A test purchase is not tracking on your branded affiliate domain: what to check
Summary
This article helps brand admins confirm that white-label affiliate tracking is working after you set up your branded domains, and explains why a test purchase can fail to record a conversion.
Description
You set up your branded tracking domains, for example one domain for affiliate links and another for creator live sites, you placed a test order, but the conversion did not appear in GRIN.
Steps
- Leave the on-site GRIN tracking snippet exactly as it was at onboarding. It loads from the GRIN CDN and should not be repointed to your new branded subdomains. Repointing it will break tracking, because those subdomains serve affiliate links and creator live sites, not the on-page script.
- Confirm the affiliate link group for the brand uses your branded affiliate domain, and that the group is in an active activation with a link assigned to a test creator.
- In a single browser session, click that creator's affiliate link first and let it redirect. This is the step that sets the tracking cookie. A purchase without a preceding click cannot be attributed.
- Complete a test purchase on your site.
- Confirm the GRIN conversion snippet fires on the order-confirmation page and passes the order number and total. If your checkout runs on a different domain from your storefront, that confirmation page also needs the snippet.
- Open the test creator in GRIN and confirm the click and the conversion appear. Attribution can take a few minutes.
Why this happens
Attribution works in two parts. The click on the affiliate link stores a tracking cookie in the shopper's browser, and the conversion snippet on the order-confirmation page reads that cookie and reports the sale. If the shopper never clicked a tracked link first, if cookies were blocked, or if the confirmation page did not run the snippet with the order details, there is nothing to attribute and no conversion is recorded.