Referral Conversion Tracking with WordPress Contact Form 7

Steps for showing the referral URL in your email

The initial settings are based on the following blog post: Can we capture HTTP REFERER information upon form submission using Contact Form 7?, however that method will allow you track only visitors who go directly to the contact page, where the form is. If the visitor comes from Google, browses the site, the referral will show the last page within your site, not initial Google link.

Contact Form 7 initial settings

We will follow the same initial steps like Tony mentioned in his blog post:

• You must have WordPress installed and Contact Form 7 configured to receive emails.
• Add a Text Field element with a css class referer-page:
• Add the following css to your styles.css: input.referer-page { display:none; }
• Add the following to the Contact Form 7 Message body (under Mail): Referer Page: [referer-page]

Here is a screenshot that explains better what happens in Contact form 7 settings:

Improved tracking based on visitor IP

In order to make it all work we need to add the following code in the function.php within your theme folder.

	//--------------- Referer code for contact form 7
function getIP() {
	$sProxy = '';
	if ( getenv( 'HTTP_CLIENT_IP' ) ) {
		$sProxy = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
		$sIP    = getenv( 'HTTP_CLIENT_IP' ) ;
	} elseif( $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'] ) {
		$sProxy = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
		$sIP    = $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'];
	} else {
		$sIP    = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
	}
	if ( ! empty( $sProxy ) ) {
		$sIP = $sIP . 'via-proxy:' . $sProxy;
	}
	return $sIP;
}
function setRefererTransient( $uniqueID ) {
	if ( false === ( $void = get_transient( $uniqueID ) ) ) {
		// set a transient for 2 hours
		set_transient( $uniqueID, $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'], 60*60*2 );
	}
}
function getRefererPage( $form_tag ) {
	if ( $form_tag['name'] == 'referer-page' ) {
		$uniqueID = getIP();
		setRefererTransient( $uniqueID );
		$form_tag['values'][] =  get_transient( $uniqueID );
	}
	return $form_tag;
}
if ( !is_admin() ) {
	add_filter( 'wpcf7_form_tag', 'getRefererPage' );
}

The code will store the referral page at the moment the customer comes on the site for 2 hours. If they submit the form within this time, no matter how many pages the visited on the site, it will still show the initial referral.

The final result

After somebody submits the message through contact form, this is how it should look like in your email client:

Other notes:

No tracking method, including Google Analytics is not 100% precise, as there are people with JS disabled, with cookies turned off, people who actually cannot be tracked using standard methods.
Same with this method, at times you might receive emails with a blank value for referral part. However the method works well for most time, enough to get real time feedback for your marketing efforts.