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What Attribution Model Does Shopify Use?

Last updated on October 1, 2022 @ 6:31 pm

Shopify is a Canadian e-commerce company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario. It is also the name of its proprietary e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems.

Shopify offers online retailers a suite of services “including payments, marketing, shipping and customer engagement tools to simplify the process of running an online store for businesses of all sizes”. As of August 2019, Shopify had more than one million merchants using its platform, with total gross merchandise volume exceeding $41 billion.

Shopify uses a first-party attribution model. This means that all sales and conversions are attributed to the original referring source.

PRO TIP: Attribution models are used to assign credit to conversion events (sales, leads, etc.) that occur on your website. Shopify uses a last-click attribution model, which means that the last ad or referral that a customer clicked on before completing a purchase is given credit for the sale.

This can be problematic if you are running ads on multiple platforms or using multiple marketing channels, because it’s possible that the customer may have been influenced by an ad or referral earlier in their journey, but the last-click model means that only the last ad or referral will be given credit.

If you’re looking to attribute credit for conversion events more accurately, you may want to consider using a different attribution model.

This is the most accurate attribution model, as it captures all touchpoints in the customer journey. However, it can also be the most difficult to implement, as it requires tracking data from each individual sale.

The first-party attribution model is the best model for Shopify because it gives credit to the original referring source. This means that if a customer comes to Shopify from an ad, they will be attributed as the source of that sale.

However, if a customer comes to Shopify from a referral link, they will be attributed as the source of that sale. This is the most accurate attribution model because it captures all touchpoints in the customer journey.

Kathy McFarland

Kathy McFarland

Devops woman in trade, tech explorer and problem navigator.