Maximise your conversion rates with custom domains
Custom domains allow you to use your own domain name (or web address) for your 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 – greatly improving the performance of your programmatic marketing
In this article:
About custom domains
Important warnings
Before you start
Process
About custom domains
By default your online checkout runs on a ROLLER domain (roller.app/…). With custom domains, the ROLLER domain can be mapped to your custom 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 point to your custom domain.
Selecting your domain name
Select a custom domain name that is the same as your main website (eg funstuff.com) and use a sub-domain (eg tickets.funstuff.com).
The custom domain name must be unique. Two ROLLER venues can not share the same custom domain.
Important warnings
- Setting up custom domains is a technical process. If you do not have experience with this process, then 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 loss of data or online checkout outages due to unsupported configurations.
- If the hosting service goes down, then the custom domain will also go 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 some 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 your explicit permission. You will need to contact your third-party hosting service for support.
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 access checkout builder enabled for your ROLLER account. Administrators have this permission enabled by default.
- Reviewed and understood the process below.
Process
- From Venue Manager, go to Apps > Online checkouts > Custom domain.
- In the custom domain field, add your unique custom domain name. For example, tickets.funstuff.com
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Once verified, a green Verified label appears.
- 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.