Why you should stop using Google Analytics (as we know it)
Google Analytics has grown to be the most common means of tracking web behaviour since its launch in 2005. However, the tool itself hasn’t really been updated since the launch of its ‘Universal Analytics’ in 2012. That’s almost eight years ago, and eight years is a long time in the online world. Now might just be the right time to ditch the good, old Analytics and start using, yes, Google Analytics.
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8 ways to optimise Google Tag Manager (GTM) for speed and performance
Google Tag Manager makes it incredibly easy to add marketing tags to your site. From registering ads conversions and transactions to sophisticated tags that segment users based on the weather in their current location, you can go crazy without having to go back to your development team every time. But that doesn't mean you should do it all. While your dev and SEO teams are working hard to reach their pagespeed goals all the marketeers are having a proverbial party in their yard. Here you'll find a few tips to keep your GTM container lean and fast.
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GTM Custom Templates: how to think about building your own
Custom templates are a way to make tag management even more manageable, scalable and secure. GTM’s custom templates can seem very limited, since they’re built on a very restricted, sandboxed version of JavaScript. There's much potential in custom templates, but it helps to think about the fundamentals of tag management when you start building your own custom template. In this post I’ll show you my thinking behind a custom template for building a frequent-flyer style tag to track user behaviour as an attribute.
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ITP 2.1: Why you won’t make your advertising targets, but will finally understand how cookies work
Last February, Apple introduced version 2.1 of their so-called Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) causing major impact on a number of fields: A/B testing, analytics, affiliate marketing, conversion tracking and most importantly remarketing. The short version is you won’t be able to target Safari users after seven days. The long version takes us back to the internet in the ‘90s and makes you rethink the results of your online ad spend.
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A Visual Leviathan: Hobbes' Schizophrenic Writing
I have spent many hours of my life devoted to studying Thomas Hobbes' book Leviathan. It was published in 1651 and is considered a starting point of modern political philosophy. There is however a strange dichotomy between the first part of the book and the second part of the book. Read on to see how I've used data visualisation to show that difference.
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Too Much Information Syndrome (And A Cure)
Humans are built to distinguish signal from noise. We have a general ability to, in an instant, understand what is important and what is not. With more and more distraction and noise heading our way, we need the mental tools to do the heavy lifting for us. Read on to learn about three mental tool that not only help us better understand the world, but also help us make better data visualisations and presentations.
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