Cross-Domain and Subdomain Tracking with Google Analytics
Imagine having all your usual client/customer communication platforms like Facebook, Messenger, Email, Website Chat, etc., active and generating messages from people interested in your offerings — but you only check and get notifications from ONE of them.
That’d make your communication and conversion efforts ineffective and almost useless.
But what if you could have a simple and effective tool that allowed you to connect all your contact streams together in one place? Then you’d have ALL your messages under one dashboard for fast notification and response — no matter where it came from.
Kinda sexy, right? Well, to a degree, those tools do exist! But that’s not the purpose of this blog.
Today, we’re talking about this SAME pattern, but with your DATA!
If you really wanted to keep true to the analogy (I know you want to), imagine all your data minions across your various subdomains need to talk to you about your website and marketing performance stats, but they can’t get their messages through as you only check your main site analytics.
That’d be like employing people who work from home, and you can never tell what they’ve done because their power is out and they can’t communicate with you and your team.
Every day.
Maybe they live on one of those empty floating islands in Dubai?
Talk about frustrating and pointless, though!
You’re too smart for that, but just in case this has slipped through the “forgotten tasks” cracks with those never-ending to-do lists businesses have, we’re going to bring you up to speed right here, right now!
In last week’s blog, we talked about gathering data from all your various platforms — like blogs, social media, lead gen pages, membership sites, and more for comprehensive reports beyond mere websites.
But we didn’t cover setting up your individual domains, and that’s a bit different. Lucky you, we’re getting into that today!
Here are a few questions we’ll be diving into:
- Why would you use multiple domains and subdomains?
- What problems can this cause with your data reporting in Google Analytics?
- How do you fix this?
- Why do you have to ‘put your two cents in’… but it’s only a ‘penny for your thoughts’?
Well… maybe that last one won’t be answered here, but it sure does baffle me sometimes! Do you know why?
I digress, let’s get into the magic!
Why Would You Use Multiple Domains and Subdomains?
Just in case you haven’t really thought about it, you may be surprised by how many domains and subdomains a single business might have.
Many businesses have their “home website” and create new domains and subdomains for each of their signature offerings, sub-businesses, and accessory websites to all stay under one business. Think of it as your Business Family Tree.
Having multiple domains and subdomains allows businesses to:
- Target unique marketing campaigns for specific products and services
- Create a stand-alone brand and identity for those products and services
- Utilize specific user functions like blogs, forums, classrooms, stores, and more that require additional websites
- Split-testing to identify what offerings may be more valuable than others
For example, Blizzard Entertainment is a PC, console, and mobile game developer known for creating highly successful games. But they aren’t all under one website domain; each game has it’s own domain so even if consumers don’t know Blizzard is the developer, they know the name of the game they want and can easily find it under its own website — like Diablo!
There are more subdomains beyond that as Diablo has gamer forums, shops, and more. Each of those subdomains holds valuable user data, and if they’re not properly linked in their analytics tracking, that valuable user data can show up fragmented, duplicated, and inaccurate.
You can bet your Xbox Blizzard isn’t wasting time, money, and workforce by going to each site individually to gather their site performance and user data then piece things together manually.
That’d be insane! And kind of impossible — or at least highly ineffective.
No, they have their systems connected, synced, and set up so they can track and access their complete data reports with ease. This is done through cross-domain tracking.
Having multiple domains can be a blessing and a curse as you have to weigh the complexity of setting up cross-domain tracking with the convenience of having more options in your business.
That doesn’t mean you have to have a net worth of billions like Blizzard to have this set-up in your own business.
It merely means you need to do some cross-domain tracking for yourself, and this can be done with tools you’re (hopefully) already using — Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager.
Keep reading to get in on this savvy data goodness!
How Can Multiple Domains and Subdomains Mess Up Your Analytics?
If you have multiple domains and subdomains in your business, you likely have them all connected to your Google Analytics account for easy use. If you don’t, check this blog out to see how you can remedy that.
Maybe you have one of the scenarios below:
- You have a website on Wordpress or another CMS and run an eCommerce on a different platform, such as Shopify.
