First-party tracking and ad blockers

Whence loads and sends through your store’s own domain, so ad blockers do not cut it, and recognizes a returning visitor for at least a month, until they buy.

First-party tracking is available on Shopify and on WordPress (WooCommerce included). On other sites, Whence loads and sends through its own domain, and the First-party tracking card does not appear; the Conversions screen then shows the Attribution window card on its own.

Why it matters

Ad blockers often block requests to tracking domains. Requests to your own store’s address get through.
Safari erases, after 7 days, what a script stores in the browser. A shopper who clicks an ad and buys three weeks later would look like a new visitor, and the sale would lose its ad click. An identifier set by your store’s server lasts its full life, so Whence can tie the sale to the click within your attribution window.

Whence never keeps that identifier as is: it keeps a fingerprint salted for your store, which cannot be linked back to the value or across stores.

Check that it works

Step 1: Read the First-party tracking card

On a Shopify or WordPress store, the First-party tracking card is on two screens: Setup > Install (with the setup steps) and Conversions (with the attribution window). It shows:

First-party tracking: on when at least one visit came through your store’s domain in the last 7 days, or First-party tracking: off with “No visit came through your store’s domain in the last 7 days. Visits still arrive through the Whence domain.”
The share of visits that came through your store’s domain and through the Whence domain.
Visitors recognized over 7 days: visitors seen this week whose first visit was more than 7 days ago. These are the shoppers Safari would have forgotten.

Set it up

Step 2: Set it up for your platform

Shopify

Turn on Visit analytics in your theme: Online Store > Themes > Customize > App embeds.
Nothing else to do: the app proxy comes with the app, at your-store.com/apps/whence. The tracker, surveys and the Whence Shopify pixel all send through it.
If you changed the proxy path in Shopify (Settings > Apps > Whence), set it back to apps/whence. Otherwise Whence uses its own domain and the card shows First-party tracking: off.

On Shopify, visitors are recognized through the identifier Shopify’s own servers set (_shopify_y, one year). Shopify does not let apps set cookies through the proxy.

First-party tracking does not change consent. Whence still records and sends only what your consent settings allow, and the visitor cookie is set only when a visit is allowed. See Which cookie banner Whence reads.

If the card stays off

Shopify: check that Visit analytics is on in App embeds and that the proxy path is apps/whence. Then open your store in a new window and browse a page.
WordPress: check the plugin version, the permalinks and the relay key.
The status looks at the last 7 days of visits, so a fix shows up after the next visit, not before.