Marketing automation, machine learning models, customer data platforms; at least one of these is included in your company’s ambitions for 2020. But is you analytics implementation prepared for it? Many companies struggle to implement ambitious data projects because of a lack of data standards and ownership, specialy in the digital analytics sphere. We introduce the GDDL, a digital data layer framework developed by Stitchd but available as open source solution for everyone that is looking for a sustainable approach to a data layer implementation. Presentation held at Superweek conference, Hungary, January 2020.

1. Sustainable Analytics
Implementations

2. Jente De Ridder
• Data Geek
• Belgian
• Father of 2 sons
• Outdoor fan
@Nihiel
Let me introduce myself…

3. Your company’s ambitions
“We will deliver relevant one-to-one
marketing experiences, fueled by A.I. „
Your CEO, January 2020

4. Bad news: you’re not ready
“Data quality is earned, not acquired. „
Simo Ahava, Superweek 2019

5. Feras Alhlou (E-nor)

6. Adam Greco (Search Discovery)

7. A website does not consist of static pages
Modular development
frameworks are on
the rise
Single page
applications are
used more often

8. There’s no such thing as a default device
Content visibility
differs between
devices and
browsers

9. Multitude of user experiences
Personalization entails
dynamic content

10. Entire digital ecosystem
B2C
Customer portal
SME B2B
Recruitment Corporate

11. IT and Marketing lost in translation
IT/DEVELOPMENT TEAM
Owns the code and strives for standardization and
reliability. Follows procedures to maintain stability.
MARKETING/ANALYTICS TEAM
Manages advertising efforts and needs flexibility to apply
optimizations and additional tools quickly.

12. High employee turnover
Continuous
implementation cycles
Continuous
implementation cycles

13. New project: migrate s-code towards a TMS
• Analysts did not trust the data
• Legacy implementation
• Everyone involved left the organisation
• Business asked for a cross-brand view
• Much ETL work involved
• IT was investigating a new CMS
• Angular front-end
• Parent company was talking to Google
• Switch from Adobe to 360 in the near future?
3 years ago

14. Key attributes put forward by Jim Gordon:
• Flexible
• Accept data in any format
• Semantic
• Intiuitive naming conventions
• Efficient
• Minimal amount of code
• Consistent
• Minimal design patterns to implement.
• Resilient
• Vendor agnostic and comply to browser standards
A quest for the perfect data layer

15. The Generic Digital Data Layer,
an event-driven, asynchronous
data layer.
Introducing: GDDL

16. Abstract tool from implementation
TMS
Page Impression Event

17. Abstract tool from implementation
TMS
Form Submit Event

18. • Impressions
• Take screen view into
consideration!
• Clicks
• Submit
• Errors
• Focus / Complete
• Product specific
• Add to cart, detail impression,
checkout, purchase
• Video specific
• Play, Pause, Complete, % viewed
Relevant events
Think of events on an abstract level.

19. Map those events to the different components within your CMS.
• Page
• Impression
• Button
• Impression
• Click
• Contentblock
• Impression
• Sitesearch
• Impression
• Click
• …
CMS components

20. List per component-event all variables that are required for analysis.
Provide context
• Button-impression
• Name
• Placement
• Button-click
• Name
• Placement
• Form-impression
• Name
• Step
• Stepname
• Form-submit
• Name
• Step
• Stepname
• ResultYour tagging plan

21. The implementation is kept as simple as
possible, relying on web standards that are
supported in every browser and programming
languages that are understood by any front-
end developer.
• Vanilla JavaScript & HTML data attributes
• Event + info
How does this translate into code?
data-tracking-event=‘button-impression’
data-tracking-info=‘{
“placement”:“top”,
”name”:”subscribe now”}’

22. The queue of generic events is translated into the data layer format
expected by the TMS in use.
Generating the data layer
Web Pages Event
handler(s)• Event-tag
• Info-tag
Event
translator
TMS SPECIFIC ANALYTICS
SPECIFIC
PLATFORM
SPECIFIC
1 2 3 4

23. By using an event-driven framework, we overcome
the problems with traditional page-based tracking and content visibility.
How does this solve our challenges?

24. By applying standards and unification we steer away from person &
vendor dependent implementations.
How does this solve our challenges?

25. • Tool independent
• Prevent vendor lock-in
• Reduced implementation & maintenance costs
• No specific briefings required
• Data quality assurance and trust
• Enables automated testing
• Implementation tailored to the business needs
• No predefined syntax that you must adapt you
• Flexibel for other data integrations
• Event queue can be used for all kind of applications
Tested & Proven framework

26. Try it yourself!
The GDDL is an open source framework.
We welcome feedback and suggestions for improvements.
https://bitbucket.org/xploregroup/xploregroup-webanalytics-demo

27. Questions? Contact us.
www.stitchd.be | www.stitchd.nl
info@stitchd.be
@We_Are_Stitchd