Do you want to track your site’s traffic and analyse how people interact with your content? No worries! In this article, our experts explain how to build an efficient tracking plan to study the possible evolutions according to your needs and your commercial objectives.
What is a tracking plan?
Setting up a tagging plan is the key to the success of any marketing strategy.
Indeed, a tracking plan, also called a tagging plan, is a document presenting the organization and the implementation process of tags from web analytics solutions. It allows to measure and analyse the audience of the site.
But what’s a tag?
Indeed, tags, also called markers or tracking tags, are small pieces of code inserted on each page of a site. They allow you to collect data on your visitors, to follow their actions and their movements. So, these markers are the basis for monitoring your audience and the performance of your site.
The goal is to know precisely the behaviours of the Internet users on the pages of the site.
How to build an effective tracking plan?
A tracking plan can be an Excel document, Google Sheet, Numbers or other more interactive tools such as Airtable.
- Identify the goal
This step consists of defining your objectives and the elements you wish to track, as well as the KPIs to be collected from the site.
- Retrieve the tree structure of the site
In order to avoid making mistakes, it is essential to follow a reliable and clear structure. For this purpose, product categories, page groups, and all notable elements must be clearly identified in order to be able to track, for example, registrations or cancelled orders.
- Fill in the table with your data
It may seem like the simplest task, but it isn’t! You have to be very precise in filling in categories, sub-categories, pages and tagging types.
You can make your table by following useful categories: page types, page section, platform, trigger types, action or event, tracking code.
- Implementation of the tracking plan
This step includes the integration of all the elements that have been included in the table. We recommend that you start with variables, then create triggers and finally activate all tags.
- Generation of analysis reports
Once the implementation is complete, you will need to create the entire analysis phase via Google Analytics or Google Data Studio. All traced queries must perform certain operations, and this is where you should use them.
These reports and data will allow you to make strategic decisions with the tracking plan of your site or shop via Google Tag Manager.
The importance of setting up a tracking plan:
The tracking plan allows you to fully customize the installation of your Analytics solution according to the structure and shape of the website. Each website is unique, with different pages, categories and URLs.
The tracking plan allows you to analyse your website to understand what works best. It can also be used in your marketing campaigns thanks to the tags that enable retargeting.
The advantages of a tracking plan:
Although a solution such as Google Analytics offers you tracking tips to easily paste on your pages, a real battle plan is important to get data that you would never have had access to without this tagging plan.
In fact, the tracking plan helps you to collect data about:
- Products that your visitors add to their shopping cart
- The moment your potential buyer has abandoned his purchase
- The precise ROI of an Adwords, emailing or sponsorship campaign. You will be able to analyse your ads one by one and identify the one that brought you the most revenue.
- The precise ROI of your campaigns
- The performance of a backlink for your site
- The performance of your form or contact page
The goal here is to ensure the profitability of your business, both in terms of money and time. This tracking plan will remind you what you are tracking, where you are tracking it on your site and will optimize data collection.
And don’t forget! A tracking plan should be updated according to the evolution of your site (number of pages, new categories…) as well as your needs and the needs of your customer.
So if you haven’t set up your tracking plan yet or don’t know where to start, don’t hesitate to contact us. Our experts will help you reach your business goals with the best solutions.