Which channel brings the customers who pay?
Rank marketing channels by the buyers they bring instead of visits, with first or last touch, revenue per channel, campaigns and Google Ads cost per buyer.
First touch vs. last touch attribution
Short answer
MIRA FIVE offers two attribution views. First touch credits the channel that first brought a person; last touch credits the most recent channel that brought them back from outside. Use first touch to judge what finds customers, last touch to judge what brings them back to buy.
Many buyers visit more than once before they pay. Say one came through an ad, returned through search and bought on the second visit. Which channel gets the sale? The answer depends on the attribution view, and MIRA FIVE gives you two: first touch and last touch.
What is first touch attribution?
First touch credits the channel of a person’s very first visit. It answers “who found this customer?” That makes it the view for judging acquisition: which channel brings people who go on to buy, even when they buy weeks later through something else. It is the default on Acquisition › Channels.
What is last touch attribution?
Last touch credits the most recent channel that brought the person from outside. It answers “what brought them back?” A direct visit counts as the last touch only when the person never came from anywhere else, so typing your address after a Google search leaves the credit with Google search.
How does one purchase count in each view?
Take Emil Becker, a customer of the sample shop. Emil first came through an Instagram ad, then clicked the newsletter, and later bought for €328 after a Google search.
| First touch | Last touch | |
|---|---|---|
| Channel credited | Paid social | Organic search |
| Where Emil counts | One buyer on the Paid social row | One buyer on the Organic search row |
| What it tells you | The Instagram ad found Emil | Search brought Emil back to buy |
Both statements are true. The shop still has one buyer; the two views only decide which row Emil sits on. The newsletter click in between gets the sale in neither view, and Emil’s page still shows it. Across all buyers, a channel that gains under last touch tends to bring people back, and a channel that gains under first touch tends to find them.
When should I use which?
| Your question | View |
|---|---|
| Which channel finds new customers? | First touch |
| Where should the next euro of acquisition budget go? | First touch |
| Which channel brings people back to buy? | Last touch |
| Did the newsletter or a search ad close the sale? | Last touch |
| What happened between the first visit and the purchase? | Journeys › Conversion journeys |
What about the visits in between?
MIRA FIVE does not split a sale across channels. Instead, Journeys › Conversion journeys lists the channels buyers came through, visit by visit, before they bought. In the sample shop, 8 buyers came only through Direct, 7 came through Paid search and then Direct, and 5 came only through Organic search. The median buyer took 10 days from first visit to purchase. Each person’s page in People shows every visit with its channel and what they did.
How to do it in MIRA FIVE
- Open Acquisition › Channels. It shows first touch by default.
- Switch to last touch and compare the Buyers column row by row.
- Note the channels that gain buyers under last touch, and the ones that gain under first touch.
- In People, filter by first channel or last channel to list the people behind each view.
- Open Journeys › Conversion journeys to see the paths between first visit and purchase.
- On Acquisition › Ads, which opens on last touch, the same switch decides whether ad buyers and revenue go to the first visit or the last outside visit before the purchase.
The Acquisition and Journeys pages show the screens.
What this leaves out
- Both views need visitors who consented, because only they are followed from one visit to the next.
- First touch is the first visit MIRA FIVE saw. A person who came before your script was installed, or before they consented, starts at their first counted visit.
- Each view gives a whole buyer to one channel. Shares of a sale across several channels are outside what MIRA FIVE reports.
Questions and answers
Which view is the default in MIRA FIVE?
First touch on Acquisition › Channels, because it answers who brought each person. Acquisition › Ads opens on last touch. One switch changes either screen.
Does a direct visit count as the last touch?
Only for people who never came from anywhere else. Someone who typed your address after a Google search stays credited to Google search.
Does MIRA FIVE offer multi-touch attribution?
No. It offers first touch and last touch. Journeys › Conversion journeys shows every channel a buyer came through, visit by visit, so you can read the whole path.
Why do buyer counts per channel differ between the views?
Each buyer is credited to one channel per view, and the two views can pick different ones. The total number of buyers stays the same; only the rows they fall into change.