Set up a custom domain for your checkout

Boost your conversion rates with custom domains

Custom domains allow venues to use their own website domain name for their online checkouts. Custom domains provide:

• A seamless guest experience, from the start to finish of their purchase, to maximise conversion rates
• Full conversion tracking throughout the checkout process – via a Facebook pixel or Google conversion snippet – significantly improving the performance of your programmatic marketing

This article shows you how to set up custom domains for your Legacy & Progressive Checkouts. 

About custom domains

By default, your ROLLER online checkouts are published via the domain roller.app.

However, custom domains enable mapping to your domain (eg tickets.yourdomain.com). Once the mapping process is complete, you'll be able to reach the online checkout by both the custom domain and the ROLLER domain.

You can then update your website and social Book Now links to direct guests to your custom domain. 

Selecting your domain name

Select and enter a name that is:

1. The same as your public website (eg funstuff.com) and use a sub-domain (eg tickets.funstuff.com); and
2. Unique - two ROLLER venues can not share the same custom domain and a legacy checkout can not use the same custom domain as a progressive checkout.

Important warnings

• Setting up custom domains is a technical process. If you do not have experience with this process, contact your third-party domain name hosting service (eg GoDaddy) for help.
• Using a third-party domain name hosting service is not supported on ROLLER and can cause unexpected behavior or service disruptions for your online checkout.
• ROLLER is not responsible for any data loss or online checkout outages due to unsupported configurations.
• The custom domain will also go down if the hosting service goes down.
• If the mapping process is not performed correctly, your website could go down (including links to your online checkout) or stop responding. It could also take time to get the website up and running again.
• The ROLLER support team can not log into your third-party domain name hosting account to fix issues for you, even if you give explicit permission. You will need to contact your third-party hosting service for support.
• If you're using Apple Pay or Google Pay as payment methods, contact the ROLLER support team for guidance. Guests won't be able to use these payment methods until you've completed some additional steps to verify your domain with Apple & Google.

Before you start

Before starting the process, you must make sure that you have:

• Coordinated the technical contact managing your domain name hosting account to add the DNS records to the hosting account. These DNS records are generated as you complete the process below (see step 4). A delay in adding the DNS records can cause a delay or failure of the verification process.
• The permission Can manage online checkout settings enabled for your ROLLER account. Administrators have this permission enabled by default. 
• Reviewed and understood the process below. 

Process

Legacy and Progressive Checkouts require separate custom domains to be created. While the process of creating and managing custom domains is the same for both Legacy and Progressive Checkouts, the location in Venue Manager is slightly different:

• For Legacy Checkouts, go to Apps > Legacy checkouts > Custom domain.
• For Progressive Checkouts, go to Apps > Progressive checkouts > Settings

Then follow these steps:

1. In the custom domain field, add your unique custom domain name. For example, tickets.funstuff.com
2. Click Continue to generate the required DNS records for the custom domain. The record generation can take up to 60 seconds, depending on background services.
3. When completed, a set of DNS records appear. Copy or email these records to your domain name hosting service to add to your hosting account in the next 1-15 minutes.
   
   For a smooth verification process, the DNS records must be added within 15 minutes of generating the DNS records. This is why you must coordinate with the technical contact managing your domain name hosting account before you start.

5. Once the DNS records have been added to your domain name hosting account, click Check verification. You now need to wait for the DNS records to populate and verify, sometimes taking up to 12 hours.
   
   It takes time for DNS changes to populate from the host to all global servers. This time depends on the DNS TTL (time to live) settings. Check back periodically every four hours or so until the verification process results in a verified status.

6. Once verified, a green Verified label appears.
7. Check that the online checkout loads and performs correctly:
   • From Venue Manager, go to Apps > Online checkout.
   • For each online checkout, use the options menu (three dots) and select Copy URL to clipboard.
   • Paste the URL into a browser.
   • Perform a full test transaction including a live card payment via the online checkout.
   • Once you're happy that the full checkout experience operates correctly on your domain, update your website and social Book now links to direct traffic to your new URL.