Update: When this article was first written it was solely to help get you up to speed with and help implement the Facebook CAPI to help make sense of things in your Facebook Business Manager. We've felt it needed a bit of sprucing up with a bit more information.
Your store has been rocking and rolling. Making sales, and taking names. But sometimes you feel like your Facebook pixel just isn’t working? Or it’s not matching up with what you know is happening because of Google Analytics?
There’s a solution, and its easier than you might think.
With this quick article you’ll find out:
With the web changing every day, so changes the methods you’ll need to implement to get the most data back to make the best decisions.
One of the main changes coming to a web near you is how browsers are now treating cookies.
You may have already noticed a fairly significant discrepancy between your tracked sales and your actual sales.
When you’ve got almost 3 of 10 people blocking your ads, and developers expiring cookies in a week... You need an extra layer to get data in a more consistent manner.
That’s where the Facebook Conversion API comes in to play.
According to Facebook, the conversion API is:
Conversions API works with your Facebook pixel to help improve the performance and measurement of your Facebook ad campaigns.
Improve accuracy of events sent for measurement and optimization when used along with the pixel.
In the simplest terms possible, this means that it works in tandem with the pixel you’ve already installed to handle the task of tracking pixel events and adds an extra server-side layer, right as the event is occurring!
In a bit longer terms, it is a partner to the normal browser pixel that is tasked with collecting all of the events through server-side tracking. Things that tend to get "lost in translation" after data is ferried off to their respective storage silos will longer be lost in the ether.
The main reason is that without this setup, you’re missing up to 30% of data that could be tracked. That’s a hefty percentage of people you either can’t re-target or have your automated “left in cart” email sent out.
You want that purchase event to be tracked every time, and the best way to do that is with the Facebook Conversions API collecting all of the conversion events in your Facebook sales channel. And unless your Google Analytics is setup perfectly, you can consider the data gained from your conversion events as a secondary source of information.
If a large part of your marketing strategy involves a layered ad sets to target your customers throughout their whole customer journey, then missing events is something you really can’t afford. And one of the best reasons I can give to get you to configure your pixel to use Facebook Conversion API on your Shopify store.
There’s that saying, “the best time to plant a tree is yesterday, the second best is today,” so if you haven’t already hopped into your store settings and changed it already – what are you waiting for?
Luckily for you, a feature that rolled out a bit ago was the ability to change the settings for data sharing between Facebook and Shopify.
Shopify now has 3 options for Data sharing settings: Standard, Enhanced, and Maximum. You’ll need to do a bit of digging in the settings, and a helpful tidbit sent out with instructions to get the ball rolling.
From these instructions, you’ll definitely need to get your settings bumped up to MAXIMUM!
There’s a few different methods to utilize and get the ball rolling to use the Facebook Conversion API with Shopify, but this is by far the easiest “set it and forget it” method. A more granular method, if that is your thing, you can set up Zapier, or another service to make Shopify and Facebook talk on a deeper level. Doesn’t require a major settings change or anything like that, but doesn’t require setting up Zapier automation.
If you're really advanced, or have a competent developer team, you can use Google Tag Manager to create a cloud container to house your Facebook CAPI data for collection and send off. You can then customize which browser events you want to track per page, ensure additional events fire where needed, create your own custom events, and have complete control over your server-side events tracking.
This method allows for greater setup and control of events deduplication, which leads to better conversion events tracking. Win-win all around.
Another method is utilizing a server container linked to a GTM account. This is again, a bit advanced and will require a developer who is intimately aware of the ins and outs of dealing with Google cloud ecosystem. But if your site is already utilizing GTM, you'll want to ask your developer(s) to implement a server container to allow for better conversion event server-side tracking.
Your marketing team will greatly appreciate the more detailed and relevant Facebook conversions API data they'll have at their disposal.
Offline events will still need to be managed within the Business Suite interface if you're someone who has a lot of data from in-person events.
Do you need help getting your store in tip-top shape and setup with FB Pixels? A quick consulting call on how to better your user experience? Or need a new store design to break away from the pack?
Contact TopOut Group to get all of Shopify needs taken care of.
