Overview

Validate that New Tracking Works as Expected Prior to Going Live:

Validating your tracking works as expected can mean several things:

• Are Tags firing as Expected in GTM Web Container?
• Are server side conversions sending data?
• Is my destination (i.e. Facebook, GA) receiving the data?
• Are there any errors in my tracking within each destination?

This guide will show how to get started with each on of these use cases.

Are Tags Firing In Your GTM Web Container?

📘

Need a detailed walk-through on how to use Preview Mode in GTM? View this guide

When you download and import our pre-built tags into your web container you will want to do a few things:

• Ensure that the variables associated to your destination are correct.
• Check that you don't have duplicate tags already configured for the same event.
• Ensure that uou are previewing the workspace that you imported the tags to.
• Check that the published version of the container is the live version.
  • (See Figure 1)

Figure 1

Validate your Tags are Triggering:

• Using GTM Preview mode.
• Using pixel helpers (e.g Facebook Pixel Helper).
• Using the Network panel in your browser dev tools.

This video will show how you each of these methods work:

• When you are ready to validate the data sent in each tag then you can use these same tools to do so:
  • Facebook Pixel Helper
  • GA Debugger Chrome Extension
  • Network panel in dev tools
• The network panel is the real source of truth. This will show the exact request out to each destination and you can typically see the data sent in the request URL or query parameters.
  • (See Figure 2)

Figure 2

Are Server Side Conversions Tracking Properly?

Validating your server-side tracking is working as expected depends on the destination. It's important to note that if you're using Elevar server-side tracking (or GTM server-side with Shopify Notification webhooks) that you won't see these purchase conversions in the browser.

Google Analytics:

• The best way to validate this is to use the real time report in your Google Analytics 4 property.
  • You should see "elevar enhanced ecommerce" as an event and filter down by purchase as the event action.
    • (See Figure 3)

Figure 3

Channel Accuracy Report:

• You can validate by looking is inside your Channel Accuracy report in Elevar (for Advanced+ plans).
  • You'll begin to see an hour by hour breakdown ~ 2 hours after going live. This will show you the # of orders GA is successfully receiving compared to your Shopify orders.

Google Cloud:

• If you are using your own GTM SS container then you can also check your logs in Google Cloud.

Troubleshooting:

If you are not seeing any activity in the above then verify:

• Is your destination (or GTM container) live?
• What property ID are you using?
• Do you have any filters in GA that might be blocking data in reports?