What is referral tracking?

How does referral tracking actually work?

A unique identifier is issued to the advocate, carried by whatever the referred person clicks or types, and stored against that person until they convert. The identifier is the easy part — the difficulty is keeping the association intact across devices, sessions and the delay before purchase.

• A unique link or code is generated per advocate
• The identifier is captured on arrival and stored against the visitor
• The visitor creates an account or places an order, and the association is written to a durable record
• The qualifying event fires — often days later — and the reward is released

What is the difference between link tracking and code tracking?

A link carries the identifier automatically and works without the referred person doing anything, but it breaks whenever the click is lost. A code has to be typed and is therefore easy to forget, but it survives any journey — a screenshot, a word-of-mouth mention, a different device entirely.

Most reliable programs offer both, because they fail in opposite circumstances. The link handles the common path; the code rescues the referral the link would have dropped.

What is an attribution window?

The period after a click or code entry during which a conversion still counts as referred. Too short and you refuse credit for real referrals that took time to decide; too long and you pay for customers who would have bought anyway. It should be set from your actual purchase cycle.

Why do referrals go untracked?

Almost always because the identifier is lost between the share and the purchase, not because of a bug in the reward logic. These failures are silent — they present as low participation, which is usually misread as customers not being motivated.

• The link was shared into an app that strips query parameters
• The referred person browsed on a phone and bought on a laptop
• The purchase happened after the attribution window closed
• The visitor declined the consent required for the identifier to be stored
• The code existed but was not surfaced anywhere at checkout

How is cross-device referral tracking handled?

By tying attribution to an account rather than to a browser wherever possible. Once the referred person signs in, the referral can follow the account across devices. Before sign-in there is no reliable general answer, which is the main argument for offering a code alongside the link.

Does referral tracking need consent?

It depends on the mechanism, not on your intent. Storing or reading an identifier on someone's device generally requires consent under UK and EU rules unless it is strictly necessary for a service the user requested. A code the customer types in themselves sits differently from a tracking cookie set on arrival.

This is worth resolving before launch rather than after. A program whose attribution depends entirely on a cookie the visitor can decline has a failure mode built into it.

What should be recorded for every referral?

Enough to reconstruct the decision months later, because someone will eventually dispute a payout. At minimum: who referred, who was referred, when the association was created, what qualifying event fired and when, and what was paid.

How do you test that tracking works?

By running the whole path end to end before launch, not by checking the dashboard increments. Share a link the way a real customer would, on a real phone, into a real messaging app, then convert and confirm the reward releases — including on the paths you expect to be awkward.