Unbounce Answers/Next Steps/Analytics, Stats & Conversions
External conversion tracking
Carl Schmidt
posted this on November 18, 2010 11:08 am
Unbounce lets you track external conversions by embedding our tracking script on your target conversion page. This is great when you’re using an Unbounce landing page to drive online purchases, or anytime your real conversion action doesn’t happen on the Unbounce landing page itself.
This is especially important when you’re conducting a test as you need to know which page drives better overall results. As Anne Holland and many others have pointed out “you have to measure tests beyond the click”.
What is it?
An external conversion is an action that takes place on a page other than your Unbounce landing page.
What you need to do
Follow the instructions below to embed a script on your conversion page. It’s best to place it just before the closing </body> tag.
Please Be Aware
If your Unbounce page has conversion goals set then you might get conversions counted due before they reach your external page. Most likely this means that you should turn off all Conversion Goals on your Unbounce page so that only visits to your external page are counted as conversions.
- Open the relevant page in the Unbounce Editor
- Open the Conversion Goals tab
- Clear all of the listed conversion goals
- Save & repeat for all variants
- Re-publish your page
- On your external page insert the following script:
How does it work?
When a visitor visits your Unbounce landing page, and subsequently visits your conversion page, the script will look for the Unbounce visitor cookie, and if it finds one, will make a tracking request back to the Unbounce servers. We then select the page that visitor has seen most recently, and if we have not previously recorded a conversion for that visitor, we'll bump your conversion count by one.
You must ensure that your Unbounce pages and your conversion page are on the same domain so that the tracking cookies can be read. For example, you could have your Unbounce pages at "promo.mycompany.com", and your conversion page on "www.mycompany.com", but you couldn't have your conversion page on "www.mypartner.com".
Do I have to configure this as a "conversion goal" in the Unbounce page editor?
No, just adding the script to your conversion page is enough.
Should I keep the conversion goals I've already configured?
That depends. Most likely you would remove any URL-click conversion goals so that a conversion is only recorded when your visitors hit your conversion page.
Will Unbounce count conversions even if a visitor hasn't converted via my Unbounce page?
No, we'll only count visitors to your confirmation page that have our tracking cookie.
Will it slow down my page?
No, the script itself is hosted on Amazon's CloudFront CDN for high-speed serving, and by adding the script just before the closing </body> element of your page, it won't affect the rest of your document loading.
Are there any limitations?
The external tracking script currently identifies the conversion page based on the last page visited by your visitor. This may or may not work for you.
If you're currently using Unbounce to drive just one type of conversion (such as a newsletter signup, or purchase), then this will work fine.
However, if you're using Unbounce to drive multiple types of conversion, and your visitors are likely to see both types of Unbounce pages, you might end up with conversions attributed to the incorrect page.
Shortly after our initial launch, we'll be adding the ability perform tracking for multiple conversion types.
Comments
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MADE MY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!
Thanks guys! I had asked for this, so it's great to see it here now!
Should it work when the conversion page is embedded in the unbounce Landing Page?
- I'm using Jotform to embed a form in the unbounce Landing Page (custom html block: <script src="http://www.jotform.com/formID"></script>).
- I added the conversion code to the THANK YOU page that is shown in the same block after the form is submitted, but conversions are not being registered.
Should this work in the first place? (different domains)
Do you suggest a workaround?
Hi Mario! Sorry, but for now the confirmation page has to be on the same domain (we note that in the article above). There's no workaround right now, but we'll definitely consider how we can address this need in the future!
Any chance you're working on on cross-domain tracking. Many of us are using hosted shopping carts that don't allow domain mapping.
Hey Luke! We're not working on it quite yet, sorry, but it *is* on the list!
yay! You need to update the community site with this - great stuff, thanks!
Re: "same domain"
What if my unbounce landing page is on http://subdomainY.domain.com and the conversion page is on http://subdomainX.domain.com? Will the conversion still register ok?
Hi Nemo! Yes, that will work just fine...
Great feature Carl.
I am most likely to use your page for the number of campaign and different type of conversions, so how you guys going with ' Shortly after our initial launch, we'll be adding the ability perform tracking for multiple conversion types'?
Looking forward to more cool stuff. Thanks
Hi Dean, thanks for the feedback. We have a few other things in the queue first, so still probably a few months out, sorry. Will do our best to get to it as soon as we can!
Hey guys. I have a question about a situation we are currently experiencing.
We have two landing pages (not variations, completely separate pages) that have the same external goal. If someone from 'landing page 1' converts and is tracked using the external tracking code above, since it is the same conversion point as 'landing page 2', will a conversion be attributed to only 'landing page 1' or will it be attributed to both 'landing page 1' and 'landing page 2'?
