For type foundries: which specimens and trial fonts lead to licences.

01How they sell

• One-offLicences by use, desktop by number of users, web by pageviews, app or ebook embedding, bought per family or style and upgraded as a client's use grows.
• FreemiumTrial fonts for mock-ups and pitches, licensed for testing only, that become a purchase once the client signs off.

02Payments it reads

• StripeFoundry shops, custom-built or on a foundry platform that charges through your own Stripe account, are read as Stripe payments, linked by email when no visitor id is passed.
• Lemon SqueezyUsed by solo type designers selling a few families with tax handled; orders and refunds are read.

03Where buyers come from

• Fonts In UseEntries showing your typeface on a real project send designers to the family's page, with the site as their referrer.
• Type and design pressRelease write-ups in type publications bring a burst of designers to a new family's specimen.
• InstagramSpecimen posts open in Instagram's in-app browser, which Readable Direct names instead of losing the visit.
• Brand agenciesAgencies return to license a family once a client approves, arriving by a typed address or a link shared by a colleague.

04What Tally answers

1. Who downloaded trials before the agency bought the licence?

   If trial downloads ask for an email and call tally('identify', { email }), the visitor list shows that person's journey from first specimen visit to the licence, with every page and its engaged time.

   Visitors and journeys

2. Do visitors use the type tester?

   Heatmaps show where people click and how far they scroll on each specimen, so you can see whether the tester gets typed into or scrolled past.

   Heatmaps

3. How long from a trial download to a licence?

   Path to purchase gives the median time from first visit to purchase and a histogram, which for a pitch-driven sale shows how long client approvals take.

   Path to purchase

4. Which in-use feature or article brought buyers?

   The referrer breakdown gives Fonts In Use, each publication and every other site a row with the revenue of the visitors they sent.

   Sources with revenue

5. An agency's purchaser bought the licence. How was it linked?

   The receipt names the method and its confidence: the visitor's id from checkout, or a match on an email identified earlier, such as at the trial download.

   Receipts

05Numbers worth watching

Median time to buy

Median time from first visit to purchase; trial fonts used in pitches can stretch it to weeks.

Engaged time

Time spent on specimen pages with the tab in view, a sign of designers actually setting text.

Coverage

The share of revenue linked to a visitor; purchasers who never visited before buying need an identified email to link.

Revenue by source

The money behind each in-use feature, article and social post.

06An example

07Setting up

1. StripePass tally_visitor_id into the Checkout Session your shop creates; if a platform makes the charge for you, identify buyers by email instead.
2. Any HTML siteAdd the tag to every specimen, family and licensing page, so the type tester and the licence picker are both counted.
3. Call tally('identify', { email }) when someone downloads trial fonts, so a licence bought weeks later links by email.

08Questions

• Can Tally count pageviews on a client's site to check a web licence?

  No. It counts visits to your own site. It isn't built to meter a licensee's traffic, and the snippet shouldn't be used that way.

• Do distributor sales show up?

  No. Distributors pay you out themselves. Only licences sold through your own checkout on Stripe, Paddle, Lemon Squeezy or Polar are read.

• A client upgrades a web licence to more pageviews. Is that a new sale?

  Yes, a payment of its own, credited to the visit before it, and added to the customer's lifetime value under their first source.