Enable cross-domain tracking to allow Google Analytics to see sessions on your site and on related sites (like Eventbrite) as a single session.
Running virtual events through Eventbrite? It's a great social-distancing solution but the analytics can be tricky to track if you are promoting events on your site then driving traffic to Eventbrite for registration.
Eventbrite offers great instructions on how to set up a tracking pixel with Google Universal Analytics.
These instructions are helpful, but I was still stuck. What I wanted to do was track activity across domains. Basically if someone was on my website and clicked the link to Buy Tickets on Eventbrite, then I wanted to track that person’s journey from my site to eventbrite and, more important, if they purchased tickets.
If you are already using Google Analytics, do not get stuck on the Eventbrite instructions suggesting you “Create new property” with your event page URL then use the new Tracking ID in Eventbrite “Tracking Pixels” (under Analyze) on your Manage page in Eventbrite.
You don’t want to track the two sites separately. You want to track a person’s journey between the two sites, all with the same google analytics tracking ID.
Cool, cool, right. Use the same property and set up cross-domain tracking.
Luckily, I deploy Google Analytics with Tag Manager.
With a few changes I was able to measure activity across domains. Enabling cross-domain tracking allow Google Analytics to see sessions on your site and on related sites (like Eventbrite) as a single session. Huzzah!
In Tag Manager, I opened up my list of Tags and looked for the type that is Google Analytics: Universal Analytics. Everyone’s workspace is different but I use the Lunametrics tag manager recipes so my tags looks like this:
I clicked to edit my All Pages tag, then navigated to More Settings > Cross Domain Tracking. Then in Auto Link Domains field, I entered a comma-separated list of domains (i.e., boxcarmarketing.com,eventbrite.com)
Since visitors to Eventbrite return to my site after purchase, I also adjusted the settings to receive incoming links from other domains. Navigate to More Settings > Fields to Set and add a field with a Field Name of allowLinker and a Value of true.
My final tag looked like this:
Remember to save your changes and publish the container. Then use the Real-Time reports in Google Analytics to test the tracking is working.
Eventbrite also supports ecommerce tracking. Need a recipe for enhanced ecommerce? Lunametrics (not Bounteous) has you covered.
