Orders not coming in as Direct

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by

Erica Thumma

Hi Guys! We use your plugin for fundraising. Fundraising Leaders = Affiliate and when they submit their final order from the fundraiser at the discounted price, the order shows up in WooCommerce correctly as a referral to “Direct”.

On occasion, we have to use the “Log in as User” plugin to push an order through for one of the Affiliates if they’re having difficulty. These also used to come in correctly as a referral for “Direct”. But lately, they’ve been coming in rewarding a random Affiliate. We then have to manually change the referral to “Direct”.

I don’t believe that I’ve made any changes lately that should have affected this. I’ve cleared the cache, flushed it, etc. Do you think it’s just a conflict with the plugin (I can’t test it without the plugin activated) or is there something more I can do to clear the cache?

It’s not a major issue. It causes them to have to take an easy extra step after pushing the order through. Although, on my side, I keep getting complaints. So, I’m reaching out to you to do my due diligence on resolving the issue.

Thanks in advance! -Erica

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Comments

3 responses to “Orders not coming in as Direct”

  1. George Avatar
    George

    You’re welcome Erica!

    That’s good but might not be enough if your affiliates use any possible URL on your site as an affiliate URL, in which case it would be better if you try to exclude the URL parameter from caching, aka only fund.

    Cheers

  2. Erica Thumma Avatar
    Erica Thumma

    Thanks for the tip. I use SiteGround’s Speed Optimizer plugin for caching control. I had lots of page noted to exclude from caching but not that one. Affiliates is replaced with Fund on our site so I excluded https://fundraising.happyvalleysoupcompany.com/?fund=*/ … the asterisk being a wildcard. I’ll see how it goes.

    Thanks again!

  3. George Avatar
    George

    Hey Erica,

    Welcome back to our support forum.
    What you describe could easily relate to cache and for that reason you are recommended to check the Troubleshooting section in the plugin’s Documentation:
    – https://docs.itthinx.com/document/affiliates-pro/troubleshooting/
    You can find a non-exhaustive list of caching plugins and the actions required to avoid any interference, but if your caching plugin is not included then you can test it and check whether the affiliate cookie is affected or not.

    In general and as the option description mentions, when there’s no affiliate applicable, then the Direct will be granted with a referral. The option I’m referring to is located in Affiliates > Settings > Referrals(tab).

    Apart from that, it is quite possible that some of your affiliates use their own or other affiliates’ links prior to placing an order. What you can further do to minimize that, is to decrease the Referral timeout to ie 1 day and also disable the Allow auto-referrals option, both found in the aforementioned place.
    Reference: https://docs.itthinx.com/document/affiliates-pro/setup/settings/referrals/

    Kind regards,
    George

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