Attribution

First touch and last touch

Attribution decides which source gets credit for a sale. First touch credits where the buyer first arrived from. Last touch credits the visit they bought on. Data-driven models spread credit across several visits, which needs a way to recognise the buyer across days or weeks, usually a long-lived cookie.

For a content site that sells, first touch answers the question owners usually ask: which posts, searches and newsletters bring the people who end up buying.

How Vireo Pro traces a sale

When a visitor first arrives, Vireo Pro notes their source, medium, campaign, referrer and landing page. When they buy, the order is matched to that first visit. Without UTM tags, the source comes from the referrer. If there's no visit to match, the order counts as direct.

Orders come from WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, FluentCart or Freemius. A full refund removes the order's revenue, and a partial refund takes off only the refunded amount.

The Revenue screen then lists top revenue sources by source, medium and campaign, and revenue by landing page, each page with its orders, revenue and the share of visitors who landed there and bought. WooCommerce Subscriptions renewals are credited to whatever brought in the first order.

The 48-hour limit

Vireo counts visitors without cookies, and the daily secret that tells them apart is kept for two days at most. A buyer can only be matched to a visit from the last 48 hours. Someone who reads a post today and buys next week shows as direct, and so does a buyer whose browser blocked the tracker.

That makes Vireo's attribution a lower bound for slow purchase decisions and a close match for quick ones. A shop where most people buy on the day they arrive gets a near-complete picture. A product with a long research phase will see a large direct share.

Pitfalls

Each order keeps its currency, and totals are shown in your first store's currency without conversion. A site that sells in two currencies sees them mixed in the totals.