How do my channels work together before a customer buys?

See how many sources customers use before buying, which sources hand over to each other, and how often Google Ads and Meta Ads show up.

One visit, or many?

The card One visit, or many?, with the line An estimate of how many sources customers come through before they buy, splits your orders in two:

• Bought after one source: the share of orders whose journey has a single source, with the number of orders under it.
• Came back through 2+ sources: the share of orders whose journey has two or more sources, with the number of orders under it.

A bar under the two shares shows the split. The line under the bar reads, for example, On average, customers touch 1.6 sources before buying. and adds Visits we can't track aren't counted, so the real number of visits is likely a bit higher.

TrueROAS counts it like this:

1. It takes the orders whose journey has at least one marketing source. Direct visits, draft orders and in-person POS sales do not count as a marketing source.
2. It takes the direct visits, draft orders and POS sales out of those journeys and counts the steps that are left.
3. The same source twice in a row counts once, but a source that comes back later counts again. Meta Ad, then Google Ad, then Meta Ad counts as 3 sources.

The two shares are rounded to whole percents, and the average is rounded to one decimal.

How your channels work together

The card How your channels work together, with the line When customers use more than one source, this is how they move between them, lists the most common hand-offs from one source to the next, for example Meta Ad then Google Ad. Next to each hand-off is its number of orders.

• It shows up to 6 hand-offs, the most common first. The bar next to each one compares it with the top hand-off.
• An order counts once for every hand-off in its journey. A journey with three or more sources has more than one hand-off, so one order can count in several rows.
• Click a Google Ad, Meta Ad or Tik Tok Ad step to see the ads behind those orders. See How do I see which ads are behind a source on Customer Journeys?.

Journeys that include Google Ads and Meta Ads

Two cards show how often each of the two big ad platforms shows up on the way to a purchase: Journeys that include Google Ads, with How often a Google Ads click shows up on the way to a purchase., and Journeys that include Meta Ads, with How often a Meta Ads click shows up on the way to a purchase.

• The big percentage is the share of orders whose journey includes that platform. After it come the number of those orders and their revenue added up.
• The next two numbers split those orders. The one labelled orders from Google Ads alone, or orders from Meta Ads alone, counts the orders where that platform was the only source. The one labelled together with other sources counts the rest.
• Most common paths lists up to 3 journeys that include it, each with its number of orders. A path with more than 4 steps shows the first 4 and a count of the rest, such as +2.
• Click a Google Ad, Meta Ad or Tik Tok Ad step in a path to see the ads behind it.

The percentages on these cards are shares of the same orders as One visit, or many?, the orders with at least one marketing source.

When a card is not shown

• One visit, or many? is hidden when no order in your date range has a marketing source.
• How your channels work together is hidden when there are fewer than 2 different hand-offs, for example when almost every order came through one source.
• Journeys that include Google Ads or Journeys that include Meta Ads is hidden when no journey in your date range includes that platform.

Good to know

• Attribution is how TrueROAS decides which ad gets the credit for a sale. These cards do not give credit. For the sales credited to each campaign, use the Ads Manager. See What is the Ads Manager and what can I do there?.
• Journeys that include Meta Ads can include customers who came from a Facebook or Instagram post without clicking an ad, because those visits also show as Meta Ad. See What do the source names in a customer journey mean?.
• There is no card for TikTok, Pinterest, Snapchat or other platforms. Their steps show in the hand-offs and in All customer journeys. See How do I read the All customer journeys list?.
• The numbers are estimates from the visits TrueROAS could link to each customer. Visits it could not see are missing, so the share for Bought after one source is likely a little too high.
• The cards follow your date range, and everyone on the store sees the same cards for the same dates.
• On screens narrower than 900 px, the cards sit on top of each other.
• How the steps of a journey are worked out is explained in How does TrueROAS build a customer journey?.