Understand Your Customers With Ecommerce Attribution

What is ecommerce attribution?

Ecommerce attribution (or marketing attribution) is the process of determining which marketing channels (or touchpoints) result in a conversion in your online store.

Let’s say a customer clicks on an Instagram ad and visits your store. They don’t buy anything, but they sign up to your mailing list. When you send your next email campaign, they click on a link in your email and check out your store again. A few days later, they search for your ecommerce site on Google and buy your product.

In this situation, you’d want to know which marketing channel did the most work in getting your customer to make a purchase—Instagram ads, email marketing, or organic search.

Ecommerce attribution identifies and tracks these touchpoints, even across the most complex customer journeys.

There are also different attribution models that assign varying levels of credit to each touchpoint, so you can quickly identify which is the most effective.

The benefits of ecommerce attribution

Ecommerce attribution provides a host of actionable insights you can use to refine your marketing strategy and ensure the marketing campaigns you create drive the most value possible.

Let’s look at some of the benefits of using marketing attribution in more detail.

Increased understanding of the customer journey

Implementing ecommerce attribution gives you valuable insight into the different routes customers take to buy from your ecommerce business.

This lets you see how customers interact with your business and helps you understand their emotions, needs, and pain points.

Optimized budget allocation

Ecommerce attribution shows you which marketing channels (as well as which combinations of channels) lead to the most conversions.

This means you can allocate more of your budget to high-performing marketing channels and move it away from poorly performing ones.

As a result, you can ensure your marketing spend results in the best return on investment (ROI) for your ecommerce business.

Improved marketing decisions

Adopting the right type of attribution model provides you with a rich source of data you can use to improve your sales and marketing strategy.

For example, you can use your attribution data to:

• See how long it takes for customers to move from discovering your business to making a purchase and identify ways you can shorten the process.
• Identify where customers are abandoning your marketing funnel and take action to retain them.
• Discover which marketing channels are most important in different countries and markets and prioritize them there.

The 2 main types of marketing attribution

There are 2 key marketing attribution models you can use in your ecommerce store. Single-touch attribution and multi-touch attribution.

You can break these attribution models down into further types, making it easier to find the best model for your business needs.

Single-touch attribution model

A single-touch attribution model assigns 100% of the credit for a conversion to a single interaction in the customer journey.

The benefit of single-touch attribution models is that they’re easy to implement and analyze. However, they ignore the other marketing channels that may play a vital role in making a sale.

The 2 single-touch attribution models are:

First-touch attribution model

First-touch attribution (or first-click attribution) gives 100% of the credit to the first marketing touchpoint.

This attribution model is ideal if your goal is brand awareness, as it tells you which marketing channels are most effective at introducing new customers to your ecommerce business.

Last-touch attribution model

Last-touch attribution (or last-click attribution) gives 100% of the credit to the last marketing touchpoint.

This attribution model is ideal if you have a short sales cycle and want to focus on which marketing channels lead to conversions.

Multi-touch attribution model

A multi-touch attribution model assigns the credit to multiple interactions in the customer journey.

Some attribution models assign credit equally, while others assign varying levels of credit depending on how relevant each touchpoint was in achieving the conversion.

The benefit of multi-touch attribution models is that they take all marketing channels into account, meaning more accurate insights. There are also lots of different attribution models, meaning you can choose what’s right for your needs.

The downside is that they’re harder to implement and analyze.

Here are some multi-touch attribution models you can use to assess your marketing performance:

• Linear attribution model: Linear attribution gives equal credit across all marketing channels.
• Time-decay attribution model: Time-decay attribution gives credit across all marketing channels, but those closest to the point of conversion have the most value.
• U-shaped attribution model: U-shaped attribution (or position-based attribution) gives credit across all marketing channels, but gives the most to the first and last touchpoints.
• W-shaped attribution model: W-shaped attribution gives 30% of credit to the first touchpoint, 30% to the last touchpoint, and 30% to the opportunity touchpoint, which is where customers seek out more information.
• Data-driven attribution: Data-driven attribution uses machine learning to identify patterns in your customer attribution, assigning credit based on how people interact with your marketing. It’s an option in Google Ads and Google Analytics.

