If you have your own website outside of your Bookwhen booking platform, this article explains how to set up cross-domain tracking in Google Analytics.
This helps you track the customer journey from your website to Bookwhen and understand which marketing efforts, such as Google Ads, social media or search, lead to bookings.
What is cross-domain tracking?
Cross-domain tracking allows Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to recognise that a visitor has moved between your website and your Bookwhen booking page as part of the same journey.
For example a customer clicks an ad to your website and their journey looks like this:
Google ads ➡️ Your website ➡️ Your booking page on Bookwhen ➡️ Completed booking
Without cross-domain tracking, GA4 may see the move from your website to Bookwhen as a new visit and record bookwhen.com as the referral source. This can make it harder to see where your bookings originally came from.
With cross-domain tracking set up you can get a clear picture of which marketing activities are generating bookings - such as Google Ads.
Before you start
You'll need:
A Google Analytics 4 property and web data stream
Your GA4 Measurement ID, starting with
G-Access to your website's Google tag settings
Your Bookwhen booking page
1. Add your GA4 Measurement ID to Bookwhen
In Bookwhen, add your GA4 Measurement ID to the analytics section within "customise your booking page"
Learn how to add Google Analytics to your Bookwhen booking page
💡Important: If you are wanting to do cross-domain tracking, your website and Bookwhen must use the same Measurement ID.
2. Set up cross-domain measurement in GA4
In Google Analytics:
Go to Admin → Data collection and modification → Data streams.
Select your web stream.
Select Configure tag settings → Configure your domains.
And then "Configure your domains"
Add your website domain and
bookwhen.com. To manually add a domain, click Add condition under Include domains that match the following conditions:Choose a match type.
Under Domain, enter the identifier for the domain you want to match (e.g., example.com).
Add each domain you want to include in cross-domain measurement.
Conditions are evaluated using OR logic.
Save your changes.
3. Test your setup
Visit your website and follow the normal journey through to Bookwhen.
When moving from your website to Bookwhen, GA4 may add a _gl parameter to the URL. This helps GA4 connect the two domains.
💡Tip: To verify that your cross-domain tracking is set up correctly, follow Google’s guide to verifying cross-domain measurement.
Tracking completed bookings
Cross-domain tracking keeps the customer journey connected. It does not create a booking conversion by itself.
If purchase tracking is enabled for your Bookwhen account, you can mark the purchase event as a key event in GA4.
This allows you to measure completed bookings against your marketing activity and understand which channels are driving results.
Important
You must use the same GA4 Measurement ID on your website and Bookwhen for cross-domain tracking.
Visitors must consent to analytics cookies for their activity to be measured.
Make sure redirects or custom booking links don't remove tracking parameters.
GA4 booking figures may not exactly match your total Bookwhen bookings.