Software as a service
For website builders: which templates and partners bring sites that go live on a paid plan.
Website builders win customers who browse templates, build for days and pay when they connect a domain and publish. Tally ties each plan and domain purchase to the visits that came first, and an agency that brings many sites gets credited for each of them.
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01How they sell
- SubscriptionPlans per site, monthly or yearly, raised for selling online, members or more traffic; yearly terms are often chosen at publish time.
- FreemiumFree building on a subdomain with your badge; a paid plan is needed for a custom domain or no badge.
- One-offDomains, premium templates or a design service sold once beside the plan.
02Payments it reads
- StripeSite plans and add-ons through Checkout; per-site renewals and refunds are read.
- PaddleWebsite builders selling to small businesses worldwide use Paddle to handle VAT; transactions and renewals are read.
What Tally can't read
- Sales your customers make on the sites they build are theirs and aren't read.
- Visits to sites built on your platform aren't your visitors; Tally counts only pages that carry your tag, so keep it on your own site.
- Domains bought from a registrar outside your checkout aren't read.
03Where buyers come from
- Template galleryBrowsing templates is how people start, and the template a buyer landed on says what kind of site they wanted.
- Badge on free sitesVisitors to free sites who click your mark arrive from your own customers' sites; a UTM on it gives them a campaign.
- Agency and freelancer partnersDesigners who build for clients open a site per client; a partner link tracks what each partner brings.
- Searches for a kind of siteSearches for a portfolio, a restaurant site or a wedding website bring people who know what they need.
- AI assistantsPeople asking an assistant to recommend a builder for a particular kind of site land in the AI channel.
04What Tally answers
How long do people build before paying to publish?
Path to purchase gives the median time and visits from first visit to first payment; for a builder where people design before they pay, that median is the build time.
Path to purchaseDo agency partners bring more sites over time?
Each partner's campaign appears in lifetime value by first source with its customers, lifetime revenue and repeat rate, so a partner who keeps adding client sites shows it.
Lifetime valueWhich templates lead to a published, paid site?
Send tally('template_chosen', { template }) and tally('published') from the editor, then build a funnel; the goals view gives each step's completions and the finishers' revenue.
Goals and funnelsDid a domain purchase come from the same visit as the plan?
Each payment has its own receipt; a plan and a domain bought minutes apart show the same credited visit, and a domain added later shows the visit before it.
ReceiptsDo visitors from the badge on free sites pay?
The badge's UTM campaign has a row in the campaign breakdown with visitors and the revenue credited to them, beside every other campaign you run.
Sources with revenue
05Numbers worth watching
- Median time to buy
- The median time from first visit to first payment, which a better starting template should shorten.
- Revenue per visitor
- Revenue per visitor by template page, which ranks templates by what their builders paid.
- Renewals
- Renewals by first source; a site that renews is a business that stayed online with you.
- Visitors from AI assistants
- Visits from AI assistants asked to recommend a site builder.
06An example
Lifetime value by first source
All time: every payment since 1 Nov 2025. The period above doesn't apply.
| First source | Customers | Lifetime revenue | Average value | Renewals | Repeat rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GoogleOrganic Search | 325 | $40,560 | $125 | 845 | 52% |
| ChatGPTAI Assistants | 126 | $21,071 | $167 | 391 | 61% |
| Direct | 178 | $18,216 | $102 | 374 | 44% |
| NewsletterEmail | 94 | $17,362 | $185 | 357 | 69% |
| Hacker NewsOrganic Social | 84 | $11,741 | $140 | 227 | 55% |
| x.comOrganic Social | 115 | $10,190 | $89 | 161 | 33% |
| RedditOrganic Social | 84 | $9,016 | $107 | 160 | 40% |
| PerplexityAI Assistants | 42 | $6,342 | $151 | 101 | 57% |
| Every source | 1,048 | $134,498 | $128 | 2,616 | 51% |
A customer is a visitor linked to a sale, counted under the source of their first visit. Lifetime revenue is net of refunds and chargebacks; repeat rate is the share who paid more than once (a renewal, an upgrade or another purchase). $13,167 from 426 payments not linked to a visitor is in no row.
07Setting up
- Next.jsIf your marketing site is a Next.js app, put the tag in the root layout, and keep it out of the code that renders customers' sites.
- StripeWhen someone publishes and pays, add tally_visitor_id to the Checkout Session's metadata and subscription_data, and to domain purchases too.
- Tag the badge link on free sites with UTMs, so its clicks arrive as one campaign.
08Questions
Are visitors to our customers' sites counted?
Not unless your tag is on those sites, and it shouldn't be. Only your own marketing site and editor should carry it.
Is a yearly plan bought at publish time credited to the template visit days earlier?
To the buyer's last visit that didn't come direct before paying. If they came back by typing your address, the credit goes to the visit before, which may be the template or search that started it; the first visit is kept too.
Can we see which countries our paid sites are bought from?
Yes. The country breakdown puts revenue beside visitors, converted to US dollars at the ECB rate for the day and without tax.