*This post is published on LinkedIn via Daniel Rust CTO/ co-Founder of EVO makers of DevHub - Web Experience Platform
There are many ways that marketing companies describe the concept of losing track of a visitor after they have payed for them to visit a Landing Page or Proxy Site.
"Breaking Proxy", "Lead Leakage", "Losing Attribution", etc
The purpose of creating a Proxy is so you can drive inbound traffic to a copy of a customer's existing website, but be able to track all leads that are generated within that campaign via Call Tracking and Form Fill capture.
But if a Visitor to the Proxy clicks on any link that takes them outside the Proxy, you immediately lose the ability to track what they do after that. This could be any sort of link (Instagram, a Press Article, or linking to their Yelp Profile). You can't reasonably stop the Visitor from visiting these links without affecting their User Experience.
But there are cases where you want to make sure you have a deep enough "net" or “gates” in place to keep the Visitor tracked as much as possible during their Session.
The DevHub Proxy platform gives you full flexibility to decide what paths you want the Visitor to take.
We will start with a simple Proxy of a customer website
Customer’s Original Domain: http://www.spalotus.com Our Proxy Domain: http://www.spalotus.co
1) Mobile Sites/Subdomains
The most common issue that can cause a lost Visitor is a dedicated Mobile Site. Since the redirect to the mobile site only happens on a Mobile device, it is easy to miss this during QA, leading to 50% or more loss in tracked visits.
[Visitor Clicks to www.spalotus.co on their iPhone, and they are immediately redirected to m.spalotus.com based on device detection within their Site, breaking Proxy]
Since this mobile site most likely contains the same Phone Numbers, etc that you want to replace and track, we suggest that you always Proxy the mobile subdomain if it is present on the customer's Site.
Example Config to keep that Visitor Source Domain: http://m.spalotus.com Our Domain: http://m.spalotus.co
Optimal User Flow:
“Mobile Visit on iPhone” www.spalotus.co
Redirected to Mobile m.spalotus.co
“Contact Us” m.spalotus.co/contact-us/
2) Other Subdomains (Ecommerce Stores, Support Panels, etc)
As businesses leverage more and more services to support their Web Presence, they can have multiple URLs/Subdomains to support this. You can optionally Proxy these URLs as well to insure that you maintaining the visitors as they browse back and forth between these Sub-Sites and their main site.
Examples:
A Shopify Store - i.e. https://store.spalotus.com/
A Zendesk Support Page - i.e. http://support.spalotus.com/
[Visitor Clicks to www.spalotus.co on their Desktop from a Google Campaign, and they click on the "Store" tab and they leave the proxy to https://store.spalotus.com]
Example Config to keep that Visitor Source Domain: https://store.spalotus.com Our Domain: https://store.spalotus.co
Optimal User Flow:
- Clicks "Visit our Store" store.spalotus.co/shop/
- "Best Yoga Mat" store.spalotus.co/shop/best-yoga-mat/
- Clicks "Contact Us" www.spalotus.co/contact-us/
- "I saw in your store that you have Blue Yoga mats, do you have any Pink Yoga mats?"
3) 3rd Party Widgets and Services
In addition to subdomains that are extensions to their main Site, many businesses are now leveraging various Widgets and Services that they place within their main Site to add valuable tools to enhance their Customer's experience.
Examples:
- "Join My Mailing List" widget powered by MailChimp
- "Contact Us Today" form powered by Wufoo Forms
[Visitor Clicks to www.spalotus.co and is interested in learning more about the business so they click on "Contact Us". On that page is a Contact Form powered by Wufoo. They fill out and submit the form, but that form sends the Visitor towufoo.com and then redirects them back to a thank you page on the Customer's original site www.spalotus.com/thank-you/]
The DevHub proxy technology can intercept these complex redirections to keep the Visitor contained as they bounce between the various URLs and keeping this seamless for the Visitor as they navigate the Site.
Example Config to keep that Visitor Source Domain: https://www.wufoo.com Our Domain: https://wufoo.spalotus.co
Optimal User Flow:
- "Contact Us" www.spalotus.co/contact-us/
- "Submit Form" wufoo.spalotus.co/process-form...
- "Thank You For Contacting Us, feel free to call "206-XXX-XXXX" if you have any questions" www.spalotus.co/thank-you/