Hey there, the conversion is recorded when our external tracking code is triggered by a visit to your conversion page. At that time, we lookup the Unbounce page most recently viewed by that visitor (just for your own domain, of course), and credit the conversion to just that page. Hope that answers your question!
Awesome external tracking feature, but it appears that the conversions are being attributed to the success page & not the landing page in the Unbounce dashboard.
The success page is also an Unbounce page & includes a form on it. Could this be what's causing the issue? Or do we just have it setup incorrectly???
Hey Michael, we had a bug where an older version of our external tracking script was being served up for many visitors, causing the conversions to be attributed to the wrong page when using another Unbounce page as the success page. We just fixed this, so conversions should start getting attributed to the correct page again. So sorry for the hassle!
Right on - thanks Carl! Sheldi helped us troubleshoot some of it last week & everything looks like it's working.
Thanks for the help & keep up the great work!
My success page is on the same domain as my mapped unbounce page, but my success page with the script is also mapped. Will it still work? Seems not to be working as far as I can tell.
Hi Ben, sorry we missed this. If this is still an issue for you, can you send in the details of your setup to support@unbounce.com? We'd want to know your Unbounce page URL, and your success page URL.
Hi Ben,
I want to track my email signup conversion using google analytics. Could you suggest me how we can do it, if at all.
Hmm. We're working with a system from LeadDoubler.com enabling us to create an online calculator. This runs on their domain making your tracking system not work.
Please consider using another system than cookies for tracking. (What about pixel inclusions from your server).
If I use this conversion script on my thankyou page which track conversions on my site, does it mean I do not need any goal set on the Unbounce page (that is the script does that)? What if I keep a conversion goal linked to a button on the landing page then? Will it add up both conversions in the stats? I am a bit confused I must say.
Thanks!
Hi Yann, excellent question! Unbounce tracks conversions on a per-visitor basis, and each visitor can only be converted once. So, if you are using the external conversion script, you don't need to (and probably don't want to) select a button link as a conversion goal. If you did that, then the conversion would be counted as soon as the button was clicked, and later, when the *real* conversion happens and triggers the external conversion script, nothing would happen at all. Does that answer your question? Sorry for any confusion...
Hi Carl, yes clear now. Thanks for that.
Alright sorry, I thought I had this but that last question/answer kinda threw me off.
I have Landing Page A, which I want to track click-through on the "register now" button. And I have Landing Page B, which I want to track conversion on submitting a (iFrame embedded) JotForm.
Do I put the script on Landing page A or B?
Both are on same domain.
Hey Matt - I see where you're going now.
The answer is neither--the conversion script would actually be placed on a separate thank-you page.
With Landing page A, you can set the click-through as a conversion goal in Unbounce so there is no need to use the external conversion tracking script.
With landing page B, you would set the JotForm submit button to send your visitors to a custom thank-you page. You would then place the external conversion tracking script on that thank-you page to trigger a conversion on landing page B.
If you have any other questions, just send me a message to support@unbounce.com and I can have a look at your pages for you.
Hi
Can anyone please tell me how to insert a google adwords conversion code in the thank you page?
Thanks,
How do I track multiple external goals? Im assuming changing 'trackGoal' within _ubaq.push(['trackGoal', 'convert']); should do the trick.
Hi Anubhav! You're just a little bit ahead of us. That's pretty much how we envision it working when we implement multiple external conversion types, however, that's not a feature we've implemented yet. That said, it's high on our priority list, and we'll update this thread when there's some progress to report!
^ looking fwd to it.. keeps us posted it's a must have feature for sure :)
Hi, any suggestion for conversion tracking to Eventbrite? They strip JS in the confirmation page, so this won't work.
As an alternative, I tried Google Analytics multiple domain option, but to make that work, I need to be able to set the onClick attribute of the cross-site links. http://www.google.com/support/analyticshelp/bin/static.py?page=guid... Is there a way to do this in Unbounce?
Or is there another alternative altogether?
Thanks,
Hey Guys,
Checking in again on the multiple external goal tracking. Any way we can expedite this ticket? Or if you guys can provide me a slightly 'hackier' way of doing this that'll do as well. anubhav@team.shoeboxed.com.
Cheers!
Hey Salim, I finally had time to test out a hack that might work for you. As long as you're using just one Unbounce page for your Eventbrite campaigns, you could embed an image that triggers a conversion on that specific page.