- You have an eCommerce on one platform and create landing pages using a different tool, such as Instapage, LeadPages, or HubSpot, on their own subdomains.
- You have a website or LP to sell something online, but it’s connected to a third-party shopping cart where users finish the purchase.
- Maybe your blog is on its own subdomain (blog.whateverisyourURL.com).
Here’s where problems can show up as a result of that.
With a standard Google Analytics set-up, your domains are added as a Property. Consider this the isolated container for your data tracking and reporting of user behavior on your site.
Easy peasy, right? Cool.
Now, say you have that eCommerce site, and you want to track user behavior from lead gen to cart closure, but they have to journey through three different websites with three different domains to complete their journey.
If you’re doing standard tracking (even if all sites HAVE their own Property/container on GA), each time they leave one site and move to the next, that session is ended, and a new one begins again with the next site tracking, and so on.
This means you MAY have all their behavior logged, but you can’t know what session belongs to what user, you simply have a series of fragmented snapshots of client journeys, but will have a hard time figuring out the overall picture. This can skew your conversion tracking big time as you can’t truly tell where they came from and what happened along the way.
If you have difficulties tracking complete data from all your different “Properties” into one Google Analytics account, this next bit is just for you!
The Fix: Property Management — Seriously.
First of all, let’s get the jargon out of the way. We’ll use the Business Family Tree analogy again for fun.
Account: Your business account in Google Analytics = The roots and trunk of the tree
Property: Your website domain, subdomains, etc. = The branches
Views: Your data and how you view it — The leaves and fruits of your labor
With this information in hand, you’ll be able to add and organize all of your data sources in no time.
These are the tools you’ll need to get started:
- Google Analytics
- Google Tag Manager
- Your domain codes from each site you plan to add
Use Google Analytics to:
- Establish your main Account
- Add your domains and subdomains as Properties
- Access data reports through your Views
Instead of having a new Google Analytics account for each domain, you need to have all the domains and subdomains you want to be paired up together set up as properties within one single account.
From there, you can create multiple views for reporting and strategic planning.
It sounds pretty straightforward, right? It is, but it’s also more complex and advanced when you get into it, I’ll just be honest.
Your next step is to use Google Tag Manager to:
- Set up Cross-Domain Tracking
- Adjust Cookie Domain Settings to the Main Site
- Match Tracking IDs
- Auto Linking Domains
- Referral Exclusion List
Once this is done, you can use Google Tag Assistant (download this chrome extension) to make sure everything is set up and running smoothly.
Now you’re able to see more than fractured, missing, and skewed bits of data, congrats!
In Closing
There are many ways you can set up Google Analytics across multiple domains, but this blog covers the most direct and straightforward method we’ve found thus far. Hopefully, it will keep things as simple as possible.
**Pro Tip: If you have a website management plan through your web developer, you might want to save yourself the hassle and shoot them a quick note to see:
- If they included setting up Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager in your initial development (many do)
- If they added all of your various domains into Google Analytics
- Are they willing to set these up as part of your maintenance service if they haven’t yet
If you’re doing this yourself, check out our previous blogs where we walk you through basic installation and use of these awesome tools so you can quickly implement the contents of this blog.
In summary, everyone CAN do this if they’re willing to invest the time to get the initial set up taken care of.
This is a one-time task (at least until you add more domains to your empire), but it will take a chunk of time to set this up, depending on the complexity and number of domains you have.
Email marketing tools, lead pages, etc. It takes time to gather all the code, etc. Before beginning, make sure this is a project you want to tackle on your own.
Let’s be real… if you want a one-and-done platform but aren’t committed or confident in doing this yourself, this will probably be overwhelming.
Don’t worry, though. You can still get the goods without shelling out the task completion efforts yourself — delegate and outsource like a boss!
It’s better to be honest with yourself and delegate than to get halfway through your DIY effort and end up with an even bigger mess for your tech help to fix.
If you feel you need some help, visit our site, we’d be happy to help you find solutions that fit the unique needs of your company.
What’s up next? Google Data Studio, a natural next step now that all your data is showing up for work!
