How To Set Up The Right Facebook Pixel Events For Your eCommerce Website

One of the most important elements that guarantee the success of your Facebook campaigns is the correct implementation of Facebook Pixel. The Pixel, along with the events that you will set up to track, will help better optimise your campaigns to get better results. In this tutorial, we will be going through the events you need to implement for your eCommerce website, and how you should implement them.

In order to confidently decide the specific Facebook Pixel events you need to implement on your e-shop, you need to write down what are some typical purchase paths that a user will go through from the moment they enter your site until they purchase. These paths are called conversion funnels. Once you do this, you can match certain segments of each path to Facebook’s standard events.

Here is the most common path: A potential buyer visits your website and sees a product they are interested in. They click to view more info about the product, cost, delivery etc. Then they add it to their shopping cart. They may then proceed to checkout and insert billing information. Then the user will be redirected to a thank you page, where some additional info about purchase and delivery will be displayed.

Before choosing the specific Facebook Pixel events to implement on your e-shop, you need to first analyse a typical purchase path that a user will go through.

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There are of course many variations of the above; a user may, additionally, search for a certain product or apply certain search criteria, add a product to their wishlist, fill in a contact form etc. Based on the example path we laid out for you, will find the corresponding Facebook Pixel events: View Content, AddToCart, InitiateCheckout, AddPaymentInfo, and Purchase. Let’s take a closer look at these events.

Facebook Pixel Events And Where To Set Them Up

ViewContent

The View Content code tracks which product has been viewed. This is one of the most important events for e-commerce sites as it gives you insights on what products your visitors are interested in.

Where it should be implemented: The View Content event should be implemented on all product pages and should pass on the important parameters such as the name and ID of the product, price, and currency.

AddToCart

With the AddToCart event, you track products that have been added to your visitors’ shopping cart.

Where it should be implemented: The AddToCart event should be implemented on the “Add to Cart” button on all product pages and should pass on the important parameters such the ID and name of the product, price, and currency.

InitiateCheckout

Use this event to track when a user enters the checkout flow.

Where it should be implemented: The InitateCheckout event should be implemented on the “Checkout” button. When fired, it should pass on the following important parameters: the ID and name of the product, the number of products in the cart, price, value, and currency. These are all not all necessary.

Add Payment Info

Use this event to track when a user enters their billing information – or when clicking to be redirected to the third-party payment processor.

Where it should be implemented: Depending on how your e-shop is setup up, you will need to implement the code to fire at a point when the user has already entered their payment info. When fired, it should pass on, although not necessary, the following important parameters: the ID and name of the product, the number of products in the cart, price, value, and currency.

Purchase

The Purchase event fires when the user has successfully completed a transaction on your website.

Where it should be implemented: Typically, this event should be implemented on the “Thank You” page. Be sure to pass on the important parameters such as the id and name of the product, number of products, price, value, and currency.

After implementing your Facebook Pixel events, be sure to test that they are firing correctly on the right pages, for the right actions, and they are passing on the right parameters.

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Making The Most Of Your Facebook Pixel Events

After implementing the events, be sure to test that they fire correctly on the right pages, for the right actions, and that they pass on the right parameters. Facebook Pixel helper is a great tool to help troubleshoot your Pixel, but you can use any other of Facebook’s Pixel troubleshooting tools to quickly check for errors right within Ads Manager.

Once you have verified that the events have been configured properly, you can:

Create custom audiences to target with your Facebook campaigns
Create lookalike audiences based on your custom audiences
Run dynamic ads

When optimising your campaigns for any event, do have in mind that you need a minimum of 50 conversions per ad set per week (taking into account your conversion window as well). If you are having difficulties obtaining the desired number, make sure to optimise for a more frequent event; i.e. optimising for ViewContent, instead of AddToCart.

There you have it! A simple to guide to follow on the events you need to implement on your e-shop, and where to implement each!