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Revenue attribution without cookies

Updated October 19, 2026

Visits tell you where people come from. Revenue tells you which of those places bring customers. The two often disagree: a channel with few visits can bring most of the sales.

What cookieless analytics can attribute

A cookieless tool recognises a visitor within one day at most. Statsdot builds a visitor code from the address, the browser and a key that is deleted every day. So it can connect a purchase to the visit it happened in: where that visit came from, which campaign, which page it started on.

That covers more than it sounds like:

  • purchases made in one sitting, the usual case for lower-priced products;
  • returning customers who come back through a newsletter, an ad or a search and buy on that visit;
  • sign-ups and trials started on the first visit.

What it cannot attribute

Someone who clicks an ad on Monday, thinks about it, and comes back on Thursday by typing your address is credited to Thursday's visit: direct. Linking Monday to Thursday needs something that recognises the person across days, usually a cookie or the customer's account, and then consent rules apply.

Renewals and other charges made by your payment provider without a visit cannot be credited either; there is no visit to credit.

Reading revenue per source honestly

  • Direct revenue includes delayed decisions from other channels. If direct revenue is high, some of it was started elsewhere.
  • Compare channels with similar buying cycles. Same-visit attribution favours channels that bring people ready to buy (search for your brand, newsletters to existing customers) over channels that start a longer journey (social, display).
  • Use conversion rate as well as revenue. Revenue per visitor for each channel shows which traffic is worth more, independent of volume.
  • Look at trends, not single days. A few large orders can swing a small channel.

Setting it up in Statsdot

Send the amount with your purchase event:

window.statsdot.track('Purchase', null, { revenue: 49.90, currency: 'EUR' });

The WordPress plugin and the PrestaShop module do it for you. Revenue then appears next to visitors and in every source, channel, campaign and entry-page row. See Revenue.