Which type of ecommerce attribution should you use?

The best attribution model for your online store depends on a few factors:

• Your goals as an ecommerce business: For example, if your aim is to increase brand awareness, a first-touch attribution model or position-based attribution model is a good choice.
• The length of your sales cycle: If your sales cycle is short, a single-touch attribution model should be enough. If you have a long sales cycle, a multi-touch attribution model can provide more accurate insights.
• Your budget and resources: If your budget is limited or your Marketing team is small, a first-touch attribution model or linear attribution model is easier to manage.
• Your marketing channels: If you use multiple channels or have adopted omnichannel marketing, multi-touch attribution will provide more valuable data.

If you’re not sure which attribution model to use, you can use a combination of models to gain specific insights into how your marketing is doing.

For example, you may have data-driven attribution set up to use machine learning to identify trends. But you may also have a first-touch attribution model in place to see which channels are best at grabbing the attention of new customers.

If you do use several attribution models, it’s important to analyze your data carefully, so you don’t count the same conversion multiple times.

Tools to measure marketing attribution

If you want to gather attribution insights, there are a lot of free and paid-for tools you can take advantage of.

A good starting point is Google Analytics, which is free. However, Google Analytics only uses data-driven and last-click attribution, so if you want to use a different attribution model, it may not be the right choice.

Many ecommerce platforms have their own marketing attribution tools. Shopify and WooCommerce offer basic attribution data through their analytics packages, while there are apps and extensions you can download if you need more advanced data.

There are also third-party tools you can use to centralize data across your marketing channels, delivering actionable insights. The best attribution tools act as hubs—pulling data from a variety of different sources.

This ensures every click and conversion your customers make is accounted for and ideal for multi-touch attribution models.

Attribution tools also clean up your data, identifying and resolving duplicate conversion information.

Making the most out of ecommerce attribution

High-quality, accurate data is vital to your attribution marketing efforts. Poor-quality information can lead to poor-quality insights.

Here are some of our expert tips to ensure your marketing attribution model provides the best results for your ecommerce business.

Use UTM parameters

Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) parameters are small snippets of data you can add to your URLs. These provide your attribution tool of choice with more information about where your customers have come from.

This makes it easier to track the customer journey from start to finish and provides accurate data even if your attribution tool can’t identify the source of a click.

Think about “offline” attribution

If you operate a brick-and-mortar store alongside your ecommerce website, you need to think about both offline and digital attribution. What do you do if a customer looks at your products online but buys them in-store?

Two easy ways to do this are through a loyalty program or by asking for your customer’s email to send them a digital receipt. This connects a customer’s email address to their online activity.

Consider your timeframes

An attribution timeframe (or attribution window) is the specific period after a marketing interaction when a conversion is credited to a touchpoint.

It’s important to choose the right timeframe. A timeframe of 24 hours may be too short, but a timeframe of a year may be far too long.

Most marketing channels have a default window. For example, the default in Google Ads is 30 days, but you can set it from 1 to 90 days.

The correct timeframe depends on your ecommerce business, what you’re selling, and what promotions you’re running.

If you’re selling expensive products like vacations and cars, you’ll want a longer timeframe, as people will need more time to decide. However, if you’re a clothing retailer running a flash sale, you’ll want a shorter timeframe so you can see which marketing touchpoint was most effective.

Embrace machine learning

Earlier, we mentioned that data-driven models of attribution use machine learning to give credit for conversions based on how customers interact with different touchpoints.

Data-driven models use your historical data to create an attribution strategy that’s unique to your ecommerce brand.

Machine learning offers many other benefits too. For example, it can piece together fragmented customer journeys and predict how your attribution will change in the future, both short- and long-term.

Optimize your ecommerce business with the proper attribution

Ecommerce attribution is one of the most accurate ways to see which customer touchpoints generate the most conversions. And the great thing is, it’s not as tricky to get started using it as you might think.

At Mailchimp, our ecommerce marketing tools make it easy to sell to both prospective and existing customers.

Create stunning campaigns with the click of a button, track your customers at every step of the marketing journey, and get real-time marketing insights that will help you identify which content is leading to sales.