Implementing Affiliate Tracking in Your Webshop

[georgecollier]

Just save the parameter to a cookie if the cookie is empty…

Keith has a good explanation of a slightly different method.

@keith

Here’s the most “bubbly” way I could think of to solve this issue:

1. When a non-logged-in user goes to submit an inquiry, we continue to store info on the user, however, we also create a new database object. In my case, I call this a “Temporary Inquiry” which stores all of the data we will need to reconstruct the state of the inquiry after the user logs in. (In my case, this is stuff like dates they’ve selected, what listing it is they are inquiring about, the number of guests, etc.)
2. We grab the unique ID of that new object and store that unique ID in a session cookie. So this is super-lightweight, right? Just a simple text string (but it points to an object in the database that could actually be very, very complex).
3. If the page is reloaded and there is data in this session cookie, we know that the user was in the process of making a reservation and we can rebuild the state of that inquiry for them so they can continue where they left off.

@code-escapee

Does that function as a solution if the affiliate info is generated by a 3rd party?

Of course. The affiliate program will provide you with an affiliate ID when you create a new affiliate (I know Rewardful allows you to set an affiliate ID). Save the affiliate ID to the affiliate User (I normally put Affiliate stuff in Current User’s Affiliate where affiliate is a new data type).

When a new user arrives using the affiliate link, save the affiliate/referral ID to a cookie, and when they sign up save it to the user.