Data layers 101
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Data Layers 101 Jono Alderson Head of Insight @ Linkdex @jonoalderson
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A whistle-stop tour through the concept of the data layer, why it’s not just techy-stuff, and some of the real-world applications and implications of adopting your own. …featuring such exciting topics as ‘Hands-on tips and tricks for Google Tag Manager’, ‘Reducing your dependency on frustrating development challenges when al you want to do is get a tag live’, and ‘Doing really clever stuff with variables, classifying user types, and scoring behaviours’.
Transcript of Data layers 101
Data Layers 101Jono Alderson
Head of Insight @ Linkdex
@jonoalderson
Not a new concept.
HUGE benefits...
But slow to take off
:(
Some History.
The Internet wasn’t designed for this.
Content, presentation and behaviour all muddled up.
The ideal...
HTML
CSSContent & Markup
Layout & presentation
Database + server-side
JavaScriptBehaviour
Logic & processing
The modern web
HTML
CSS
Database + server-side
JavaScript
HTML
CSS
Database + server-side
jQuery
Better, but still a mess.
And so...
“Can we add this conversion script to all
form ‘thank you’ pages?”
How do we get better at this?
Let’s get organised.
Container Tags
Great! …until you want to do something new.
Same principles apply with other solutions
Hook, trigger and manipulate page elements.
“Trigger a CTA if this is the first page the user has seen”
But what about...
“Don’t trigger our retargeting code if the product has a high returns rate”
or...
DOM hooks only get you so far.
Introducing the Data Layer......Making it really freakin’ easy to manage
and turbo-charge your tagging* since 2012
*and other cool stuff
HTML
CSS
Database + server-side
JavaScript / jQuery
Data
Data
It’s just a big array.
dataLayer : {“number of tacos” : 12345“colour” : “red”“foods” : {
“meat” : “bacon” “veg” : “carrot” “starter” : “soup” “courses” : 3
}}
pageInfo: {url: "http://www.example.com/category/article-name/"author: "John Smith"
}
Pages written by a specific author
category:{ primaryCategory: "Cameras", subCategory1: "Nikon", pageType: "ProductDetail"
}
Products in a specific category
Specific page templates
attributes:{ seasonal: "Christmas" priority: "high"returnFreq: "low"
} Attributes which aren’t necessarily available from/on the page
userInfo:{ pagesViews: 6 lastPage: "http://www.example.com/page/"loggedIn: "false"persona: “bargain hunter”qualityScore: 2gender: "female"
}
Server-side stuff which you can expose and use easily
Just imagine...
(An aside)Enable Google Analytics demographic data NOW.
transactionInfo:{ "bookingDate" : "26/05/2014", "departureDate" : "12/07/2014", "bookingValue" : 155.45, "productSkus": [ "100002", "100003", "100004" ]
}
Get that in your analytics
Chuck some API calls in there, too (don’t forget to cache)
Getting stuff out
Google Tag Manager, javascript, ajax
“But we can already do all of this kind of stuff…”
...but it’s sure as hell not flexible.
and it doesn’t anticipate unknowns
Next steps...
Now bring it to life.Add things after page load
Clicks, mouseovers, dwell times, behaviours, triggers
Anticipate what you needUpdate as you go
This sounds like more work...
Standardisation
E.g.,Generify the concept of ‘submitted’
Brief on scenario not specifics
Want to get really clever?
Server-side / ajax data layers
Keep sensitive data secret!
SummaryCare for your data, and it’ll change your world
Thanks!
