Website Tracking for Affiliate Marketers: Unlocking Lead Insights

It’s one thing to track affiliate-driven customers on your website and another thing to track them to a granular level, developing a fully-fledged lead profile based on their interactions with your website elements.

Yes, I’m talking about website visitor tracking and how it can change the game for you, an affiliate marketer who buys or sells website traffic. Imagine knowing what draws attention, where they click, how they scroll, and which website elements trigger conversions.

With this knowledge, you can be so much more cost-effective. No less importantly, a well-thought-out web visitor tracking system ensures you stay on the legal side of the fence, not worrying about compliance, affiliate fraud, or any other risks.

“Phonexa serves pretty much anyone in the customer acquisition space, whether that’s media buyers, affiliates, brands – anyone looking to grow their book of customers or generate customers for other product providers and track their marketing from an end-to-end perspective, all the way from the first impression – where this customer first sees your advertising – to the final destination of buying your product.” – David Pickard, CEO at Phonexa

Sounds good?

Read on to learn more about website visitor tracking and how it can grow your business.

What Is Website Visitor Tracking?

Website visitor tracking is recording and analyzing the engagement of referred customers, including clicks, form fills, quote requests, sign-ups, downloads, and other interactions that have value for your marketing strategies and that you can quantify.

Example: You’ve got 5,000 clicks and only 5 quote requests, a disappointing 0.1% conversion rate. Through website tracking, you can identify the exact time and place where leads disengage; for example, you may have too many questions or fields on your form. Then you can fix it.

Here’s how it looks within Phonexa’s web visitor tracking dashboard:

Take a product tour to explore how Phonexa helps untangle the web of website interactions.

What Insights Can You Get Through Website Tracking?

Traffic Insights	Once referred customers land on your website, you can track their location, traffic source, device, operating system, and browser. Example: If your traffic is 95% mobile users, it makes sense to work on mobile-friendliness and only count mobile traffic when developing your semantic core.
Conversion Insights	The number of leads, signups, and sales reflects how well your referred users convert. Example: If blog post A gets 1,000 clicks and only 5 conversions, while blog post B gets 500 clicks and 25 conversions, you can analyze what makes the difference: source, targeting, CTAs, content itself, etc.
Behavioral Insights	Metrics like time on site, drop-off points, and post-click behavior can help you segment user groups and hone in on the ideal buyer. Example: If users spend less than 10 seconds on your landing page, you might want to move CTAs to the first screen. Read also: How To Maximize Landing Pages With User Behavior Tracking

Web visitor tracking can also reveal technical problems, like slow page loading speed or other performance issues. Speaking of which, 85% of shoppers will avoid an online business with performance issues, while every second of delay in page load speed drops page views by 11%, conversion rates by 7%, and customer satisfaction rates by 16%.

That’s what I’m talking about – website visitor tracking is so underrated!

Book a demo to transform user behavioral insights into leads and revenues with Phonexa.

Website Visitor Tracking: 3 Steps To Unlocking Affiliate Traffic Insights

Step 1. Set Your Goals and KPIs

First, identify the data you want to measure: clicks, form submissions, purchases, account registrations, or all of that. Next, knowing the insights you focus on, you can define your KPIs – such as click-through rate and conversion rate – and track your performance.

Attribution Model

As an advertiser, you must ensure all referred customers are unmistakably attributed to affiliates, with the latter receiving timely and fair commission for driving traffic. 

Here are the most popular attribution models:

Last-click attribution	The affiliate whose link was clicked last gets full credit
First-click attribution	The affiliate whose link was clicked first gets full credit
Multi-touch attribution	Credit is split among multiple or all affiliates proportionally to their contribution

The right attribution model will incentivize affiliates to send high-intent traffic to your website, reflected in objective website tracking metrics. Likewise, more traffic will pass your qualification criteria, resulting in sales and commission payouts.

Tracking Parameters

Tracking parameters are UTM codes (for example, ?utm_source=affiliate&utm_campaign=sale) or affiliate IDs (for example, ?aff_id=123) added to affiliate links to help you know which referred customer was sent by which affiliate.

Here’s why UTM codes and affiliate IDs are crucial for website visitor tracking:

• If two or more affiliates use the same UTM code or affiliate ID, you cannot attribute the conversion to the right affiliate and therefore don’t know whom you should pay.
• If the UTM code or affiliate ID is incorrect – for example, ?aff_id= with no number – your web tracking system won’t know who sent the affiliate referral.
• If the UTM code or affiliate IDs are confusing – for example, utm_source=aff1 for one affiliate and ?utm_source=affiliate1 for another – your reports might split the same data into different categories.

