GTM Kit – Google Tag Manager & GA4 integration vs Koko Analytics – Privacy-Friendly WordPress Analytics

GTM Kit puts the Google Tag Manager container code on your website so that you don’t need to touch any code. It also pushes data from WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) and Contact Form 7 to the data layer for use with for Google Analytics 4, Facebook and other GTM tags. The goal of GTM Kit is to provide a flexible tool for generating the data layer for Google Tag Manager. It is easy to use and doesn’t require any coding, but it allows developers to customize the plugin as needed. The settings are organised around what you are trying to do (Setup, Events & data layer, Commerce, Consent & privacy, and Tools), so related options live together and the setting you need is quick to find. Know when your tracking breaks Tracking fails quietly. A caching plugin strips the container out of the page, a second plugin loads it a second time, a staging copy reports into your live property, and nothing on the settings screen says so. GTM Kit checks one of your own pages once a day, the way a visitor receives it, and tells you when nothing on your site is loading your container, or when your pages load tracking twice. Where it recognises the plugin or tool adding the second copy, it names it. Two checks in WordPress’s own Site Health screen report whether your container is set up and reaching your pages, and whether consent is configured. A GTM Kit section on the Info tab lists your whole configuration on one screen and copies it into a support request with one click. On sites WordPress reports as staging, development or local, GTM Kit leaves the container out, so test traffic never reaches your live analytics. The data layer is still built there, and a setting loads the container anyway when you are measuring a test site on purpose. eCommerce events tracked with Google Analytics 4 The following GA4 events are automatically included in the dataLayer: WooCommerce view_item_list select_item view_item add_to_wishlist [Premium] add_to_cart view_cart remove_from_cart begin_checkout add_shipping_info add_payment_info purchase refund [Premium] order_paid [Premium] order_processing [Premium] order_completed [Premium] order_refunded [Premium] subscription_started [Premium] Unlock all features with GTM Kit Premium. Easy Digital Downloads view_item add_to_cart begin_checkout purchase Flexible container implementation Depending on how you use Google Tag Manager you can delay the loading of the container script until the browser is idle. This may be relevant to you be if are focusing on pagespeed. You may enter a custom domain name if you are using a custom server side GTM (sGTM) container for tracking. It’s also possible to specify a custom loader. GTM Kit has full support for Stape server GTM hosting. You can also exclude specific pages from GTM entirely. Add URL patterns on the Container settings page and GTM Kit holds back the container, the noscript fallback, and its data layer scripts on matching pages. Useful for third-party checkout iframes, partner-hosted subpages, and in-app webview routes that run their own tracking. Glob patterns are supported by default, with optional regex for advanced matching. Moving from another Google Tag Manager plugin GTM Kit imports settings from Google Tag Manager for WordPress, Google Tag Manager for WooCommerce, Metronet Tag Manager and other GTM plugins, at any time, from the Tools page. Your container ID, data layer variables, Consent Mode defaults, excluded user roles and container environment come across in one step. Before anything is written you see exactly which of your settings will be replaced, and only settings the other plugin actually configured are touched. Post data You may specify which post data elements you wish to include in the dataLayer for use in Google Tag Manager. – Post type: include the type of the current post or archive page. – Page type: include a defined page type. I.e. post, page, product, category, cart, checkout etc. – Categories: include the categories of the current post or archive page. – Tags: include the tags of the current post or archive page. – Post title: include the post title of the current post. – Post ID: include the Post ID of the current post. – Post date: include the post date. – Post author name: include the post author name. – Post author ID: include the post author ID.

Koko Analytics is a privacy-friendly and lightweight Google Analytics alternative for WordPress sites. It is a plug and play solution to get GDPR compliant insights into your website visitors without requiring any third-party services. Why choose Koko Analytics? Important insights Koko Analytics provides you with simple and effective analytics. There are no complicated reports to dig through. All the important metrics are visible from a quick glance at your analytics dashboard, right inside your WordPress admin. Privacy-friendly analytics Koko Analytics is a privacy-friendly solution for WordPress. It can be used without any cookies, no personal data is processed or stored and nothing is shared with any third-party. That makes it suitable for GDPR, CCPA, and PECR-compliant website statistics. Lightweight website statistics Koko Analytics is lightweight. It adds less than 1 kilobyte of data to your pages and is fully compatible with all kinds of caching setups. WordPress is bypassed entirely for its collection endpoint, making the impact on your site’s performance as close to zero as possible. Open source analytics Koko Analytics is open source released under the GPL license, just like WordPress itself. The source code is publicly available. Everyone has the right to run, study, share or modify the source code. Features WordPress analytics dashboard – View your website statistics directly inside WordPress admin. Top posts and pages – See which content gets the most visits. Referrer statistics – Find out which websites send traffic to your site. Path-based tracking – Track statistics for any URL, including archives and search pages. Returning visitor detection – Reliably detect returning visitors without cookies. Exclusion rules – Exclude visits from selected WordPress user roles or IP addresses. Historical data imports – Import statistics from Jetpack Stats, Plausible Analytics, Burst Statistics, Statify, WP Statistics, Independent Analytics, or SlimStat Analytics. Automatic data cleanup – Remove historical data older than a chosen number of months or years. Popular posts output – Show your most visited posts or pages with a widget, Gutenberg block, or shortcode. Pageview counter – Show the total number of pageviews for a page with a shortcode or Gutenberg block. Koko Analytics Pro Koko Analytics Pro adds more reporting options for sites that need deeper analytics. Country statistics – See which countries your visitors come from. Technology reports – View browser, operating system, and device statistics. Email reports – Receive periodic analytics reports in your inbox. UTM Campaigns – Measure the performance of your marketing campaigns. Custom event tracking – Track outbound link clicks, contact form submissions, add-to-cart actions, and more. Traffic spike alerts – Get notified by email when traffic changes quickly. View the Koko Analytics live demo or see Koko Analytics Pro pricing.