Data Layer, Meet Data Layer Validation

For those of you who have implemented a data layer, you did so because you wanted to:

• Standardize data across marketing technologies.
• Maintain consistent data collection despite changes to HTML structure.
• Reduce development time for implementing new technologies.

In light of the importance of the data layer, it’s important to stay in the know of whether or not your data layer is being populated with the correct values.

Data layer validation is the process whereby you can verify that:

1. Your data layer object is always present
2. The variables within the object are present
3. The variable values are in the correct format

How does data layer validation work?

While analysts/marketers commonly debug the data layer to spot-check individual values on a page-by-page basis, they can hardly do so at scale. As such, data layer validation involves automatically scanning a large batch of pages, systematically checking that the data layer and its variables are present and formatted correctly.

As an example, users of ObservePoint’s Technology Governance platform can run Audits of their site in which the audit tracks and tests the values in the data layer (see video below).

If you want to see more specifics of how ObservePoint can validate the data layer, take a look at the help documentation. Or you can request your own complimentary audit of your site, including an audit of the data layer.