Why did an order show as 'direct' after a redirect, and how does SignalLane fix it?

A shopper clicks your ad, lands on one of your stores and is sent to another, then buys. If the campaign tags did not survive the hop, or the store that took the order never saw the visit that carried them, the order looks as if the shopper simply typed your address: "direct". SignalLane prevents both, and credits the order on its Attribution page.

Why the campaign gets lost

• The tags are dropped. Campaign tags such as utm_source and click IDs such as gclid live in the part of the address after the question mark. A redirect that does not copy that part leaves them behind.
• The order is on another store. Each Shopify store measures its own visits. When a shopper moves from one of your stores to another, the second store never saw the click that brought them in.

What SignalLane does

• It carries every parameter. A SignalLane redirect, and a banner's link, take the shopper to the same page on the destination with every parameter on the address, unless you limit them under Advanced › Only forward these parameters.
• It marks its own redirects. SignalLane marks its own redirects, so the destination knows the visit came through SignalLane even when there was no campaign to keep.
• It records the landing visit. SignalLane's pixel on the destination notes a page view that arrives with a campaign tag, a click ID from Google, Meta, TikTok or Microsoft, a SignalLane redirect, or an AI assistant as the referring site.
• It joins the order. When the same shopper places an order up to 30 days later, SignalLane credits it to their latest landing visit.

The order then shows on that store's Attribution page as kept a campaign when the visit carried a campaign, or sent by SignalLane with no campaign when it came through SignalLane with no campaign. What the attribution figures mean.

Orders that still have no campaign

• The shopper declined tracking, or their browser blocks it. SignalLane still counts the order, from your Shopify orders, but cannot tell where the shopper came from, so it counts as unattributed.
• The landing visit was more than 30 days before the order, or older than the visit records SignalLane keeps.
• The shopper really did arrive with no campaign, no SignalLane link and no AI assistant. That is a direct or organic visit, and nothing was lost.
• The cart was carried to the other store at checkout. A checkout extension cannot read the visit that started the order, so the second store sees only that the visit came through SignalLane.

Check a redirect yourself

Open your store with a test campaign on the address, such as ?utm_source=test, from a country the rule matches. After the redirect, the address on the destination should still carry it. The landing visit then appears under Latest activity on the destination's Attribution page.