I'm trying to track clicks from our site to an external website. On the external website, I'd like to place some code on their checkout thank-you page, that tells our server that a particular click has resulted in a sale.
How does this tracking code work? Does it need to be a pixel? Do we need to drop a cookie before we send the user to the external website?
Thanks.
Pixel-based conversion tracking is pretty straightforward. You set up a basic web server to accept HTTP GET requests and write logs for those requests. On the merchant's confirmation page you put an image where the src attribute is a URL on your tracking server. That URL contains any data you need to collect for the sale, which will show up in your server logs.
(No, this doesn't need to be a pixel. It can be any excuse to make a client request something from your server. XHR requests, script tags, etc will work just fine.)
Example: if you need to know the Order ID number and value of a sale, you could have the merchant embed a pixel that looks like this: <img
src="http://tracker.example.com/i.gif?orderID=12345&orderVal=99.95">.
Your server logs will now have a record of sales generated on
that site.
Now you need some way to separate sales you generated from the rest of them. There are three ways to go about this:
you do the tracking,
merchant does the tracking
you work with a third party.
An affiliate network can be that third party, the merchant can track traffic sources and use that data to decide when to display your tracking pixel, or you can track it yourself. Which way you go depends on the terms of your partnership.
One popular and easy way to track which sales are yours is to set a cookie on the same domain as the tracker. Since many clients will block 3rd-party cookies, you will track best if your tracking server is also a redirection server.
Example: on your site you make outbound clicks go through your
tracking server. Whereas you used to have an <a> tag that pointed to
http://destination-site.com/landing-page.html you now send traffic
to: http://tracker.example.com/redirect.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdestination-site.com%2Flanding-page.html. In this example, redirect.php
should set a cookie and a redirect to the
destination site.
Your server logs will now have that cookie value on image requests from
the merchant's confirmation page, along with any other data you passed
in the cookie (or associated with it on your back end). Now, when you look at your tracking
server logs you know the image requests with cookies are yours and the others are not.
Things start getting complicated when there are more parties involved, deeper reporting needs, accounting and PII policies to comply with, concerns over fraud, etc but that's the gist of it.
Related
I'll be precise, i have been trying to add a custom gateway to bigcommerce, i have been somewhat successful till now, now i am stuck on bypassing the checkout page, i am unable to add additional option in checkout payment options, i'm able to do it using javascript, but then order is not being processed, and second thing, even if i am able to add option, and redirect user using javascript, how am i suppose to empty the cart once user has returned to the site?
I'm completely stuck here, any help or pointing to the right direction would be greatly appreciated.
For anyone who wish to achieve the same as i needed to, here is i went about it,
i didn't touch the actual flow of the order and checkout, what i did, i renamed one of the offline payment method as the third-party gateway i wanted to integrate, then after checkout, user lands of thank-you page, on thank-you page, i embedded my script, which picked up order-id from thank-you page, and checked the payment method that was used during checkout, if it matches the one i required, then i redirected user to external url ( additional domain on another hosting ), where user and order details were fetched using order_id ( which i sent via ajax ) and the payment was processed, and in the end, user is redirected back to the bigcommerce store.
Things that you will need
Additional domain
Additional hosting, to point that domain to, and to execute payment-gateway processing code and also to update order status in bigCommerce via their API.
It is kind of a complicated process, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes pretty simple after that.
I have a requirement to do 3rd party age verification before I ship an order. I'm using a company called EVS for this. They released a shopify app recently, but seems partly baked. It requires a user to enter date of birth when registering for an account and then triggers the verification when the user places an order. The main problem with that is that it's rare for a customer to actually create an account before ordering for the first time -- instead they order first, then shopify emails them to create an account after the fact. Creating the account afterward does not allow the customer to enter DOB.
So I'm planning to implement my own solution. I can use EVS's API to run the verification by sending a combination of Name, Address, DOB, DL# and State, and last 4 of SSN. I have already built a proprietary order management system that pulls in customer and order data, and I can write a client to perform the verification.
I'm less savvy on the shopify side. I need to balance customer friction when placing an order for the first time, against having to do a lot of manual work for verification.
Below are the options I have conceived. Are there any other options? Any ideas for a better solution? Keep in mind I need to verify a customer once. I can tag the customer account as verified, and once verified it's business as usual.
Alter shopify templates to only show the checkout button when a user is logged in. If not logged in, show a "Create an account" button instead. That way the user provides DOB during account creation and the EVS app works as designed.
Set up a separate verification site like verify.my-domain.com. I can trigger an email to the customer upon order creation and ask them to verify. (May have issues with incorrect email addresses or spam filtering.)
If customer is not logged in, or account is not age verified, and they click Checkout, I can redirect them to a page. I can use a form on the page to do the verification. If verification passes, send them on to checkout.
For option 3, I don't know what shopify allows or what best practices allow. Can I use js to pass data to my own server on a different subdomain? Or post the form to another subdomain and then redirect back to shopify?
I'd appreciate any thoughts or suggestions.
You have pretty much summed up all your options, to clarify on them a little:
You can require that customers create an account in the store checkout settings. /admin/settings/checkout
This would work, you could iframe it in too on a custom Page. Or, better, use cross-domain calls or jsonp.
This is a little convoluted and you would have to persist and maintain lot of external state. I'd avoid this
I think a combination of 1 and 2. Turn on "require customer account". Modify the customer account creation page. Implement a cross domain policy with your server which will host custom code leveraging the EVS API.
I'm not sure if you are selling tangible goods or not but with stringent policies on users' age you have to bear in mind that shipping addresses could change. For a tight integration you should look at having webhooks whenever a customer is changed and make sure all their data is still valid since their last EVS approval.
