Hi there,
When someone clicks on an affiliate link, then you have a Visit and at least one Hit. As a Visit, counts the user’s browsing session on your site, while the Hit relates to each file that is requested from the server, during that Visit.
As for the Referral, this will be recorded once the referred visitor, completes an action on your site, ie submit a form, register as a new user, or complete a purchase through WooCommerce. All these actions are tracked through the supported integrations, as described here: https://docs.itthinx.com/document/affiliates/setup/settings/integrations/
Kind regards,
George
Thanks George for your clarification.
One of my beta testers did one WhatsApp share to herself & one FB post to herself only.
In total, she registered 16 Visits! How is this possible?
Hi, I’ve figured out how my beta tester got 16 Visits within minutes. Apparently, she shared it on Facebook & LinkedIn & clicked the post multiple times herself. For every click, both FB & LinkedIn changed their IP addresses, giving 16 new unique IP addresses!
As such, is there a more robust way of tracking Visits instead of depending on IP addresses alone?
Hi again, you’re welcome.
I would say that most probably, it was the user/client that changed their IP and got another visit, because the IP is the client’s unique identifier.
Another simple way to track unique users, would be through authentication. You can offer an excerpt to visitors and encourage them to register and login, in order to view the full contents of the post.
In case you can think of another way, then you are more than welcome to share your thoughts with us.
Kind regards,
George
Hi again,
Thought it would be better for me to provide additional information on how the aspect of Affiliates plugin works.
Each link that your affiliates share on social media or anywhere else on the internet, contains a unique identifier for the affiliate involved. In turn when a visitor uses this link, then a cookie is stored in the visitor’s browser, with the value of this identifier. This way, the Affiliates plugin can track Visits, Hits and possible Referrals for the respective affiliate. Even though each unique IP clicking the affiliate link, will result in a new visit, it’s because of the cookie that the system will decide whether these stats should be tracked for an affiliate or not.
As far as Referrals are concerned and in case you wish to keep track of them as well, then the visitor needs to also complete a tracked action as configured on your site. Once the visitor completes the tracked action, then the Referral will be recorded for the respective affiliate again because of the stored cookie. The tracked action can be one of the following: a WC sale, a form submission, a new user registration, an Events Manager booking, so once you’ve set this action, you can test the process, using these steps:
- Create a test affiliate account.
- In another browser and without being logged in as a user, visit the test affiliate’s link. Use the browser’s Development tools (or Firebug) to check that there is a cookie wp_affiliates which records the referring affiliate’s ID.
- Complete the tracked action.
- Check the section Affiliates > Referrals to see that the referral has been recorded.
Kind regards,
George
