Enable Cross-Domain Tracking for VWO Insights

Overview

When analyzing visitor behavior across multiple domains using VWO Insights, ensuring consistent tracking is critical for accurate results. The cross-domain tracking feature provides a powerful solution by unifying visitor sessions across different domains. This unification ensures that when a visitor navigates between your domains (for example, from a marketing site to a checkout site), VWO captures their entire journey as a single session in VWO Insights.

For example, you have two websites, a primary site (mystore.com) and a separate checkout domain (secure-checkout.com), both registered within the same VWO account. A visitor browses products on mystore.com, clicks Buy Now, and is redirected to secure-checkout.com to complete the purchase. Without cross-domain tracking, VWO Insights would record this as two separate sessions from two different users, making it impossible to see their complete, end-to-end journey. With cross-domain tracking enabled, VWO understands it is the same visitor and stitches the two sessions together. Thus, enabling you to view the entire process, from browsing to purchase, in a single, unified session recording.

This article further explains how to enable cross-domain tracking for VWO Insights in your account.

Prerequisites

Ensure that you have added the same VWO SmartCode on all domains you wish to track. The feature links visitor data based on the account ID in the SmartCode.

Enable Cross-Domain Tracking for VWO Insights in Your Account

This is a global setting that, once enabled, applies to all VWO Insights data collection, including Session Recordings, Heatmaps, Forms, Metric Reports, and Funnels.

To enable cross-domain tracking for VWO Insights in your account:

1. Log in to your VWO account.
2. Click at the top-right corner of the dashboard, then select Settings from the menu.
3. From the left panel, go to Accounts > Insights Settings and scroll down to the Cross Domain Tracking section.
4. Check the Track visitors across multiple domains checkbox.
   A warning pop-up appears. The warning ensures you understand the impact on your data. Read it carefully, and if you wish to proceed, click Yes, Proceed.

Once you enable cross-domain tracking in VWO Insights, VWO begins to link visitor activity across the different domains associated with your account.

What Happens After You Enable Cross-Domain Tracking for Insights?

Here are the key changes you will observe:

• Unified Visitor Profiles: Instead of creating a new visitor profile when a user moves to a new domain, VWO will now recognize and link the existing profile.
• Seamless Session Recordings: You can watch a single session recording that captures the visitor's entire journey, from the moment they land on your first domain to their actions on the second domain.
• Accurate Funnel Reports: If you have funnels with steps on different domains, visitors will now correctly proceed through the funnel instead of being marked as a drop-off when they switch domains.
• Consistent Data and Sampling: VWO maintains the visitor's sampling status across domains. If a visitor is sampled on the first domain, their session will continue to be sampled on the second, thus preventing data discrepancies.

Verify if Cross-Domain Tracking is Working as Expected

The most effective way to verify your setup is by checking your session recordings.

1. Open a new browser session (or an incognito window).
2. Navigate to your first domain (for example, mystore.com).
3. Perform a few actions (clicks, scrolls).
4. Navigate to your second domain (for example, secure-checkout.com) by clicking a link from the first domain.
5. Perform a few more actions on the second domain.
6. Wait a few minutes, then look for the session in your VWO Session Recordings dashboard. A successful setup will show the entire journey across both domains in a single recording.

Caveats

• Browser Restrictions on Third-Party Cookies: Cross-domain tracking relies on third-party cookies. As some browsers disable third-party cookies by default, this feature may not work for all your visitors. This is a browser-level restriction that VWO cannot override. For more information on how to avoid this issue and maintain consistent tracking across domains, refer to Handling Browser Restrictions on Third-party Cookies.
• No Historical Data Merging: This feature does not work retroactively. Enabling it will only merge visitor sessions going forward. It will not merge any visitor data that was collected before the feature was enabled.
• Signal Tracking Limitations: Certain user interaction signals, such as Quick Back events, are not tracked when a visitor switches between domains in different browser tabs.
• Sampling Status Consistency: A visitor's sampling status (whether they are included in data sampling or not) is determined when they start their session on the first domain. This status will remain the same for their entire journey, even after they navigate to a different domain. For example, if a visitor is sampled on website-a.com, they will continue to be sampled on website-b.com.

Troubleshooting

FAQs

• How will enabling cross-domain tracking affect my visitor count in VWO Insights?
  After enabling this feature, you may notice a decrease in your unique visitor count. This change is expected and indicates that the tracking is working correctly. VWO will no longer count a single user visiting two of your domains as two separate visitors. Instead, it will correctly identify them as one, leading to more accurate visitor metrics.
   
• Other than installing the VWO SmartCode, do I need to make any more changes to my website's code to enable cross-domain tracking?
  No. For VWO Insights, once you enable the setting in the VWO app, no additional code changes are required on your website.
   
• What happens if I disable cross-domain tracking after it has been enabled?
  If you disable the feature, VWO will revert to its default behavior and will no longer link visitor sessions across your domains. Any visitor moving from one domain to another will be treated as a new, separate visitor. Data that was collected while the feature was active will remain merged, but all new data for each user will be collected in separate, individual sessions. We strongly recommend keeping the setting enabled to ensure data consistency.
   
• Do I need to enable this setting in case of sub-domains also?
  No, there is no need to enable it for subdomain tracking. VWO automatically handles tracking across subdomains (for example, blog.example.com  and shop.example.com). Enabling this setting is only necessary for tracking between different main domains (for example, website-a.com  and website-b.com).

Need more help?

For further assistance or more information, contact VWO Support.