If required, it is possible to allow conversions to be tracked via the referral URL, even if the affiliates coupon isn’t used on the order.

This means if someone visits your site via a referral URL and places an order without using the coupon, or uses a different coupon for a better discount, you can still track the referrals for that affiliate, and provide the appropriate commission.

To enable this feature, simply go to the “Referral URLs” settings tab, and enable the option under “URL Conversion Tracking”.

How it works

When URL conversion tracking is enabled and a customer places an order while their referral cookie is still active, the plugin saves that affiliate’s coupon as the order’s referrer, even though the coupon is not on the order. The commission is then worked out from that coupon’s own commission settings, including any custom rate set on the coupon itself, so the affiliate earns what they would have earned if the coupon had been used.

The order then appears on the affiliate’s dashboard like any other referral. The customer receives no discount, since the coupon was never applied to the order.

This relies on the referral cookie, so Store cookies for referral links must stay enabled under Privacy & Cookies. With cookies disabled, the coupon has to be used on the order for the referral to be tracked. See Privacy & Cookie Settings.

Stop one coupon from auto-applying

Auto Apply Coupon is a single site-wide setting, so when it is on, every affiliate coupon is applied automatically. If you need one affiliate’s link to track sales without ever giving a discount, there is a workaround, though it is not a supported feature.

Give that coupon a WooCommerce usage restriction it can never meet in practice — for example a Minimum spend far above any realistic order value, set on the coupon’s Usage restriction tab. Auto-apply skips any coupon WooCommerce considers invalid for the current cart, so the coupon is never added, while the referral cookie is still stored. With URL conversion tracking enabled, as described above, the sale is still attributed to that affiliate and they still earn their commission.

Two things to be aware of: the coupon cannot be entered manually at checkout either, as the customer sees the standard WooCommerce minimum-spend error; and if a cart ever does meet the restriction, the coupon applies as normal. Test this on a staging site before using it on a live store.