Use UTM parameters
Tag your links with UTM parameters to see which campaigns bring visitors, and which of them convert.
UTM parameters are tags you add to the end of a link, like ?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=launch. When someone arrives through a tagged link, Muro records the tags so you can see which newsletter, post, or ad sent them. There's nothing to set up: the tracking script reads them automatically.
What Muro captures
The tracking script reads three parameters from the page URL:
| Parameter | What it's for | Example |
|---|---|---|
utm_source | Where the visitor came from | newsletter, twitter, producthunt |
utm_medium | The type of channel | email, social, cpc |
utm_campaign | The campaign or promotion | launch_week, black_friday |
A tagged link looks like this:
https://yourapp.com/pricing?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=launch_weekutm_term and utm_content are not captured by the tracking script. They stay in the page URL, but they don't appear in the UTM Breakdown panel or as filters. If you need to tell two links in the same campaign apart, put the difference in utm_campaign, for example launch_week_header and launch_week_footer.
First-touch attribution
Muro credits each visitor to the UTM tags of their first visit in the period you're viewing. If someone arrives from your newsletter and then browses five more pages, all of their activity, including any goals they reach, is credited to the newsletter.
This means:
- Each visitor appears in one row only, so the rows add up without double counting.
- Visitors whose first visit had no UTM tags aren't in the UTM Breakdown panel. You'll find them under Top Referrers instead.
- Tags only need to be on the landing page. You don't have to carry them from page to page.
The Referrers, Technology, and Locations panels work the same way, so every breakdown on your dashboard tells the same story.
Visitor IDs reset every day for privacy, so a visitor who comes back tomorrow without tags counts as a new visitor. See Privacy.
The UTM Breakdown panel
On your dashboard, the UTM Breakdown panel lists each combination of tags with these columns:
- Source, Medium, Campaign: the tags on the visitor's first visit. A "—" means that tag wasn't set.
- Visitors: unique visitors first tagged with this combination.
- Conv. Rate: the share of those visitors who reached at least one goal in the period.
Without goals, Conv. Rate is 0%. Set up a goal to compare campaigns by how many visitors they turn into signups or buyers, not just by how many visitors they bring.
The panel shows the top 5 rows. Click View all to see more. If nothing in the period was tagged, you'll see "No UTM-tagged traffic in this period."
Filter by UTM
Click any row in the UTM Breakdown panel to filter the whole dashboard to those visitors. Muro adds a filter for each tag the row has: UTM Source, UTM Medium, and UTM Campaign. Click the row again to remove them.
With the filter on, every panel shows only those visitors: which pages they read, where they're from, which devices they use, and which goals they reached. See Filter your data.
The Sessions page has the same UTM Source, UTM Medium, and UTM Campaign filters, so you can follow individual journeys from a campaign.
Naming tips
- Use lowercase. Values are case-sensitive, so
Twitterandtwittershow up as two rows. - Pick one spelling per channel and keep it. Decide whether it's
xortwitter,emailornewsletter, and use it every time. - Use
_or-instead of spaces. Spaces become%20in links and are easy to get wrong. - Keep values short. Each value can be up to 256 characters. A pageview with a longer value is dropped.
- Never put personal data in tags. No email addresses or names, for example in a link generated by your email tool. Tags are stored as part of the page URL.
- Don't tag internal links. Tags are for links on other sites, in emails, and in ads. A link from your homepage to your pricing page doesn't need them, and tagging it muddles where visitors really came from.
Build tagged links with Muro Links
Muro Links has a UTM builder. When you create a short link, choose Add UTM parameters and fill in Source, Medium, and Campaign. Muro adds them to the destination for you. The builder also has Content and Term fields, but as noted above, the tracking script doesn't capture those. Save a combination you use often as a template. See UTM templates.
You get two views of the same campaign: the link's own click stats in Muro Links, and what those visitors did on your site in the UTM Breakdown panel.
If you sell on Shopify, the Revenue panel has a Campaign tab that shows revenue by campaign. See Shopify revenue.
Verify it works
- Open your site with test tags, for example
https://yourapp.com/?utm_source=test&utm_medium=docs&utm_campaign=check. - On your dashboard, set the time range to Live or Today.
- A row with
test,docs, andcheckappears in the UTM Breakdown panel.