ClickFlare Tag Manager uses these concepts to handle how tags are configured and fired:
Tags: A ClickFlare Tag is a code snippet responsible for transmitting data to a designated system, such as ClickFlare reporting itself, or to a third-party platform.
Triggers: A Trigger is a mechanism that listens for specific events, like clicks, form submissions, or page loads. When an event matches the trigger criteria, any associated tags will be activated.
Variables: A variable, serves as a named placeholder for a dynamic value that may change over time, such as a product name, price, or date.
Data Layer: ClickFlare Tag Manager employs a Data Hub, known as the Data Layer, to temporarily store values client-side, enabling their utilization by tags, triggers, and variables. This article will delve into the interplay of these elements within ClickFlare Tag Manager.
Tags and triggers
A Tag represents a code snippet that executes within a webpage or mobile application. Tags fulfill various purposes, primarily transmitting measurement data from your site to external platforms. Prominent examples include the ClickFlare reporting, FB pixel, etc.
Without a tag management solution, each tag's code is directly inserted into the source code. ClickFlare Tag Manager, however, empowers users to manage all tags through an intuitive web interface.
Tags are activated, or fired, in response to events such as page loads, button clicks, or page scrolls. In ClickFlare Tag Manager, triggers are defined to monitor these events and dictate when tags should be fired.
Triggers and variables
ClickFlare Tag Manager offers a plethora of built-in variables, alongside the option to configure user-defined variables. For instance, the pre-defined variable "URL" contains the current page's address. If you want a tag to fire only on the page clickflare.com/signup.html, define a trigger with these settings:
- Event: Page View
- Trigger Type: Page View
- Fire On: Some Page Views
- Activate the tag when these conditions are met:
URL contains clickflare.com/signup.html
- Activate the tag when these conditions are met:
Variables are instrumental in making information accessible to your application as needed. These variables can be employed in trigger conditions or utilized to transmit data to tags.
Variables and the data layer
The Data Hub, or Data Layer, serves as a transient repository for data. It adopts a structured format comprehensible to ClickFlare Tag Manager, facilitating the seamless transfer of data from web pages or mobile apps to tags, triggers, and other variables.
While it's possible to retrieve information without setting up a data layer, leveraging a well-organized data layer implementation is considered best practice. Such an implementation minimizes the risk of data loss due to inadvertent code modifications, promotes an organized data model, and simplifies troubleshooting.
Note: For web applications, every page must have code that adds the needed information onto the data layer. The data layer does not automatically persist across pages.
Data layer implementation scenarios
In deciding whether a data layer implementation is suitable for your requirements, consider the following scenarios:
- If your tags exclusively need to activate during page loads without requiring additional information beyond URL and referrer, a data layer implementation may be unnecessary.
- If tags necessitate additional information beyond URL and referrer, such as page type or user ID, integrating a data layer and populating it with relevant data may be essential.
- If data becomes available only after user interactions, implementing code to push data to the data layer and configuring ClickFlare Tag Manager to leverage it upon specific events is imperative.
