Orders and revenue: why connect your shop

Heatmaps and recordings show what visitors do. Orders show which of those actions lead to sales. Without orders, Varly can tell you where people click, but not which clicks are worth money, and it can't say which version of a test gets more orders.

What orders unlock

• Click impact. For each element on a page, Varly compares visitors who clicked it with visitors who didn't: how many placed an order, the revenue per click and the revenue after the click. Without orders, this page shows No orders yet. Read more in Click impact.
• A/B tests. Each test counts how many visitors in each version placed an order, and turns that into a conversion rate. Tests compare orders, not revenue: order value isn't part of the verdict. Without linked orders, the test page says Varly can't pick a winner yet. See Read your test results.
• Filters. In Recordings you can show only visits that Placed an order (or No order). In Heatmaps you can choose Placed an order or No order too. The heatmap filter is grayed out while the chosen period has no orders.
• Better ideas. Varly's research looks at which pages convert, and the test plan for an idea uses the page's real conversion rate instead of an estimate.

Two ways to connect

Open Install in the menu on the left and scroll to 5. Connect your orders. Varly shows the way that fits the platform you picked under 1. There are three ways:

Your shop	How it works	Guide
Shopify	A webhook in your Shopify admin sends each new order to Varly. No app to install.	Connect Shopify orders
WooCommerce	The Varly plugin for WordPress sends each paid order, and updates it after a refund or cancellation. No developer needed.	Install Varly on WooCommerce or WordPress
Any other shop	Your shop's server sends each order to the Varly order API with a secret key. Usually a job for your developer.	Send orders with the order API

The top of 5. Connect your orders shows how many orders arrived in the last 30 days and when the last one came in. If it says No orders received yet, nothing has reached Varly so far.

How an order is linked to a visit

An order on its own only tells Varly that something was sold. To know which visit led to the sale, Varly needs to link the order to the visitor:

• On Shopify, the snippet adds two hidden values to the cart: a visitor ID and a session ID. Shopify keeps them with the order, so the webhook tells Varly which visit it belongs to. Customers don't see them.
• With the WooCommerce plugin, the plugin remembers the visit in a cookie on normal pages and saves it with the order at checkout.
• With the order API, your developer reads the same two IDs on your site and sends them along with the order.

Orders without these IDs still arrive and count in the order total on Install → 5. Connect your orders. They don't count in Click impact, A/B tests or the order filters, because Varly can't tell which visit they came from.

What you see

• At the top of Install → 5. Connect your orders: for example "124 orders in the last 30 days. Last order 5 min ago."
• In Click impact: the revenue per session for the page, and per element the revenue per click and the revenue after the click.
• In a test: an Orders and a Conversion column for the original and each variant.

Orders arrive within a minute of being placed. Varly only receives orders placed after you connect: earlier orders are not imported. Orders are kept for 25 months. See Privacy and GDPR for all retention periods.

Common problems

Install still says "No orders received yet" under 5. Connect your orders. Check the setup steps in Connect Shopify orders or Send orders with the order API, then place a test order.

Orders arrive, but Click impact and tests show few of them. Some orders aren't linked to a visit. See Orders are not linked to visits.

My revenue in Varly is lower than in my shop. That's expected. See Why Varly's revenue differs from Shopify or GA4.