'Net Features : ensighten

Tag Management for Non-Techie Digital Marketers

Michael Garrity — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 10:44:00 GMT

Real-time tag management system provider Ensighten wants to bring the ability to efficiently and accurately set up and manage dozens of tags across a website to even the least technically inclined marketers, which is why the company just launched its new Visual Tagger solution.

Despite the many benefits touted by tag management systems, some digital marketers and site optimization professionals have struggled to execute testing and targeting campaigns when they are required to tag pages with testing code and don’t have the technical background to do it. However, with the release of Visual Tagger, users can deploy Adobe Test & Target and Webtrends Optimize campaigns without updating any code.

All they have to do now is visit a Web page, launch the Visual Tagger through a browser bookmarklet and then define “as many test campaigns as they would like,” which includes identifying the testing locations, setting targeting criteria, passing along essential information, review all tags deployed, debugging any issues and more.

This will help “non-technical users” create a website data layer that improves the consistency and accuracy of visitor, browser and page data collection, while enhancing marketing optimization thanks to more refined data. It will also simplify event tracking, as marketers and analysts merely need to visually identify page elements to track and the events they want to pay attention to, and Visual Tagger’s built-in Adobe SiteCatalyst and Webtrends Analytics integration can easily map the analytics code for those events.

Visual Tagger is currently available for all Ensighten Manage customers at no additional cost.

Web Privacy Tech in Focus

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 21:15:00 GMT

If you're struggling to help users maintain privacy on your site, check out the combined tag management system and visitor privacy solutions from Ensighten, which has just been awarded a patent for its consumer privacy management technology. Ensighten's services help online publishers and retailers that need to comply with consumer privacy protection lawas such as Do Not Track (DNT) in the US and the UK Cookie Law.

The Ensighten system uses conditional logic enables the creation of privacy rule-sets to handle privacy law requirements from any nation or to support enforcement of any company policy. Multiple privacy rule-sets supported, and are assignable by domain(s), sub-domain(s), page(s), path(s) or session-conditions (e.g. based on visitor’s national origin, device type, cookie, date, etc.).

“We’ve always seen our privacy technology as far more advanced than any other website privacy compliance solution on the market. The assignment of this patent by the USPTO underscores that Ensighten has extremely unique and compelling privacy technology that is practical for real-world use by high-traffic publishers,” said Des Cahill, VP of marketing at Ensighten.

“Online publishers and retailers are paying careful attention to evolving regulations such as Europe’s ePrivacy Directive because they must ensure their websites conform with its requirements. Ensighten Privacy provides single line of code deployment, requires no modification to existing page code, and does not require the purchase or installation of a TMS while giving publishers complete control of their privacy compliance.”

The U.K. Cracks Down on Cookies

Allison Howen — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 02:00:00 GMT

The U.K.’s cookie law, which requires website owners to ask permission before installing certain types of cookies on to users’ machines, went into effect earlier this week – meaning that website owners in the U.K. need to make sure that they are compliant.

One way to become compliant is with a new and free Web service from high-performance tag management systems provider Ensighten. The service, Ensighten PrivacyEU, not only helps publishers, marketers and merchants become compliant, but also complements the recently launched Ensighten PrivacyDNT service.

Together, these free services offer a complete solution for consumer online privacy initiatives.

Ensighten PrivacyEU is easy to set up and doesn’t have a limitation on traffic volume or the number of Web domains supported. Publishers are required to add a single line of code to their websites so that site visitors from the U.K. can be recognized and presented with a dialogue box that requests their consent for any data collection that will be used for tracking purposes.

Additionally, the Ensighten PrivacyEU solution leverages tag classification data provided by PrivacyChoice, and is also based on the same technology that powers Ensighten’s enterprise-class privacy solution, Ensighten Privacy.

“The laws emerging in the European Union invariably go far beyond the recommendations and best practices embodied in the Do Not Track standard that is evolving in the United States,” said Des Cahill, VP of marketing at Ensighten. “Publishers and e-tailers worldwide need to pay careful attention to the ePrivacy Directive and ensure their websites conform to its requirements. Ensighten PrivacyEU provides simple and free compliance with these laws and enables them to reassure site visitors that their rights are being respected.”

Would You Benefit from a Tag Management System?

Michael Garrity — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 02:15:00 GMT

Ask any online professional about analytics, and you may spend hours hearing about their vital importance in the pursuit of Web success.

One secret to garnering especially meaningful analytical insights is by breaking down data into different divisions to see more accurate reports of specific content categories. This process is achieved by using tags.

Tags are metadata keywords assigned to a piece of information or content on the Web that describe the item and make it more easily found when users go browsing and searching for it.

Tags are most common on blog-based or other content-heavy websites as a way to group, manage and track similar information. The problem, especially for less savvy content publishers, is that after a while, sites and pages will end up cluttered with unorganized tags, which sort of defeats the purpose. Because of this, analytics researchers are met with a mess of disorganized data thanks to duplicate, outdated or non-functioning tags that can give marketers and site owners inaccurate information, and that’s no help to anyone.

Enter tag management systems. These services come in and clean up the clutter created by disorganized, user-generated tags. Using a management system allows content publishers to collect all of their campaign’s tags into one container tag and then manage and maintain them in a single application.

According to TagMan, the benefits of such a system include greater accuracy in analytics results, more efficient tag management with a user-friendly interface, more control over all of a site’s tags, improved performance in page load times and serving tags to visitors, and greater flexibility in adding and testing new tags.

Unfortunately, it seems that many website owners tend to undervalue the worth of tag management; but for prolific content publishers (anyone from enterprise-level ecommerce companies to very busy bloggers), tag management systems are the easiest and perhaps most effective way to keep track of the performance of various content categories.

Many major companies have come to terms with the usefulness of tag management systems, however; currently, TagMan works with brands like Travelocity, Virgin Atlantic, Subaru and Kellogg’s, among many others.

Department store group Debenhams turned to TagMan while in the process of switching analytics providers. The site’s infrastructure was supplied and hosted by IBM, making any code changes a “delayed process.” To resolve this concern, Debenhams implemented the TagMan tag management system into its website so that it would be able to apply new online marketing technology without having to wait on code changes from the back-end infrastructure.

The single container tag used by services like TagMan replaces all on-site tags used to manage and track online marketing technologies; instead, these tags are stored in a tag management system that allows site owners to make immediate changes in a single, user-friendly, browser-based interface, never altering the code on the website. Ultimately, this allows content publishers to more effectively manage and track existing technologies and instantly install new ones. This improved efficiency saves site owners time, while giving them more accurate and insightful data from analysis and greater control over the way content is categorized on their websites.

In addition to TagMan, there are a number of tag management systems available, including UberTags, Tealium and Ensighten.