Tracking the source of orders – WebSelf Simple Help Center

You can grasp a quick understanding of the origin of your purchase (for instance: a Google advertisement, a Facebook post, an email promotion, etc.) on the order details page in your shop administration. The origin data appears if you utilize UTM labels for the links you distribute to customers. If you conduct an email promotion through Mailchimp or have automated marketing emails activated, UTM labels are generated automatically.

When a shopper clicks a link with the UTM label and completes a purchase in your shop, you will observe where the order originated. If a purchase was made without a link with UTM labels, you won’t discern the order source.

In your shop administration, you will observe the origin of purchases and also UTMs for any other initiative a shopper interacted with. UTM labels can also reveal the traffic source. To automatically receive the traffic data, link your online shop to Google Analytics.

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Understanding UTM labels

UTM labels, or UTM parameters, are additional pieces of text you can append to a link to your shop that inform your online shop (as well as other analytics tools like Google Analytics) a bit more information about each link. Here’s a sample of what one looks like:

https://www.yourstore.com/?utm_source=google_ads&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=black_november_ads

If you dispatch a lot of promotional emails or run advertisements on multiple social media platforms, you might be distributing dozens of links. UTM labels assist you in tracking the effectiveness of each of those links so you understand which platform yields more sales.

The UTM comprises three mandatory parameters: source, medium, and campaign. Each parameter contains information about the traffic source that is forwarded to your shop administration and third-party analytics tools like Google Analytics. You can observe the UTM parameters on the purchase details page:

Here’s a brief explanation of what each parameter means and how you can name it while creating them:

utm_source indicates where shoppers originate. The traffic source can be a website or an email. For a utm_source name, select the name of a platform you utilize for your initiative: facebook, google, mailerlite, etc.

utm_medium indicates the method of attracting shoppers. In other words, it illustrates the type of traffic: advertisement, banner, cpc (cost per click), etc. For a utm_medium name, choose a method you utilize to attract traffic: article, blog_post, shoes_ad, etc.

utm_campaign indicates a particular advertising initiative. This label is quite flexible with naming. As you may have different initiatives for different products or demographics, select a specific name: black_friday_22, wireless_headphones_sale, women_under_30_dresses, etc.

Naming UTM labels. Best approach

UTM follows its naming standard. Take a quick glance at the fundamental do’s and don’ts:

Make tag names uniform, neat, and easy to understand. For instance, decide between underscore or hyphen and utilize your chosen one to name all tags (e.g., “summer_sale”, “facеbook_ad”).
UTM codes are case-sensitive. We advise sticking with lowercase to ensure that data will be categorized accurately.
Be precise in naming your UTM labels so you can readily identify the initiative. For example, “spring_sale_dresses_2022” is preferable to just “sale”.
Maintain a record of your UTM links in a single spreadsheet to monitor all your initiatives and obtain a swift overview of it.

Creating UTM labels

To monitor orders from marketing campaigns, you must create UTM labels yourself. There are numerous websites where you can generate a UTM link for your ad campaign: UTM generator, Google Campaign URL Builder, UTM Constructor, and so forth.

If you execute an email campaign via Mailchimp or have automated marketing emails enabled, UTM labels are automatically generated.

To formulate UTM labels for your marketing campaign:

Open a UTM generator. In our illustration, it’s Google Campaign URL Builder.
Fill in your website URL, campaign source, campaign medium, and campaign name in the respective fields:
(optional) Complete the Campaign content and Campaign term fields if you run PPC ads. If you run ads with Google Ads and possess a campaign ID, input it in the appropriate field.
Scroll down to the URL with UTM labels and copy the link.
Insert the URL with UTM labels to your social media post, ad, or banner. In our case, it’s a Facebook ad:

Once your marketing or email campaign goes live, you will be able to trace the source for all orders made by customers who click the link with UTM labels in your online shop admin.

Viewing order source in your shop

When a customer clicks the link with the UTM label and places an order in your shop, the information about an order source appears on the order details page in your shop admin on desktop. If a customer interacted with any other ad or marketing campaigns, you will also observe UTM parameters for those campaigns.

To verify the order source:

From your shop admin, navigate to My Sales → Orders.
Select the order and click Update → View order.
Scroll down to the The order was placed thanks to a tagged source section:
If there’s more than one order from a certain source, click Show all orders from this source to view all orders.
(optional) Click View UTM parameters history to see which other campaigns a customer interacted with.

You can export a CSV file with UTM labels to your computer. This way, you can get a quick overview of your campaigns: which one generates more traffic or revenue. You can export not the full UTM parameters history, but only the UTM labels that lead to a purchase.