The news from Shopify is offering pixel technology to the users of their store. The problems with Shopify's Pixel manager were one of its main concerns. Shopify does not support pixels but does support native integration with certain channels such as Universal Analytics, Facebook and many others. However, benefit outweigh risks and this was a challenge process which posed some risks. Shopify Web Pixel allows the merchant to configure and activate pixels using the shopify setting. This new section will be named Customer Events, let this shopify tutorial 2023.
Conversion Tracking Overview on Shopify
Conversion tracking is a tool that allows you to measure, track, and optimize the performance of your campaigns. By understanding the customer journey, you can make better decisions about how to improve your marketing efforts.
To track customer conversions, most marketing platform such as google and facebook need install tracking code snippets(or tags) in shopify store, as data layer collection.
The problem of existing pixel tracking
There are serveral issues of existing pixel tracking.
1. The pixel is time-consuming to install and manage
To track customer behaviours, ecommerce store need to install tracking code manually. To track specific events, merchants need custom tracking code according to store front code. These manual job is not only time consuming, but also lead lot of mistakes.
Addtionaly, the tracking code should be changed according to ecommerce store updates to avoid miscollecting. It's also hard to manage, even with some tag manager such as Google tag manager for Google analytics.
Due to the complexity of event tracking codes.The pixel is unable to capture every customer event, resulting in incomplete data.The pixel fails to connect with other marketing platforms such as Google or Facebook Ads due to incompatibility issues.
2. Pixel is easy to be blocked with browser rerstriction policies.
Pixel tracking can be easily blocked with browser restrictions policies, leading to incomplete data collection and inaccurate insights. Browser restriction policies are typically implemented by the user's browser settings or plugin extensions, which limit the types of code that can be executed on a page.
This means that pixel tracking code may not always execute correctly and could potentially result in large amounts of lost data. To ensure accurate pixel tracking, it is important for merchants to understand how their customers interact with their website and take steps to minimize any potential interference from browser restrictions policies.
3. Client-side pixels can't track customer events totally.
Client-side pixels can track customer events with a website or app, such as page visits and clicks on links, but they cannot track server-side conversions. Server-side conversions include activities like purchases and signups that occur when the user interacts with the server rather than the front end of a website or app. Tracking these actions requires a different set of tools altogether as client-side pixels have no way to access information from the server.
Merchants who wish to accurately measure their conversion rates must use both client-side and server- side tracking solutions in order to get an accurate picture of how customers are engaging with their websites and apps.
4. Cross device customer identity resolution can't be done only with client side tracking.
Cross device customer identity resolution is a crucial component in tracking customer behavior, allowing merchants to identify and understand the digital interactions of customers across multiple devices and marketing channels.
However, this process can not be accomplished solely through browser-side pixel tracking. In order to properly track cross device user activity, additional methods such as device fingerprinting must be used. Device fingerprinting involves capturing unique identifying characteristics from a device such as hardware and software components and using that data to create a unique identifier for that particular device.
This allows merchants to track user activity across different devices and platforms, even when cookies and other tracking technologies are blocked or restricted within the browser settings of the user’s device.
Additionally, collecting data from third-party sources such as social media networks or google ads/facebook ads platform can help provide further insight into a customer's full digital journey. By leveraging all these methods together, merchants can gain an accurate understanding of their customers’ activities across all their devices and platforms in order to better tailor their marketing efforts towards them.
Why is Shopify restricting scripts on the checkout?
Shopify is restricting scripts on its checkout steps page in order to ensure customer security and privacy. By blocking potentially malicious scripts, Shopify is helping to protect customers from unauthorized access of their payment information as well as other sensitive data.
Additionally, scripts can interfere with the checkout process and lead to errors or delays, which can result in a poor customer experience. So shopify merchants need find a way get important customer checkout process data, while ensure the scripts safety.
What Is Shopify's pixel & customer events feature?
Shopify's pixel & customer events API feature is a powerful tool that enables merchants to accurately track customer interactions on their website or app. By leveraging this technology, businesses can get insights into how customers are engaging with their website and gain an understanding of the full digital journey of each individual customer. This data can then be used to customize marketing campaigns and tailor offers to meet the needs of their target audience.
Shopify web pixels feature supports some most common events during the customer journey, as standard events listed below:
- Page view
- Product view
- add to cart
- collection view
- search terms
- checkout start
- payment info submission
- checkout complete
Merchants might also choose different filters( SKU and many other variants) to track specific customer conversion events. Such as add to cart for specific products.
Besides, merchants can also define custom pixels.
Shopify offers a secure sandbox environment for app pixels and custom pixels, so you can run scripts without worrying about disrupting the rest of your online shopify theme store.
Why do I need Shopify pixel?
Before Shopify web pixel (or Shopify customer events), merchants need manually add JavaScript in different places to track customer behaviours. in checkout pages, theme files. These scripts not only were complex to install, but also unable to capture every customer event. With latest Shopify Pixel, tracking customer events can be super easy and accurate.
As mentioned by Shopify, the pixel provides below benefits:
- Access to a stream of customer events on your online store, including checkout events
- An additional layer of security for your online business and your customers, including greater control over the customer data that you share with third-party services
- Prevention of third party code running non-performing Javascript, or interfering with your online store and checkout
- Built in tools for privacy compliance
How to implement custom pixels?
If you need track more events other than stand one, you may consider custom pixel. To get started, merchants will need to have an understanding of basic HTML code. From there they can begin writing custom pixel scripts which they can then deploy onto their Shopify store in order to start tracking customer events.
Since there are lot risks for non software engineer to edit code, Shopify recommends merchants to use pixel app in app store.
How to implement pixels with Shopify customer events?
You can deploy shopify web pixel either by app pixels or custom pixels.
- App pixels. wish to get started with Shopify customer events? You might consider app from App Store. All you need is install the app and login it, then select the events that you wish to track. For example, you may install Attribuly to get rich events immediately.
- Custom pixels.If you have an understanding of HTML code and want full control over customizing tracking scripts, then you can use custom pixel
Web pixel such as Facebook pixel, google tags can also be installed via shopify customer events feature. To set up the pixel, merchants just need to enter the Facebook pixel ID in their Shopify dashboard. After that, all customer events will be automatically tracked and the accurate data will be easily accessible. This makes it easier for businesses to create targeted campaigns and tailor their marketing efforts towards them.
Deploy Shopify customer events feature with Attribuly
As one the ealiest apps that support this new feature, Attribuly is super easy to integrate with Shopify customer events API.
When installing Attribuly, you get standard customer events data without any Javascript job. And you will find Attribuly registered at app pixel list.
You may monitor real-time customer events with rich information. Such as prodcut and total price information for product view, add to cart, checkout start, payment info submit, checkout complete events.
You can also click customer information to get single user customer journey with Attribuly leading shopify customer identity resolution technology.
The customer events data is also perfect data source for your marketing attribution, so you improve ROAS with high attribution insight.
Install Attribuly free on Shopify now!