A skilled colleague with a fairly advanced web configuration recently asked me:
At this point I realized I want all conversion data in one GA view. Period. Is there is some major reason why I shouldn’t use this approach, that you can think of?
I agree, having it all in one view is a good choice.
When you have several parts to your website, be sure to use cross-domain tracking, subdomain tracking and exclusion filters, as applicable.
The reason for this is to ensure that platforms and landing pages don’t get marked in GA as the “source” of the traffic.
To be clear, the purpose of cross-domain tracking is to keep together all sites and URLs that pertain to a unique entity. Very roughly “a website” “a business” but not literally.
(I struggle to find the right word for “entity”, it’s not exactly the site the matters, nor the domain, nor the [legal] business, some people call them “separate projects” but I find “projects” too generic of a word.)
Rather the point is to have all the sites, platforms, pages, SaaS solutions, etc that are working together in conjunction serving as one entity, all under one roof, so all the data together can be in one Analytics account, one AdWords account.
The main reason for this is that you may use launchprogram.com as your main website, then you might add a shopping cart and because of the SaaS platform you end up using launchprogram.samcart.com or launchprogram.thrivecart.com and later you build a landing page with launchprogram.leadpages.co and then you switch to launchprogram.clickfunnels.com
This is where you end up needing cross-domain tracking.
To say it another way, the purpose of cross-domain tracking is not so that everything you own can be under one roof 🙂
For example I have octobermarketing.com and properppc.com (coming soon!) Even though they are both part of my business, and both are related to my AdWords service, they will have completely separate google accounts, with separate analytics, and separate AdWords accounts.
When it comes to their functions, they are distinguished (separable) entities and while they both help bring customers and revenue into my company (a single, legal tax-paying business), they don’t work together … they are separate little worlds within the greater business universe.
I assume sub-domain is self explanatory: the usual “www. “ seen on so many websites is technically a subdomain though a lot of people don’t realize that. learn.launchprogram.com and promo.launchprogram.com and blog.launchprogram.com would all be subdomains.