StartEngine Analytics Scalability Enhancements

The Challenge

One of the largest equity crowdfunding platforms in the U.S., StartEngine approached Avatria for assistance establishing a scalable and efficient tag management architecture.

To help their startup customers (known as issuers) track the performance of their crowdfunding campaigns, StartEngine was sending behavioral data from their website directly to the issuer’s Google Analytics property. To do so, they had a unique Google Tag Manager container for each issuer’s page, which created a number of scalability issues:

• Their Google Tag Manager account featured hundreds of containers
• The containers weren’t centrally managed; each issuer had an account manager responsible for configuring tags, triggers, and variables, which created serious data consistency errors from issuer to issuer
• When a new site-wide feature or trackable event was added, it needed to be propagated across all containers one at a time
• Each container required individualized testing & troubleshooting
• There was little consistency in the 3rd-party tracking pixels supported, or how they were implemented

As the number of issuers was constantly growing and contracting, StartEngine sought Avatria’s help to find a solution and process that was more scalable, more consistent, and easier to maintain.

Additionally, StartEngine was using GTM and GA to tracking website behavior internally, but had a number of significant gaps in the data available to them.

The Solution

For starters, Avatria proposed a massively simplified tagging architecture. Rather than maintaining a unique GTM container for each issuer, we would create a single container to manage all issuer data connections. This offered the following benefits:

• Data consistency issuers
• A single set of tags, triggers, and variables was created for all issuers.
• Streamlined process for adding new issuers
• Rather than creating a new container (and recreating all required tags, triggers, and variables), a single row would need to be added to a set of lookup tables in the existing container. This took an hours long process and ensured it could be completed in a matter of minutes.
• Simplified process for adding new tracking features or pixels
• Development would only need to occur once, and it could be rolled out to all issuers at the same time
• More efficient testing & troubleshooting
• Centrally managed support process

Beyond these scalability enhancements, we also implemented best-in-class tracking from the ground up. This work included:

• Designing a standard data collection strategy for use across Google Analytics, Google Ads, and other marketing/analytics tools
• Building a data layer from the site backend for highest accuracy and long-term stability
• Implementing Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce tracking to provide purchase data, revenue information, and more
• Incorporating custom event and dimension tracking for unique client requirements

Avatria's Impact

Avatria’s streamlining of the client’s tagging architecture enabled the elimination of 99% of their GTM containers. This significantly improved performance and time spent on maintenance.

Our improvement of their data collection practices increased the accuracy of the reporting for StartEngine’s internal use and for all of the 300+ startups leveraging their platform. This has resulted in a massive decrease in the number of technical issues reported, and a corresponding decrease in the client’s support burden.