How to get UTM parameters and referrer of user session

Shopify Discussion

Topic summary

Main issue: capturing UTM parameters and referrer for user sessions in a Shopify store when no order is placed.

  • Current capability: UTM data is available via Order.CustomerJourney, but only after a purchase. CustomerJourney is a Shopify object that records a buyer’s path and related campaign parameters.
  • Desired outcome: collect UTMs and referrer for visitors on any page (home, product, etc.) without requiring an order.
  • Attempted approach: reading Shopify analytics cookies (_shopify_sa_p and _shopify_sa_t), but the original poster couldn’t get them to work.
  • New idea shared: define conditional UTM parameters using the “Customer left online store without making a purchase” trigger (likely via an automation/flow). An image was posted showing this trigger, but no implementation details or results were provided.

Status: unresolved. No confirmed method for reliably capturing UTMs/referrer for non-purchasing sessions was agreed upon. Open question: how to persist and access session-level UTMs/referrer across pages without relying on an order.

Summarized with AI on December 13. AI used: gpt-5.
1

Does anyone knows how to get the UTM parameters and Referrer of a user session?

I know it is possible to get the UTM parameters through Order.CustomerJourney object but it assumes that a customer placed an order.

I am looking for a solution that will work if a customer does NOT order anything. For example, if someone is simply visiting a home page or a product page, and any other page on my store.

I have found some suggestions on the internet to look into _shopify_sa_p and _shopify_sa_t cookies but I could not get it working

2

I’m brainstorming solutions to the same issue now, so far the closest I’ve come is the ability to define conditional utm params based on the “Customer left online store without making a purchase” trigger. Did you ultimately solve your problem?

Left online store.jpg
Left online store.jpg815×487 28.6 KB