Shopify customer consent and referral links

customer privacy settings in shopify can significantly impact roster's ability to accurately track link clicks and attribute referrals to ambassadors roster relies on shopify's technology for pixel tracking, which may be limited by customer privacy settings when a customer visits a store through an ambassador's referral link, a cookie banner may appear, requiring their consent for tracking if the customer accepts, network calls, including those to roster to capture link clicks, are triggered however, if they decline or ignore the banner, roster cannot track the referral correctly this limitation is due to shopify's coupling of web tracking pixels with customer privacy settings, and it is crucial for brands and ambassadors to be aware of this to manage expectations and address any discrepancies in referral tracking video walkthrough video transcript this is a transcript from the loom video walkthrough \[00 00] hey, this is jeff at roster this video is geared towards brands on roster who are using shopify and who have questions about how the customer privacy settings in their shopify store or a third party plugin they're using might impact roster's ability to capture link clicks and attribute referrals to \[00 21] customers who make purchases from link clicks that's really important topic um, definitely we want to be as accurate as we possibly can, but we're also using shopify's technology to do the pixel tracking \[00 36] so we do have some limitations so, okay, for first of all, before we jump into the settings, i just want to show you what this could look like for your store \[00 43] so i'm in a roster account here and i'm going to copy a referral link from one of the ambassadors and i'm going to paste it into here, which is going to bring me to a store and you see that i have a cookie banner right here \[01 01] i have set up my store in the region where i live to have the, um, cookie banner required before shopify is allowed to do any tracking \[01 09] so, there's a whole bunch of, stuff happening right here what's important to note is that if i come back to the ambassador and i click refresh, um, we'll note that the link click, link, link clicks didn't increment \[01 28] and that is because roster wasn't able to fire off, didn't get the web pixel event from shopify about a week ago, this page being viewed, this ambassador's link being viewed \[01 39] and the reason why is that, uhm, the store is configured and the way shopify set up their web pixels is that web pixel events and other events that would be considered, uhm, customer privacy aren't admitted to merchants and developers until the customer provides consent \[01 59] if they click declassify, then, uhm, that session will never be able to capture link clicks and referred orders, referred purchases \[02 09] but if the shopper at some point in being here decides to click accept on this, you're going to notice, excuse me, you're going to notice when i click accept a whole bunch of, uhm, call, network calls are going to be made \[02 23] so a bunch of network calls are always got fired off and among them is this call right here to roster \[02 29] this is the roster call to capture a link click and those were all queued up by shopify waiting for the customer to click accept and as soon as they did, it fired off a whole bunch of things, uhm, that shopify now has enabled, uhm, most of which don't have anything to do with roster, but some of which \[02 47] do and so now if we were to come back to the ambassadors account and we'll click refresh there and now you see that the link click count has incremented from 459 to 460 so that link click went through to roster \[03 00] uhm, if a customer didn't accept that banner and either just clicked the x to close it out or they clicked decline and roster wouldn't know about the link click \[03 10] and if they went on to make a purchase the purchase would obviously go through to your store, but roster wouldn't know that that purchase was due to one of your ambassadors driving that sale \[03 20] and unfortunately, that is just a hard limitation, uh, that, that shopify has imposed they have tightly coupled their web tracking pixel with their, uh, customer privacy \[03 32] so let me show you what that looks like from a shopify admin perspective so i'm logged into one of my shopify stores and i went into settings and then i clicked on customer privacy \[03 46] and at the top of customer privacy, i have the regions and consent box and this is something that your brand can, um, customize by default \[04 00] bye i think shopify checks the ones that are recommended and i believe they recommend countries based on whether or not those countries have requirements for, for shoppers to opt in \[04 12] um, and that looks like it's a lot of the european union countries um, i added for demonstration purposes, i'm in united states \[04 24] so i manually checked that for all the states and clicked done and that is why when i came to the store, i got that banner pop up \[04 35] um, according to shopify's documentation, um, the united states does not require opt in so if you're a store in the united states and you have that enabled, um, obviously that's your decision, your choice \[04 47] uh, it sounds like it might be might not be a requirement from maybe the u s government maybe it is in california \[04 54] i'm not totally sure but if you do have it enabled and your business is primarily in the united states, then the ramifications are that any customer who came in from a referral link who doesn't click accept, those link clicks and purchases won't be accepted \[05 12] they won't tracked in roster so, it's just a good thing to know about in any other region where it is mandatory and required \[05 20] you'll have the same limitations there might be some studies out there that talk about what percentage of users click accept versus just close the little banner versus click, uh, to deny \[05 34] i'm not sure what those metrics are but, it does seem logical to reason that if it is on for a region, the banner is on for a region, that a certain percentage of people who come in from a referral link will click accept and those link clicks won't be captured \[05 52] so, it's just something that you guys need to be aware of and that your ambassadors will need to be aware of \[05 57] it's not uncommon for ambassadors to reach out to roster managers and say, hey, i know for sure somebody used my link, but the link click didn't come through and i didn't get credit for the order and, uhm, sometimes that is the reason why, other times, maybe they didn't end up making the purchase in \[06 13] the same browser and so the cookie wasn't in the browser when they made the final purchase there could be a number of reasons, but this is definitely, uhm, one of the primary reasons and it's just simply something that we are aware of \[06 25] under, uh, shopify's, uh, terms of use and, well, they actually, it's not a term of use we could even break, they just don't even send us the information until the customer clicks accept \[06 35] so, hopefully that makes sense if you have further questions or you want to talk to us about it, or if you have some insights you'd like to share with how your brand is doing things or some other things you've heard, that would be great \[06 46] uhm, send those to support ai getroster com and we will get back to you in the meantime, have a great day thanks step by step instructions demonstrating the impact of customer privacy settings open an ambassador's referral link to view the shopify store notice the cookie banner appearing before any tracking can occur return to the ambassador's account in roster and refresh the page to observe that the link click count does not increment initially granting consent for tracking as the customer, click accept on the cookie banner observe the network calls initiated by shopify, including those capturing link clicks in roster refresh the ambassador's account in roster to see the incremented link click count reflecting the customer's consent understanding shopify's customer privacy settings log in to your shopify admin navigate to settings > customer privacy review the regions and consent boxes, which advise where cookie banners are required based on local regulations (e g , european union countries) note the importance of these settings, particularly if your store is in the united states, where opt in is not always mandatory but can affect tracking communicating with ambassadors inform ambassadors about the limitations and conditions under which their referral tracking might not function explain potential reasons for untracked referrals, such as customers not consenting to tracking or switching browsers before finalizing purchases encourage ambassadors to reach out if they notice discrepancies, and be prepared to investigate possible causes support and feedback if you need further assistance or want to share insights on how your brand manages these settings, contact roster support reach out to support at support ai\@getroster com for any queries or to discuss tracking performance need help? if you need any additional assistance with with your roster account, feel free to contact our support team at support\@getroster com mailto\ support\@getroster com we're here to help!