What is last-click attribution?

Last-click attribution is a way of crediting sales that gives 100% of the credit for an order to the last channel the customer came from before buying.

How WooCommerce uses it

WooCommerce's built-in order attribution (added in version 8.5) uses a last-click model. WooCommerce's documentation describes it as giving all the conversion credit to the last interaction before the customer lands on your site. That source is what you see in the Origin column on the Orders list and in the Order attribution box on each order: its source type, UTM source, medium and campaign, and device type.

Earlier visits from other channels aren't recorded against the order. By default WooCommerce treats a visit as one session lasting 30 minutes.

A worked example

Say a shopper sees your Instagram post on Monday and visits, but doesn't buy. On Wednesday they search your store's name on Google and visit again. On Friday they click a link in your newsletter and order.

Under last-click attribution, the newsletter gets the whole order. Instagram, which introduced them, gets nothing, and Google gets nothing either.

Why it matters

Last-click is simple and consistent, which makes it easy to compare channels month to month. Its blind spot is the channels that start the journey, such as social posts and ads, which tend to look weaker than they are, while email and branded search look stronger. Read channel numbers with that in mind and avoid cutting a channel just because it rarely gets the last click. See WooCommerce order attribution, explained and Instagram vs email: comparing revenue by source.