of analytics namely Classic Analytics and Universal Analytics. Don't be confused, go ahead and implement Universal Analytics. Of course the advantages are many which will take another post to talk about it.

Now that you have decided to use Universal Analytics on your blog, how do you implement it? Not the traditional way but the newer one using Tag Management tool. Again none other than Google's Tag Manager! (Read: Understand the Basics of Tag Management System).

In this post, I would like to explain you step by step process on how to implement Universal Analytics using Google Tag Manager (GTM) on your blog.

How Tealium is different from other Tag Management tools?

The present buzz in Web Analytics industry is Tag Management (Don't know why? Read the basics of Tag Management System). Recently I compared three free tag management tools, Google Tag Manager, Qubit Open Tag and DC Storm Tag Manager. All of the above tools are either free or free up to certain extent depending upon the number of page views the tags has been served. But there are separate set of Premium tools such as Ensighten, Bright Tag, Tealium and others which are being used by most of the Enterprise Clients. All these premium tools have been present in the market for quiet a good bit of time and each of them is trying to become the market leader with their features.

Fortunately I have had a chance to work with Tealium. I would like to specially write about Tealium because of it's awesome features which make it a special tool in the market.

So what makes Tealium unique and different from other Tag Management tools in the market? Let's take a dive in to the various features and how they affect your implementation capability. Before reading further I just wanted to convey that all the opinions in the present post are purely based on my experience with the various tools.

Comparison of 3 Best Free Tag Managers: Google Tag Manager, Qubit Open Tag, and DC Storm Tag Manager

(Scores are updated on 27th November 2013)

Hello everyone, in my previous posts I reported about the Tag Management Usage among Top Retailers on Internet. For an enterprise level customer, there are outstanding premium TMS tools like Tealium, Ensighten, Bright Tag and others but for small tier customers who does not want to spend a lot of money on TMS solution, fortunately there are good TMS tools which provide a good service for free of cost.

The buzz around Google Tag Manager clouded some brilliant TMS tools which provide Free tier in the market. During a conversation on Web Analytics Yahoo group I came to know about those Tag Management tools which are freely available as Google Tag Manager and have lot of other features. Those two important tools are DC Storm Tag Manager and Qubit Open Tag. Both provide Free tier along with an option for Premium upgrade.

In this post, I would like to compare all these three TMS tools and analyze which of them is best. Of course, the choice of tool depends upon your requirement but I will do a functional analysis of all the tools. The following analysis is based up on purely my experience with the tools, this might vary with your experiences.

A report on Tag Management System in Top 100 Internet Retailers

In the previous post, I have talked about the basics of Tag Management System, so most of you would be interested to know about how the Market is receiving TMS solution and how effectively are they using the solution. Fortunately, Lima Consulting Group and well know Tag audit firm (I will talk about Tag Audit Tools in future) Observe Point did a research on Top 100 Retail companies on Internet and about the Web Analytics solutions they are following and came up with a very good report which gives you a snapshot of the Industry's awareness on the TMS tools.

I would like to present you the highlights of the report. These highlights will answer most of the questions you will be having on the present industry's maturity levels in web analytics.

Understanding the Basics of Tag Management System

If you meet someone from the Web Analytics industry or if you are keeping yourself updated about the industry, you will be hearing a lot about Tag Management System (TMS for short) these days. So what exactly TMS mean? Let us take a dive into this subject matter and understand the different questions.

What is Web Analytics?
If you are a beginner and new to Web Analytics, Web Analytics is nothing but a method of studying the online traffic, visitor behavior and coming up with an actionable insight which will be useful in decision making. So, to study the online traffic we use different tools which collect the data from websites and showcase in a nice Interface with various features. Some of the examples for such tools are Google Analytics, Adobe SiteCatalyst, IBM CoreMetrics, WebTrends, Piwik and others. Most of these tools use JavaScript tags placed on the website to collect data. We have other kind of tools which perform log analysis. To know more about the history of Web Analytics, I would suggest you to read the Wiki of Web Analytics.

Let's continue with our understanding of Tag Management System.

How I got a job because of Social Media?

Hello everyone, I am Ram Manohar Bokkisa, presently working as a Web Analyst in a MNC. I have been working there since August 2011. Let me tell you the story, how exactly I ended up here.

Schooling and Noob Blogger:
I did my schooling and +2 in Hyderabad. Then I wrote JEE and joined Civil Engineering Dual Degree course at IIT Madras in 2006, Chennai. I was not much interested in the course from the beginning.