Basically, all you have to do is:
Hi Carl,
2 questions for you please:
1. Is it an issue than my external tracking page has a redirect? To give you a bit of background, we are tracking the people registering to our site. This is done by them filling in a form, and getting back an activation link on a mail. When they click, they go to the 'activation successful' page that is then redirected to their 'my account' page. I am asking if this is an issue because I heard somewhere than Google Analytics can miss converstion because of this.
2. We have other scripts on the 'activation successful' page: Zopim, Google Analytics. Is there a risk they "interact" and make the stats non reliable?
Thanks a lot,
Yann
Obviously something is wrong with our external tracking... 0 conversion on https://app.unbounce.com/pages/daf78730-14f1-11e1-8830-12313e003591 can't be right.
Can you guys help? Maybe the answer is in the questions I asked the other day. As an extra info, note that conversions are counted fine with Google Analytics whose code sits on the same page as the Unbounce one.
Thanks in advance,
Y.
Hi Yan, sorry for the slow response, I notice you're now getting conversions to that page, did you get it sorted out?
Cheers,
Carl
Hi Carl,
Not sorted out no.
What I did is to add standard conversions so I can compare champion / challengers while I wait for the external tracking issue to be solved.
If you need me to remove those standard conversions to figure out what's going on, let me know.
Cheers,
Yann
Thanks Carl, I'm going to give this a try on an event that has one UB page and on EB page. I think it should work.
Hey Yann, can you open a case with support on this one? Just send an email to support@unbounce.com. Comments in our support articles don't work the best for tracking down issues like this, sorry!
How can I track multiple types of conversions by using the Unbounce external tracking script?
Hey Owen, sorry, but we currently don't have that functionality yet. Multiple conversion types is on our roadmap for early this year though!
Will this work with Shopify?
Right now, the process is:
Hi Chip! As we mention in the article above "You must ensure that your Unbounce pages and your conversion page are on the same domain so that the tracking cookies can be read." Given that in this case "mydomain.com" and "shopify.com" are different, this won't work in your example, sorry!
Thanks, Carl. Would the solution you offered for Eventbrite (above) work in my case?
Hey Chip! No, sorry, that solution still requires the tracking cookies. That was a workaround for a lack of Javascript support...
I have two questions regarding the external conversion tracking and integration with 3rd-party apps like MailChimp.
Question #1: If our landing page uses a "Register with Facebook", does that need the external conversion tracking and, if so, will it allow integration with MailChimp?
Question #2: If our landing page uses an embedded iframe for registration, will that mean that we can't use the Unbounce integration with MailChimp?
Hi Brian!
With regard to your first question, if your "Register with Facebook" process can end on a page that lives on your own domain/sub-domain, then you can use the external tracking script to track that funnel. I'm not a Facebook api expert, but I thought their ToS prohibits you from storing personal information obtained via their API, and certainly storing their email in MailChimp would be subject to that rule. Maybe I'm completely misunderstanding what you're trying to do.
The integration with MailChimp depends on you using an Unbounce form on your landing page. Submissions to that form are then also sent to a MailChimp list when you enable the integration. So to answer your question regarding the embedded iframe, if that iframe contains a form that posts somewhere other than Unbounce, then no, you can't use our built-in integration.
Hope I've understood your question. Feel free to ping us at support@unbounce.com as well.
Carl,
I had essentially the same issue as Brian, but I would like to ask again and add something in by phrasing the question differently:
I am integrating the FB Registration into my unbounce page and have successfully added the above script to my confirm/results page, which is being reflected properly as a conversion in my Unbounce dashboard. However, I would like to know if there is a way to post the fields back to my Unbounce form for that page (which now is not existent on the original Unbounce landing page)?? Achieving this would allow me to not only Register with FB and measure conversions, but also continue to populate my leads table as was being done before by filling out the form.
Thanks.
Hey Michael! Unfortunately, there's no ready way to accept Facebook's registration posts into your Unbounce form quite yet. This is something we plan to address in the future, though (see https://getsatisfaction.com/unbounce/topics/any_plans_for_a_login_w_fb_button).
Hi Carl - quick question. Will the external goal tracking work if there is a 3rd party payment tool between the custom domain with the landing page and the confirmation page on the root domain?
In other words, if the funnel looks like this: landing page (custom domain) - payment page (3rd party domain) - confirmation page (root domain) conversion goal.
Thanks.
- Michael
Hey Michael, that should work just fine!
Hi,
All are campaigns are using server side pixel (STS pixel). Do you support this ?
