Home > Design - Imagery, Banners & Landers > Landing Pages

Tracking Domain in URL Arguments? (6)

03-20-2019 06:39 PM #1 bluemarble (Member)
Tracking Domain in URL Arguments?

After downloading and reviewing some landing pages, I noticed some of them put their tracking domain in the URL, that looks something like:

Code:
index.html?td=example.com&data1=aaa&data2=bbb
And within the HTML, there's code that referenced 'td':

Code:
window.location="https://"+getURLParameter("td")+"/click.php?lp=1"
It seems the advantage of something like this is that because the tracking domain isn't hardcoded in the LP, if you need to quickly swap out tracking domains (e.g. because it gets flagged by Google), you can implement the change just by changing the URL. Otherwise, you'd have to edit every LP.

I'm considering using this technique. Besides for the added complexity, are there any disadvantages to doing something like this?

03-20-2019 09:35 PM #2 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

I don't think there are any disadvantages to using a system like this, if anything, it gives more control to whoever is using a setup like this.

And yes, looks like a system to allow for instant or automatic change of tracking domains in case of a flag, or to prevent the flags from happening fast. They might also be doing some other stuff with this, for example some funnel manipulation based on where the traffic comes from etc ...

03-21-2019 05:17 PM #3 bluemarble (Member)

Hey matuloo, thanks for weighing in. In your opinion, are there any disadvantages of encoding the entire tracking link in the 'td' variable like:

Code:
?td=http%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2Fout%2Fclick.php
And decoding the URL with:

Code:
var link = decodeURIComponent(getURLParameter('td'));
That way, we can swap out entire trackers (Voluum, FunnelFlux, Binom, Thrive).

Anyway, just thinking out loud here. I think this is a cool feature for landing pages.

03-21-2019 07:52 PM #4 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

I know that some people are doing this, even using multiple trackers at the same time... but to me it sounds like an unnecessary complication, I'm pretty sure I'd get lost in the process and screw something up I also heard some opinions that were against making the links to complicated and featuring many special chars ... the argument was that these can increase the chances of the link "breaking" and resulting in a click loss. I didn't run any tests personally, so can't confirm nor deny this.

03-21-2019 09:03 PM #5 bluemarble (Member)

I'm with you 100%. The more complicated something is, the more likely I'll mess it up too.

The scenario I'm envisioning is when CPV Lab went out of business because the owners disappeared, I had to edit all my landing pages. In the original LP that I looked at, although they could swap out the domain, they hardcoded the '/click' portion. So if they ever wanted to move off Voluum to another tracker, they'd still have to edit all their LPs.

Anyway, I wanted someone to bounce my ideas off of. Thank you.

03-21-2019 10:16 PM #6 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

I see what you mean, had to go through this once too and it took me a while to change the click urls on all my landing pages, but it wasn't such an issue after all, I think I had about 40 or so LPs, so I handled it pretty quickly. I used some editor to mass edit multiple files at once with the "replace" function I think it took me longer to set all the LPs up again in the new tracker and create the campaigns again, than it took to replace the urls. But I can imagine it would take longer for someone with tons of LPs, especially some more complicated ones.

Home > Design - Imagery, Banners & Landers > Landing Pages