Referrals and Attribution
Finding out how clients actually found you, running a referral programme, and hooking up your ad tracking.
Most shops cannot answer "where do new clients come from?" Perceny gives you three ways to find out.
1. Ask them
New clients are asked how they heard about you during booking and in the kiosk walk-in flow. The answer is stored on their record.
Disable "How Did You Hear About Us?" Question (Appointment Settings) turns it off. Turn it off if you will never look at the answers; leave it on if you will. It is the only attribution data most local businesses ever get, and it costs the client one tap.
Read the answers monthly, not yearly. The pattern changes.
2. Referrals
Perceny has a referral feature reachable from the account area. Clients refer other clients, and the referral is tracked.
A referral programme works when the reward is worth mentioning to a friend and simple to explain. "Both of you get $10 off" beats a points scheme every time.
3. Ad tracking
Features Configuration → Website Settings carries four fields:
- Google Tag ID — one or more IDs like
AW-123456789. - Google Book Conversion Label — the full conversion ID for bookings, in
AW-123456789/AbCdEfGhIjform. - Google Walk-In Conversion Label — the same for walk-ins.
- Meta Pixel ID — one or more pixel IDs.
Each accepts several values, so you can track across accounts — useful if an agency runs one and you run another.
Set these up before you spend money. Conversions are not backfilled, and a month of ad spend with no conversion tracking teaches you nothing.
What to do with the answers
The point of attribution is to stop paying for the channels that do not work. Once you know that half your new clients come from Google and none from the flyers, the decision makes itself.
Two things to watch:
- Word of mouth is under-reported. People who were referred often say "Google", because that is where they looked you up.
- The first month of a channel is not the channel. Give it a quarter before you judge it.
Google Reserve
Enable Google Book Online Button (Google Reserve) (Appointment Settings) puts a Book Now button on your Google Business Profile. For most local shops this is the single highest-volume booking source there is, and it is free. Google can take 24 hours to switch it on.