CTA tracking on external website and Google Analytics

[katieliston]

I'm looking to integrate Hubspot CTA's on my wordpress blog. I am not switching my blog over to hubspot hosted. 

I want to ensure before we start implementing CTA's that this won't affect Google Analytics data. 

I've noticed on my site that when I put a CTA  that when I click the link there's a utm_referrer on the cta button link. Usually it's bad practice to have utm's within your own site as this causes Google Analytics to record a new session and skew analytics. 

Has anyone experience with this and Hubspot ctas? Thanks 

[XLiu]

Hey Daniel, 

I see your post talking about using UTMs to track the traffic source of CTA. 

Currently, I have encountered an issue that the smart CTA is not placing their attributes properly for one campaign. All traffic from that specific CTA is "Direct" on Analytics while other CTAs created on Hubspot look fine.  That failed tracked CTA has the same configuration as the other CTAs. 

Do you know it happens?

[justbeez]

To be clear, UTMs on an internal links are a bad practice. Why? Because any change to campaign terminates the existing session and starts a new one. So now you have two sessions, two different landing pages, and any conversions that get tracked will only be attributed to the campaign from the CTA and will lose all attribution to the original traffic channel.

So let's say you drive paid traffic to your site from an ad and the visitor clicks your CTA button. Now GA attributes any conversion they make to the CTA, and you won't see any attribution credited to your ad.

This is easy enough to Google for, but here's CXL's tips on their UTM builder as one example:

https://cxl.com/blog/utm-parameters/#tips

[DanielSanchez · Accepted solution]

Hi @katieliston ,

I have always used UTMs on my sites and I have never heard that it is a bad practice, quite the contrary, UTM does not affect anything negatively and was made to assist in reporting. Know the origin, the campaign, etc ...

All WordPress and / or HubSpot sites, I use UTM without any problem in the Analytics and HubSpot reports.

Wait for more comments from staff, but I assure you that UTM supports the report and not the opposite.

Did this post help solve your problem? If so, please mark it as a solution.

Best regards!