Do the following to ensure correct website tracking for your affiliate marketing campaigns:

• Make sure all your affiliates have unique IDs and use clear and consistent UTM codes
• Add sub-IDs to track specific campaigns and sources; for example, ?sub_id=blog_post1 for affiliate links in a blog post
• Test your affiliate links before providing them to affiliates.

Struggling to kick things off with affiliate marketing? Book a demo with Phonexa experts.

Step 2. Choose Your Website Tracking Method

In my opinion, there are only three practical website tracking methods:

• Cookies
• Tracking pixels
• Server-to-Server (S2S) tracking

As for the other web visitor tracking methods – fingerprinting, supercookies, cached content tracking, session-based tracking, user ID tracking, etc. – none of them are reliable and insightful enough.

Cookies

Inserting a first-party cookie into the user’s browser – a small piece of data that your website stores in the user’s browser to remember things like their login info, what’s in their shopping cart, their location, language, and other preferences – you attribute conversion to affiliates and track important engagement details.

That said, browser restrictions – for example, Safari limits cookies to 7 days – and consent requirements somehow restrict the potential of cookies and force you to use cookie consent banners, which also means some referrals will deny using cookies.

Read also: Your Complete Guide To Cookieless Affiliate Marketing

How To Choose an Optimal Cookie Window

Choosing an optimal cookie window is about paying affiliates who contributed to a conversion while not paying for the clicks made so long ago that they did not affect the conversion. An overly long cookie window might increase commissions and decrease web tracking accuracy.

I suggest considering the length of the sales cycle. In high-ticket affiliate marketing, 30 to 90 days might be optimal; for impulse purchases, you might need a shorter cookie window.

Recommended Cookie Window Duration by Industry

Insurance	30–60 days
Finance	13–30 days
Home Services	30–45 days
Legal	30–60 days
Solar	60–90 days

Tracking Pixels

A tracking pixel is a simple JavaScript or tag hosted on a third-party server to track affiliate website visitors. To use it, add a ready-made tag to the page you want to analyze, such as a thank-you page after a purchase or sign-up. 

There are four ways of using tracking pixels for website visitor tracking: 

iFrame	Placed as an inline frame on a website’s landing page
Image	Set up as an image or 1×1 GIF on the site’s landing page
JS	Added as a script to the site code to track affiliate visitors
S2S postback	A click ID attached to any user’s click; best for counting conversions

Tracking pixels allow you to collect anonymized affiliate data, such as which affiliate drove a conversion and the type of action (form submission, sale, etc.). Meta, TikTok, Google, and affiliate networks like Impact and ShareASale use tracking pixels. That said, forgotten pixels – ones no longer actively monitored and maintained – are not uncommon either.

Server-to-Server (S2S) Tracking

Server-to-Server (S2S) tracking, or postback tracking, is the most advanced website visitor tracking method, where the advertiser’s server communicates directly with the affiliate platform’s server to record clicks and conversions, bypassing the user’s browser entirely.

Here’s how S2S affiliate tracking works:

1. A user clicks an affiliate link – for example, www.yourstore.com?aff_id=123&click_id=xyz123 – which contains the affiliate ID (123) to identify the affiliate and the click ID (xyz123) unique to that specific click and session.
2. When the user lands on your (the advertiser’s) website, your server logs the click ID and affiliate ID in your database without setting a cookie in the user’s browser. Now you can track what they do on your website.
3. Upon the conversion (say, the affiliate made a $50 purchase), the advertiser’s server identifies the click ID, attributes the conversion, and sends a postback request – a server-to-server message that includes click ID, affiliate ID, and conversion details to the affiliate platform’s server: https://affiliateplatform.com/postback?click_id=xyz123&aff_id=123&amount=50
4. The affiliate platform (network) matches the click ID with its database (the affiliate link itself is usually created in the affiliate network’s system), pays a commission to the affiliate, and logs the conversion in the affiliate dashboard.

 

S2S tracking is reliable, privacy-compliant, and fraud-resistant. Likewise, it’s unaffected by cookie-blocking, ad-blocking, and browser restrictions.

Cross-Website Tracking: How To Ensure Tracking Consistency

It’s no secret that the customer journey is multi-channel: a typical customer switches between devices and platforms several times during their purchase history, starting in a mobile browser, continuing on a desktop, and finishing in an app.

This is quite challenging because cookies and pixels fail to maintain continuity across different environments. For instance, a cookie set on a mobile browser may not persist on a desktop, resulting in incomplete attribution and lost commissions.

Example: A user clicks an affiliate link on their mobile browser and explores the website, but does not download the app immediately. In a few days, they see a retargeting ad on their PC, download the app, and buy a subscription. 

In this scenario, you need cross-website, or cross-device, tracking to attribute the conversion.