I've been looking into this quite extensively and we've spent a number of hours experimenting with options. Our client in this case is on Shopify Plus so we do have the benefit of access to checkout.liquid.
Our research has led us to believe that one cannot pass the required 'customer note' of the date of birth to the checkout should they be attempting to checkout as a 'guest'. Perhaps because the 'customer' does not yet exist.
Our options have been narrowed down to:
Write a custom backend app that allows Shopify and EVS to communicate directly (XML API on the EVS side) in the checkout process or just prior and then pass the verification status back to Shopify to allow the order to proceed, or append some relevant status marker for the fulfillment department to act accordingly. The EVS app doesn't prevent the order from proceeding, but does flag the customer's age as unverified in the Risk Level panel in the admin. This would be quite a substantial project and by no means low hanging fruit. There is also risk of re-doing a lot of what the EVS app does already and running into they same obstacles they did.
Force customers to register prior to checkout (if not signed in). This seems the most viable approach. The only caveat being that existing customers will not have the customer note (birth date) and we'd need to build a smaller backend app to allow them to append this to their customer account via the Shopify API (this cannot be done via liquid).
These are our findings and I'd love to know more about how you ended up approaching this.
I have a single authorize.net account, and I have 5 different e-commerce applications tied to that account. Some are posting from a public site and some are posting from managed access sites. I am using SIM and I have read about the Relay Response, but as far as I can tell I can only have one URL listed. That will not work for me as I need a different URL for each different point of entry into the e-commerce system.
My problem at the moment is that I need to update a datafield via a guid upon successful payment completion to confirm purchase of a digital item, but if I put in a relay response page it is getting sent to all my access points and throwing errors. Other parts of the e-commerce system need to send different emails upon completion etc, plus all the urls are different at the top level.
Is there some other way of accomplishing this task that I am overlooking?
Use Silent Post*. It's Authorize.Net's equivalent of Paypal's IPN. It will only post to one URL per account but it happens behind the scenes. This means you can send a custom flag along with each transaction identifying which site the purchase is for and then have it respond accordingly (e.g. send emails, update database, etc).
*I am the author of this content
I am developing an application where I have a section only for paid users where they purchase for the section using the in-app purhcase system in iOS. I know that I need to keep track of the purchase history myself, and this is where the problem begins. I have a database and I am capable of storing users in my database, with a web service interface. How can I create a system where a URL is pinged only when a user has made the purchase.
As an example, I have the URL:
http://example.com/registerUserPremium/userid=123456
How can I get this to be called only when a purchase is made? The most elegant way seems like Apple pinging the URL with a special user ID upon purchase, but I can't find a way of doing it. It is obviously not a solution to make the user call that URL within the app, as it can be cracked/pirated. What is a good way of providing such a mechanism that is piracy-proof. My service is web-based, so if I can get this part done, the rest relies on my server-side mechanism (the user will just send a special key that is stored in its keychain, to the server) so I'll be able to finish the project. In short, I need a way to call a URL only when a purchase is made. What are some possible solutions?
Thanks,
Can.
I see two solutions:
"Server product model" (doc): the appstore contact your servers every time a user makes a purchase. In this case you have all of the information right away.
"Builtin product model" (same doc) in which the application gets the receipt from the appstore. In this latter case you can contact your server special URL, providing the receipt information, and the server can verify that the receipt has not been tampered with asking the app store to verify (it's a simple post, see here).
Been googling all day, reading numerous PDF's and still getting confused with the concepts of sending data to Payway system from Westpac (a bank in Australia). They offer access via API but also give access via what they call "NET."
The way I understand is that when client want to pay on my website, in case of NET, client gets to the page (hosted by a bank or hosted by me) where is provided with form to enter credit card info details. Then this form is submitted via normal POST call to Payway's specific https address. It is processed then and browser returns to the URL I specified as one of the parameters I sent in hidden field.
In case of API story is similar, so user receives form, fills in the data and then data is send to my backend (not Payway's). My backend then calls payway API with data provided and once answer received returns confirmation page to the client.
Is my understanding right? Please explain as I have a feeling I am missing something basic here.
There are a number of different ways to interact with PayWay Net, depending on how much control you want. The simpliest way is this:
You create a HTML format containing fields with certain names. This form is served up by your website, but when submitted goes to the PayWay website. You can add to this your own hidden fields and information fields.
Your user enters some details and clicks Submit.
Your user's browser submits the form to PayWay. PayWay validates the values and displays a page asking for credit card information (over https)
The user enters the credit card details then confirms the transaction.
PayWay processes the credit card transaction
Optionally, PayWay can conduct a post back to your server indicating the status of the transaction so you can complete the order (called server-to-server payment notification)
Optionally, PayWay can redirect the browser back to your server (but do not use this to update yoru database)
There are also ways to fully customise the credit card input page and receipt page.
PayWay API is different. You install a piece of software on your server. When you want to conduct a credit card transaction, you invoke this piece of software. It talks over the internet to the PayWay server, conducts a transaction, and gives you a response. You could use this if you were writing a phone payments system, for example, as no browser is involved in the PayWay interface.
(Disclaimer: I work for Qvalent, developers of PayWay).
Your understanding is correct.
I've done a couple of Payway integrations and have always opted for the API solution so that users get a consistent experience and are not jumping between websites.
An odd thing about PayWay, is that while most payment gateways have 2 options.. a merchant hosted or server hosted, PayWay offers this pseudo-merchant hosted with their NET option using the token request. Credit Card details are taken directly on the merchant site and only redirects the confirmation momentarily to the server and then back. This would be great if a payway account worked universally with both NET and API.. but it seems an API account doesn't support NET methods. So if you want to accept cards on your site, the NET token method is pretty much eclipsed by its bigger API brother.