Conversion tracking options

Updated February 1, 2022

Conversions are events that create revenue.

They can only occur on offer pages, but a conversion for any visitor will also attribute backward to pages/nodes they visited before converting on an offer (so you can still see what landers may have lead to conversions).

There are two ways to track conversions:

  1. Using a postback URL
  2. Using our JavaScript

I'll go through both options below.

Conversion tracking using a postback URL

A postback URL is very simple -- its just a URL that gets loaded by some system, such as your offer network, another tracking platform, some code in an app/page, or even you in a browser.

They are very simple in nature. You load the URL as a way of passing some info, they get received, and that's it!

There are two postback methods you can use.

Method 1 - Traditional, Single Hit ID

You can find the FunnelFlux Pro global postback URL under system settings:

https://DOMAIN/pb/?hit=REPLACE&tx=REPLACE&rev=REPLACE
  • hit = a unique hit ID (required)
  • tx = an optional transaction ID
  • rev = optional conversion revenue (if none passed, we will use the default payout defined in the offer's configuration)

For this to work you need to pass a Hit ID, which is a unique tracking ID that we generate for every visit to any node in a funnel. So a single visitor (who has a single VID) will make a different hit ID for every node they touch.

When someone visits an Offer Page, we want to get the hit ID generated for that page and pass it back when a conversion happens.

The simplest way to do this is by changing your offer to pass our hit to them using the token {hit}. In most cases, with affiliate networks, this will mean passing something like ...&clickid={hit}... in the URL.

Then in the postback URL configured in your network, you would pass that data back, using something like this:

https://DOMAIN/pb/?hit={{clickid}}&tx={{transaction}}&rev={{payout}}

Keep in mind this is just an example -- the parameter to pass hit ID under and the tokens to use in the postback will depend on the third-party system. Use our offer source templates to guide you here.

If you are using a custom system or your own self-developed funnels, its up to you to capture this hit ID and then pass it back in a postback URL when conversions happen.

Method 2 - Session-based VID

If you can't capture a single unique hit ID for a specific page, but can capture the visitor ID (VID) of a user, then you can use this for conversions as well.

VID is a unique identifier for a user/session. We always return this in our JS response, add it automatically to redirect destinations, and try to automatically pass it into action links.

Often it may be easier to capture this at the beginning of a visitor journey and not worry about some hit on some specific page, especially with Ecommerce-related platforms.

What you can do instead is pass back the VID in the postback URL, as well as either the page ID that converted, or a product ID -- these product IDs are configured in the "Integration Product IDs" section of an offer.

So, your postback URL can be:

https://DOMAIN/pb/?vid=REPLACE&p=REPLACE&tx=REPLACE&rev=REPLACE

or

https://DOMAIN/pb/?vid=REPLACE&product=REPLACE&tx=REPLACE&rev=REPLACE

When you pass data like this, we will find that VID/user, then find the most recent hit ID for that page ID, or page that has that Product ID configured.

We added these product IDs specifically so that webhook integrations with Ecom systems can be used easily... as we can match product IDs to page IDs, then figure out what hits must have converted.

The same approach is more obvious in our JavaScript as you already pass a page ID value and can then inject a VID value if known. Otherwise our JS will use the URL, referrer, or cookies to find this VID.

Using Visitor ID vs Hit ID

There are a few pros/cons to capturing and using visitor ID or hit ID for postback-based conversion tracking.

For visitor ID:

  • It's easier to capture in general given our JS always has it and our redirects always add it
  • It is a single visitor identifier, so is much easier to store in CRMs and Ecom systems
  • This also makes it a lot more useful when you have flows with upsells/multiple offers, where you want to store one user ID and send multiple conversion events
  • You don't need to capture different IDs on different offer pages and ensure they get stored/used correctly
  • However, VID data gets looked up from our session storage, which is not permanent. These sessions last for 7 days by default, 30 days if you are using linked funnels, and they automatically extend when getting activity. So while you could store this value in a CRM, it won't work if you fire some random conversion 6 months later with no previous activity.
  • Additionally, with VID, you must also pass a page ID value to say what offer converted -- else it will use the last visited offer for that user's session
  • If you are using linked funnels to link user journey and track LTV, you need to capture VID anyway

For hit ID:

  • It's simple in traditional affiliate scenarios to pass a single unique click ID, then pass it back to another system
  • No need to specify another value like page ID, as hit IDs are already unique to a specific page visit
  • Hits are stored forever in our analytics DB, so can be converted at any time in the future
  • Unlike VID however, you can't use a hit to convert different pages for a visitor, so they are less ideal if you have many pages/offers and some CRM system

If in doubt, just reach out and we can help clarify any questions about postback tracking.

Conversion tracking using JavaScript

The second way you can track conversions is using JavaScript.

Go to any offer > edit > conversion tracking. This will give you the code for firing a conversion event, like this:

<script>
lum.event('conversion', {
  'query': {
    'rev': '',
    'tx': '',
    'p': '0T0ikkeomSIt',
    'hit': '',
    'vid': ''
  },
  'onDone': function (response) {}
});
</script>

Here the most important parameter is this p attribute, which is the offer page's ID.

This p value tells FunnelFlux which offer created the conversion. If you pass nothing we will just use the most recent offer hit.

Usually you would either execute this JS on-demand when a user does some action, or put it on a thank you page the user gets to after conversion. So, keep in mind, the code you need to put on a thank you page would be sourced from the previous offer page's settings.

You can fill in the rev attribute with revenue, tx with an optional transaction ID, and you can pass in hit/vid value if you know these. These can be dynamically inserted by systems if possible, such as Google Tag Manager, using PHP code, etc. -- this really depends on whether you are using a system capable of this.

Note: this conversion tracking, like the view tracking, also depends on the <head> include code being present first. So on a typical thank you lander page, you would have the <head> include, a <body> view tracking code for the lander, and lastly a <body> conversion tracking code for the previous offer page.

Getting data directly from our JavaScript

In some cases you may not be able to use postback URLs or redirects, but could capture data on your side such as Hit ID / VID to use in later tracking.

You can retrieve all of this from our JavaScript directly, see this article.

In a nutshell, you could get VID, hit ID and other data from the JavaScript response directly, like so:

lum.event('view', { 
'query': { 
  // 'f': '{FUNNEL-ID}', 
  // 'n': '{NODE-ID}', 
  'p': 'SOME_VALUE', 
  // 'ts': '{TRAFFICSOURCE-ID}', 
  // 'c': '{COST}' 
}, 
  'options': { 
  'cookieAllowed': true, 
  'timeOnPage': false, 
  'resolveTokens': [ '{hit}' ], 
}, 
'onDone': function(response) {
  vid = response.resolvedTokens['{visitor}'];
  hit_id = response.resolvedTokens['{hit}'];
} 
});

You could then use JavaScript inside the onDone function to store these somewhere for later use, depending on your system.

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