How to: Publish NextGen Experiences to Custom Domains

This article provides you with a high-level walk-through of all the steps you need to follow in order to publish a NextGen Experience to a custom domain registered in your account. Before you begin, please ensure that your IT team has made all the necessary changes as described in the attached Technical Guide to set up the configuration of custom domains. 

 

View custom domains connected to your account

Follow the steps below to view all the custom domains associated with your account:

  1. Hover over the cog icon in the top right-hand corner of Grow.

  2. Select Account Settings (this option is only visible if you are a Publisher or Admin).

  3. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to view the custom domains registered with your account.

    mceclip1.png

 

Connect a publishing channel with a custom domain

You need to connect each custom domain to a publishing channel. Once this is done, any Experience you publish to that channel will use your custom domain instead of a system-generated URL.

Follow the steps below to connect a new channel to a custom domain:

  1. Hover over the cog icon in the top right-hand corner of Grow.

  2. Select Manage Channels (this option is only visible if you are a Publisher or Admin).

  3. Choose one of your existing channels on the left and click on the Edit Channel button (or connect to a new channel by clicking the Connect new channel button at the top-left).

    mceclip4.png

  4. On the Edit channel screen, select a custom domain from the Custom domain drop-down and click Save.
    A custom domain can only be associated with one web channel at a time.
    (If you connected to a new channel instead of editing an existing one, the domain selection is done in the creation wizard.)

    mceclip5.png

Note: Once a channel is set up with a custom domain, the domain gets fixed and can no longer be changed.
Therefor, when editing such a channel, the domain field is read-only.
mceclip5.png

 

Publish NextGen Experience to a custom domain

Follow the steps below to publish a NextGen Experience to a custom domain:

  1. Select the Experience that you like to publish to a custom domain from the Experiences tab.

  2. Click Publish in the left-hand menu.

  3. After approving the Experience (see this article for more info), click the + Add Destination button.

    mceclip6.png

  4. Select the channel that is associated with your custom domain and complete the publishing process as usual (see this article for more info).

    mceclip6.png

  5. Once you've completed the publishing steps, you'll see a publishing destination listed on the publishing screen.

    mceclip6.png

Note: When published to a Microsite, you can use the Preview icon to see the Experience running on your custom domain.
mceclip6.png
The preview then shows the custom domain in the URL (e.g. https://offers.company.com/...).

Previewing Web Embed and Lightbox destinations, show the Experience on the system domain URL, not the custom domain one.

 

Attribution tracking and analytics

You can add trackable parameters to your custom domain URL which then allows you to track the channel, medium and source a user clicked-through from in order to reach the Experience.

This information is used to generate certain Insights reports within your Experience and is also stored against each entry your Experience receives. You can use this data to determine where each user clicked-through from and for attribution purposes.

How to add parameters to custom domain URL:
https://offers.mycompany.com/###?channel=website&medium=direct&source=facebook

Note: The # (Hash) marks represent a unique short-code identifier, you will need to replace these with the actual short-code generated for your campaign.

We hope you found this guide useful. If you need help or have any questions, please reach out to our Support team or email global.support@cheetahdigital.com who will be happy to help get you started and run you through the options available.

 

Attachment