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What is Multi-Touch Attribution?

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Attribution data helps users understand where their customers came from before making a purchase. The first visit of a customer to a website does not always result in a conversion. Users often visit a shop multiple times before converting. With multi-touch attribution models, marketers can analyze which visits resulted in positive actions.

Peel relies on Shopify’s handling of all user visits to access Referrer and UTM data. Peel is collecting customer attribution data from Shopify. We gather visits for each order of a customer from Shopify.

Shopify shares what they call CustomerJourney and it details referrals and UTM parameters. Peel then defined their own Channel mapping (including paid and organic channels) with 19 platforms so you can get the most accurate tracking of channel performance, without needing to set up the channel mapping yourself like required in Google Analytics or other data platforms.

Fields definitions

  • Shopify source: an attempt by Shopify to define the source/channel. Source from which the customer visited the store, such as a platform (Facebook, Google), email, direct, a website domain, QR code, or unknown.
  • UTM source: the utm_source URL parameter of the session if one was defined in the original link. t.ex. facebook, google, postscript
  • UTM medium: the utm_medium URL parameter of the session if one was defined in the original link. t.ex. paidsocial, cpc, text, email, referral
  • Referrer: When visiting a web page, the referrer or referring page is the URL of the previous web page from which a link was followed. Modern browsers with a focus on privacy are limiting the amount of information sent in the referrer field.

Segments Overview

  • Channel: Peel defined mapping of the 19 most common traffic sources for easier analysis
  • Days to conversion: The number of days between the first touch (or visit) and the order purchase. From 1 day to 30 days since the Shopify cookies expire afterward and the attribution data is lost
  • Landing page: URL of the first page the customer landed on for any session associated with the order
  • Referrer: URL of the previous web page from which a link was followed (see above)
  • UTM Source: Values from the utm_source parameter when landing on the shop on any session
  • UTM Source/Campaign: Values from the utm_source and utm_campaign parameters when landing on the shop on any session
  • UTM Source/Medium: Values from the utm_source and utm_medium parameters when landing on the shop on any session
  • UTM Term: Values from the utm_term parameter when landing on the shop on any session
  • UTM Content: Values from the utm_content parameter when landing on the shop on any session

Channel Definitions

  • Text Messaging
    • UTM source = 'postscript', 'attentive'
    • UTM medium = 'text'
  • Instagram Paid
    • Shopify source = 'Instagram'
    • referrer contains = 'instagram.com'
    • UTM source = 'instagram', 'Instagram'
    • UTM medium = "paidsocial", "paid-social", "paid_social", "Paid Social", "cpc", "ppc"
  • Instagram Organic
    • Shopify source = 'Instagram'
    • referrer contains = 'instagram.com'
    • UTM source = 'instagram', 'Instagram'
  • Facebook Paid
    • Shopify source = 'Facebook'
    • referrer contains 'facebook.com'
    • UTM source = "facebook", "Facebook"
    • UTM medium = "paidsocial", "paid-social", "paid_social", "Paid Social", "cpc", "ppc"
  • Facebook Organic
    • Shopify source = 'Facebook'
    • referrer contains 'facebook.com'
    • UTM source = "facebook", "Facebook"
  • Pinterest
    • Shopify source = 'Pinterest'
    • referrer contains 'pinterest.com'
    • UTM source = "pinterest", "Pinterest"
  • Youtube
    • Shopify source contains 'youtube'
    • referrer contains 'youtube.com'
  • Twitter
    • referrer contains "/t.co"
  • TikTok Paid
    • Shopify source = 'TikTok'
    • referrer contains = 'tiktok.com'
    • UTM source = "tiktok", "Tiktok", "TikTok"
    • medium = "paidsocial", "paid-social", "paid_social", "Paid Social", "cpc", "ppc"
  • TikTok Organic
    • source = 'TikTok'
    • source contains = 'tiktok.com'
    • UTM source = "tiktok", "Tiktok", "TikTok"
  • Snapchat Paid
    • Shopify source = 'Snapchat'
    • referrer contains = 'snapchat.com'
    • UTM source = "snapchat", "Snapchat"
    • medium = "paidsocial", "paid-social", "paid_social", "Paid Social", "paid|social", "cpc", "ppc"
  • Snapchat Organic
    • Shopify source = 'Snapchat'
    • referrer contains = 'snapchat.com'
    • UTM source = "snapchat", "Snapchat"
  • Referral
    • UTM medium = 'referral'
    • UTM source = 'referral'
  • Paid Search
    • UTM source = 'adwords'
    • UTM medium = 'cpc', 'ppc', 'paidsearch'
    • referrer contains "googleadservices"
  • Affiliate
    • UTM source = "affiliate", "affiliates", "shareasale", "pepperjam", "awin"
    • UTM medium = 'affiliate', 'affiliates', 'aff'
  • Email
    • Shopify source = 'email'
    • UTM source = 'email'
    • UTM medium contains 'email'
    • Referrer = "com.google.android.gm" (Gmail app on Android)
  • Online Advertising
    • UTM medium = 'cpv', 'cpa', 'cpp', 'content-text', 'display', 'cpm', 'banner'
  • Organic Search
    • Shopify source = 'Google', 'Bing', 'Yahoo', 'DuckDuckGo'
    • referrer contains 'bing.com'
    • referrer contains 'duckduckgo.com'
    • referrer contains 'search.yahoo.com'
  • Shop App
    • referrer contains 'shop.app'
    • referrer contains 'pay.shopify.com'
  • Direct
    • Shopify source = 'direct'
  • Offline
    • All orders with no web sessions (subscriptions, draft orders, admin, etc.)
  • Other / Unknown
    • Everything else we couldn't identify with the rules above

Updated over 2 years ago