Here are the two major ways to preserve attribution across websites and devices:

• Server-to-Server (S2S) Tracking: As I’ve already mentioned, S2S tracking logs affiliate data directly on the advertiser’s server and shares it with the affiliate platform. So, tracking remains accurate even when users switch between the web and app.
• Deterministic and probabilistic website tracking
  • Deterministic website tracking relies on data users intentionally share with a company (zero-party data) through forms, surveys, account registrations, etc.

For example, if a user clicks an affiliate link on their phone and later logs into your website on a desktop with the same email, the web tracking system can attribute both actions to the same user.

• Probabilistic website tracking predicts user actions based on historical patterns, like how users with similar IP addresses, device types, or browser settings behaved in the past.

Combining deterministic and probabilistic tracking is a great strategy for measuring on-site user behavior without S2S tracking. However, even if you use S2S tracking, which is inherently deterministic, you can also use probabilistic tracking to address cases like anonymous ToFu users and cross-device journeys without logins.

Read also: How To Improve On-Site User Engagement with Mouse Tracking Insights

Step 3. Choose Your Web Visitor Tracking Solution

Once you’ve identified what you track and how, you need to choose the website tracking software that can do it, and that’s not an ordinary task. Free affiliate web tracking tools like Google Analytics 4 only provide basic insights, while enterprise-grade solutions like Adobe Analytics might cost you over $50,000 annually. 

Here’s what I would recommend: For starters, use Google Analytics 4 (it’s free). Once you’ve got the hang of it, take your website visitor tracking a step further with a cost-effective website tracking software like Phonexa.

Best Free Website Visitor Tracking Platform – Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is a leading free website visitor tracking solution that provides, among other things, cross-platform tracking and analytics.

• Behavior Flow: Visualize user journeys from entry to exit
• User Explorer: Track anonymized user activity with chronological event timelines
• Audiences: Segment users by location, intent, and new vs. returning visitors

GA4 might be a solution to rely on in the beginning, but it has several significant disadvantages:

• It cannot map UTM data to affiliate IDs, calculate commissions, or handle payouts, so you need to integrate GA4 with an affiliate platform or use custom scripts.
• The free version of GA4 uses data sampling when processing large datasets, which may skew web tracking metrics.
• The free version of GA4 stores user-level and event-level data for only 14 months, which limits historical analytics, so you have to export data to BigQuery or use an affiliate platform with longer retention.

The good news is that anyone looking for an advanced solution can use Phonexa, an eight-in-one performance & affiliate marketing ecosystem that helps track, distribute, and analyze lead flows in real-time and historically, while costing pennies compared to solutions like Adobe. 

“One thing many people forget to do is implement real-time tracking. They often say, ‘Okay, I’ll review this once a month,’ and then realize, ‘Wow, this isn’t going well.’ That’s usually because their system doesn’t track data in real time, or it’s too difficult to access the stats quickly. So, first and foremost, consolidate everything into one place, allowing you to monitor performance through a simple, streamlined process. Make sure your decision-makers and media buying team have access to the right data.” – David Pickard, CEO at Phonexa

As a GA4 user, you can leverage GA4’s free analytics and Phonexa’s advanced affiliate tracking capabilities to address GA4’s free tier disadvantages and only pay for what you actually use.

Best Paid Website Visitor Tracking Platform – Phonexa

For anyone willing to untangle the customer journey and close loops between clicks, leads, calls, and revenue, Phonexa’s performance marketing ecosystem is an incredible asset. We have united the best lead tracking, distribution, and analytics solutions into a single, comprehensive suite, allowing you to cover it all without juggling between reports and systems.

 

Regardless of your business model and the side of the game you are on – affiliate or advertiser – knowing all the ins and outs of on-site and off-site lead interactions will help you generate and convert more of them while ensuring sublime experiences for your every customer.

Phonexa’s two cornerstone products – LMS Sync for web leads and Call Logic for phone calls – effectively synergize with our click tracking software Lynx, website tracking software HitMetrix, and predictive modeling software. You get a fully-fledged affiliate marketing ecosystem that does most of the job automatically while constantly updating you on the progress.

➥ Did you know 41% of decision-makers described their customer journeys as mostly or fully automated, while 59% said they were partially automated? This is what Phonexa is all about – automating what can be automated while leaving the rest to professionals.

LMS Sync and Call Logic seamlessly integrate with HubSpot, Salesforce, and other CRM systems, allowing you to connect lead data to customer profiles in your CRM. Similarly, you can sync website visitor tracking data with email marketing tools like Mailchimp or Klaviyo to retarget affiliate-generated customers with tailored campaigns based on their on-site behavior.

Take a product tour to see how Phonexa helps affiliate marketers grow their revenues.

