A repeatable playbook for diagnosing broken tracking and attribution

Problem

A recurring, high-stakes failure mode: a merchant’s tracking and attribution isn’t working after initial setup, so affiliate referrals go uncredited and the program is effectively down.

Finding

The root cause is almost always an implementation mismatch — incorrect instruction sets, or an attribution setup that doesn’t match how their particular Stripe checkout is built.

Resolution

I split the diagnosis by layer. For the tracking layer, the browser console is the fastest confirmation of whether the script is firing. For the attribution side of conversion tracking, I check the Stripe logs for the tracking ID to confirm the referral is being carried through. Fixes are verified the same way before handing back.

Impact

Tracking and attribution restored within hours — or a couple of days when coordinating with a merchant’s dev team. Merchants get their affiliate program back after an outage. Tracking and attribution resumed, so new referrals and commissions are recorded correctly again. If the merchant has secondary data about affiliate link usage, missed attributions can be rebuilt.