Google Tag Manager

In Google Analytics, you can monitor your site speed and get a decent overview of what pages are contributing positively and negatively to site speed. The problem with page load time metric is that it’s an average based on a sample. You can modify the sample rate with setSiteSpeedSampleRate(), but for me that’s not bloody well good enough.

(UPDATE 28.3.2014: This post is still valid, but an implementation with User Timings is a much smarter way to measure actual page load time. I’ll be doing a short update at some point in the near future.)

There is a new version of this post for GTM V2 here.

[Last updated June 2014] I’ve fallen in love with Universal Analytics and Google Tag Manager. Together they form an incredibly powerful tool for marketing professionals. In most cases, I no longer need to post recommendations to my client for yet another page template revision, since with the tag manager in place, I can just add custom code via the admin panel. Add to that the power of Universal Analytics with its ultra-sensitive Measurement Protocol, and the ability to craft custom dimensions and metrics, and voila! I’m in a happy place.