For the last 6 months or more I’ve been frustrating over the Google Analytics and Bookeo integration on my website. I wrote about this in a previous post where I thought I had solved the issue, but then the issue reverted (due to some changes I made that I didn’t think would make a difference I suppose), so I want to outline better what was going on because I was throwing thousands of dollars at ads without the ability to know if they were doing much good.
Here’s the short answer:
There’s no way to have customers book on the bookeo website AND use Google analytics (because to use analytics requires the widget which is only available when my site hosts the booking page).
I emailed Bookeo support to confirm this. They replied “That is correct, if you want to use the full capabilities of Google Analytics, you must embed the booking widget in your own website.”
Let’s talk about the longer answer now.
How to Set Up Google Analytics and Bookeo For Beginners
Bookeo allows you two choices of where your booking page can exist: your site or the Bookeo.com site.
Bookeo also allows you to put in your Google Analytics tracking codes (both UA and GA4)
These two features interact with each other, HOWEVER, Bookeo put the settings on different pages so it gives the impression you can paste in your GA codes and set the booking page to “on bookeo” and it will all work.
THIS IS NOT THE CASE.
If your booking page is on the Bookeo.com site, you will send your users there using a link like bookeo.com/mysite1234 But as soon as a user clicks that, you lose the tracking.
You can see the following statement in bookeo article titled Google Analytics is not tracking traffic sources correctly: “Do not use bookeo.com/yourname links on your site if you want traffic sources to be kept. You can use a widget code that corresponds to any bookeo.com/yourname direct link, place that widget in a page of your web site, and use a link to that page instead of the bookeo.com/yourname link”
I must have read that 20 times before I sort of understood it. What the heck is “widget code” ? Turns out, it is a term that Bookeo uses more than it is a standard phrase.
The “widget code” is found on the Settings > Integration page. But it DOESN’T SHOW UP unless you choose the right option for “page location”. It is not obvious at all that choosing the right option here reveals a widget code.
Therefore, there is no way to get a widget code if you do not host on your site. And if you host the booking page on Bookeo, then you won’t have the widget and therefore not have GA tracking which requires the widget.
Ok, so if you choose “embed a widget on my website” for the Page Location dropdown you’ll see the widget code. Copy it.
Then make a new page on your website and put that code in the html. I use wordpress and this was as easy as making a page called “booking” and putting the value there. Here’s a page that shows you how to integrate bookeo code with other website builders.
For WordPress, there is also a plugin but dropping the html into a page seemed way easier. Here’s instructions on how to do both those options.
Finally – and crucially – go through your site and ANY links that were going to the bookeo.com/mysite1234 you need to go to the new page on your website you created. For me, that page was called “booking” and the only content was the widget code that I inserted into the HTML (like I just explained). The booking page is retrieved from bookeo and fills up that page.
On the Settings > Integrations page there are also some options on how you want the booking page to appear (new page, same page) and how you want it to work on desktop and mobile.