I was at a client meeting this week an the question of page download came up so I thought I’d jot down the answer here. TagMan consists of a JavaScript library and short amount of code that is included in each page. The library is standardised and shared across all clients so that users only download it once per session.

To prevent tags from slowing down the page, you can configure TagMan to writes out into an iframe instead of directly into the page.  The advantage of writing tags out into an iframe is they will not delay the page from completing like Javascript does.  If the business logic dictates that no 3^rd party tags need to be served, minimal code is sent back to the page, keeping bandwidth to an absolute minimum and reducing the impact on page download speed.  However, if page weight remains an issue you can always store a lightweight configuration in TagMan that you can roll back to in case of an emergency.

No client wants a webpage to hang, appear blank, not load or redirect to another page.  Tagging mistakes are easily made, and usually only noticed once live and when you need to generate a report.  TagMan provides comprehensive change control so you can instantly roll back to a previous configuration, test changes on a staging server and then be deployed live by users with the correct permissions.  This is all the while providing accountability by logging who is updating what.

Also, because tags are launched via TagMan, should a particular vendor tag be slowing page load it can easily be removed at the click of a button through the TagMan interface rather than having to ask the webmaster to remove it. 

Or even better, how about being able to set an end date against a vendor tag so that it’s automatically removed without you having to remember to remove it or do anything else.

TagMan will save you time. Being in control of the tagging process means that there will be fewer mistakes and improved accuracy, now that’s got to be a good thing……….