Lynx: Click Transparency That Gets You the Best Leads in the Market

Whether you’re buying or selling leads with Phonexa – or haven’t tried our software suite yet – I would highly recommend Lynx as a tool that uncovers all the insights into sales, clicks, impressions, affiliate progress, conversion rates, and other affiliate-related aspects.

• Advanced click tracking
• Real-time analysis on advertiser offers and affiliate traffic
• Centralized journey control
• Precise targeting to secure the leads you need

With Lynx, you not just get clicks – you get meaningful clicks that tell a story of where the customer journey began, what elements triggered a click, and if these insights would be true for other referred customers as well. There’s no other tool on the market that uncovers as much information as Lynx does, dissecting clicks on an atomic level.

 

HitMetrix: The Key to In-Depth Affiliate Tracking

It’s no secret that affiliate marketing revolves around forms, fills, and conversions, with success largely depending on how well you can track on-site user behavior. With HitMetrix, you can track every user action on your website and use these insights across marketing channels.

On top of tracking clicks, taps, and scrolls, HitMetrix can record user sessions so you can dissect them at any time to the required depth: how the on-site journey evolved, what triggered a specific form fill, and what you can change to generate and sell more leads.

 

The best part is that HitMetrix is native to Phonexa’s web tracking & distribution software, LMS Sync, with all essential information being pulled to an all-encompassing dashboard.

Take a product tour to explore HitMetrix and how it works hand-in-hand with other Phonexa’s products.

Predictive Modeling: Taking the Trial & Error Out of Affiliate Campaigns

The synergy of Phonexa’s solutions is truly remarkable. First, you unlock affiliate customer data using HitMetrix and LMS Sync or Call Logic, and then you can use these insights to simulate marketing scenarios without any risk.

Phonexa’s predictive modeling software uses real-time and accumulated customer data and preset campaign conditions to predict whether it is likely to succeed and what the chances are. Then, based on your risk tolerance, you can give it a green light or continue toggling variables until you’re fully satisfied with the prediction.

 

The best thing is that predictive accuracy grows as you accumulate more data. Slowly but steadily, you transform from occasional inconsistencies to a polished business model where expansion and scaling are exciting, not frightening.

Read also: Affiliate Tracking Software: How To Improve Attribution & Maximize Profit

How To Track Website Users Legally in the United States

Did you know 28% of adults in the United States are concerned about how the website they visit uses their personal data? First things first, you should make sure you’re complying with federal and state-level privacy laws and regulations*:

Federal Regulations Around Affiliate Tracking

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Act – Section 5	Practical implications: Properly disclose the use of affiliate links and the fact that you get a commission on the user’s purchase.
FTC Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising	Practical implications: Ensure that disclosures are clearly located near affiliate links and are easily understandable to the average consumer.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act: Affiliate Marketing	Practical implications: Give consumers notice and an opportunity to opt out of data sharing for marketing purposes.
CAN-SPAM Act	Practical implications: Use accurate sender information and subject lines, include a clear opt-out mechanism, and make sure any third-party email tracking services you’re using are compliant
Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA)	Practical implications: Obtain user consent for collecting their communications and prevent unauthorized access to this data
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)	Practical implications: Ensure tracking methods comply with the terms of service and user consent.

In addition to federal regulations, there are state-level regulations, such as the CCPA and VCDPA, which may overlap and necessitate a unified compliance strategy.

*The author of this article is not a legal professional. All information provided is for informational purposes only. Please consult a qualified attorney for legal advice.

Come on Top of the Lead Gen Mountain with Phonexa

So far, I’ve mentioned five of Phonexa’s solutions, but there are three more, all serving your performance & affiliate marketing success.

Granular affiliate tracking, data-driven distribution, real-time analytics & accurate marketing modeling – no software unlocks as much data into leads as Phonexa. With all data available in one dashboard, you never lose the forest for the trees, being able to focus on what matters.

 

Get Phonexa’s all-in-one performance marketing software suite at a single price (online price calculator):

Build your plan now, or book a demo to learn more about Phonexa.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does website visitor tracking violate the law?

Website visitor tracking is legal if you comply with federal laws like the FTC Endorsement Guidelines, FCRA, and CAN-SPAM, as well as state-level laws and regulations (CCPA, VCDPA, etc.).

What is the best web visitor tracking software, and how much does it cost?

The best web visitor tracking software is Phonexa’s HitMetrix because it uncovers every on-site customer interaction and synergizes with Phonexa’s seven performance marketing solutions and popular CRM systems like HubSpot or Salesforce. Monthly subscription starts at several hundred dollars, and you can customize your plan based on your needs.

How do I start web tracking affiliate traffic on my website?

To start tracking affiliate traffic on your website, set tracking goals and choose an optimal website tracking method (cookie, pixel, or S2S tracking) and software. Feel free to book a demo with Phonexa professionals for full guidance on the process.