Hey Shay, should be no problem, but a little hard to answer for sure without a bit more detail about your setup and how you'd like everything to work together. Probably best to email our fantastic team at support@unbounce.com (or give us a ring at 1.888.515.9161) and we can help you get setup...
Hi everyone,
It seems to me that this is an important feature I should be using, but unfortunately I still don't understand what purpose this feature does really serve. Can you share an article or info on why I should use this external tracking thing? Very curious. Thanks 1000!
Hello Andrea! The external conversion tracking code is used to trigger conversions farther down your funnel or in instances where you are not using an Unbounce form. If you are already tracking your conversions in Unbounce then you don't need to use this script. I hope that helps to clarify things for you :)
How is the multiple external tracking work coming along?
We will be using unbounce to manage multiple landing pages with 2-3 different calls to action (but only one per landing page). Each call to action leads to a funnel on our own site and we'd like to put the tracking code at the confirmation stage of that funnel to only track true conversions instead of just click throughs. Is this possible yet?
thanks,
Martin
Hi Martin - you could exclusively track "true" conversions by using the external conversion tracking script on the final page of your funnel as outlined at http://support.unbounce.com/entries/20473626
Tracking multiple conversions is still on our roadmap though we don't have an estimate of when this feature would be released. For now, to compare clicks on the landing page vs. conversions at the end of the funnel, you might want to consider adding a third party analytics tool like Google Analytics.
Hi,
I just wanted to ask whether you will be supporting separate domain conversion in the future? We are unable to set unbounce up on our ecommerce site, and currently all landing pages are set up on a subdomain of our main brand's site.
Chris
Ryan, I have issues with tracking. My setup is the following:
- Main landing page for my home page with different variants
- Call to action button on this page which leads to the "plans & pricing" page (also using variants in Unounce)
- If they take action on this pricing page they are redirected to checkout processor and after successful checkout, I send them back an unbounce managed Thank you page where I added your "external tracking" script
Conversions for checkout are not tracked correctly to say the least. It seems it's random in fact. I am also tracking with GA, so it's not a biggie, but my goal using Unbounce is not to mess with tracking. Since it's an A/B splitting engine with so many cool features, it's becoming pretty useless without proper tracking of conversions.
Tracking conversions through a funnel is a must in my book. Can you tell me what to do to get proper stats when people go from my main page ==> pricing page => checkout ==> Thank you page.
ThankJP
Ryan, any chance to get any comment on my comment above :-) ?
Thanks
JP
I'm having same problem as JP Schoeffel with the script... It is tracking some but not all. I've tracked about 11 says it only tracked 3...
Hey Matt - would you mind sending us the page that you're seeing this issue with to support@unbounce.com? For something like this we'll want to do some digging into the overall page setup and probably do some testing on our end as well.
Guys,
honnestly, do you have any chance to improve the tracking script to make it useful. As it is, it's completely useless, with random tracking and around 60 to 80% inaccuracy. No idea why. Of course I track with GA, but what's the point of having a full integrated split testing solution if I can only rely on external tracking. Basically, the conversion rates are wrong, and so are the Confidence level reported.
And my setup is really easy: 1 page with 2 variants, 1 order button, redirecting to a thank you page where the tracking code is pasted.
Thanks
I have been using the external conversion tracking code on a thank you pages on my own domain www.MyWebsite.com and it has been working perfectly but recently I have moved my thank you pages to a third party site www.ThirdPartySite.com/thankyou and I am wondering whether or not the external conversion tracking code above will work?
Ryan,
As a new customer I would like to know that improved tracking is on the roadmap, and how far ahead. It's vital statistical information that needs to be presented to the my platform users. 1/click and many/click conversion types, with a settable value attribute -- is it too much to ask for?
Namaste & keep up the great work!
Howdy,
In your example, you tell us to add the external tracking code to the unbounce landing page we're working on.
But isn't it supposed to go on the final thank you page my customers see and not on my landing page?
If that's the case, could you change the explanation at the top of this thread?
Or do you mean that I should be putting the code snippet on my landing page AND on my thank you page?
Thanks
Peter - Improved tracking is on our road map; we'd really like to give you the ability to track multiple conversion types. Stay tuned! In the mean time, I can help you configure goal tracking through Google Analytics if that would help get you the data you need.
Jeanne - Thank you for pointing out the issue with the article. You're exactly right that the external conversion tracking script goes on the final thank you page your visitors see (doesn't have to be an Unbounce page). The article's all tidied up now.
Hi
Its now gone more than 2 years since you guys said that cross-domain tracking was "on the list". How long is this list?
I am eagerly waiting this feature. We are doing sub-optimal conversion tracking because of this..
Thanks.