Web-only apparel retailer Indochino understands that purchases, instead of coming from the last click made by consumers, often involve several online steps, and last year moved to begin tracking the steps leading to a sale. “We live in a world where shoppers have many touch points with a brand,” says Antonio Guzman, the retailer’s manager of digital marketing. “They’re visiting our web site, using search, reading our e-mails and visiting social media. We knew we had to find a better way to evaluate the performance of those channels.”

That’s why the e-retailer, which sells custom suits made from measurements that customers provide via its e-commerce site, turned to Convertro. The vendor places a pixel on consumers’ computers to show the full digital path a shopper takes after seeing an ad and completing a purchase. A pixel is an invisible tag placed on an ad or web site that, when clicked on, generates a notice of that visit. They work in conjunction with cookies by registering when a consumer visits a particular page.  In some cases, the vendor can also link consumers’ actions on multiple devices, such as when he opens an e-mail on his smartphone and then visits the retailer’s site on his laptop.

The move to Convertro helped the retail gain a clearer picture of how consumers shop. Convertro ties together consumers’ actions across multiple devices for roughly 15% of Indochino’s customers. The vendor also enables Indochino to analyze such data points as revenue generated via each of its channels, and to see which channels generated the last click before a shopper made a purchase. 

“Somebody might come to our site via organic search, then Like us on Facebook, click through a Facebook link, sign up for our e-mail newsletter and then two weeks later do a branded search query and click on a paid search link,” says Guzman. “Before we’d attribute the sale to the paid search ad, but now we can weigh each touch point accurately and see what actually drives the transaction. It’s a more holistic view.”

That perspective helps the retailer better allocate its marketing spending, he says. For instance, it boosted paid search spending on high-value items, like premium suits, that may not lead to a direct click, but influence shoppers’ path to purchase. “The last click is important, but it isn’t everything,” he says.