Meta, or Facebook, pixel lets you track your site and store visitors, giving you a lot of data about your customers' behavior. You can use that data to plan your ad campaigns more effectively and get even more customers. Installation on the eCom (E-Series) site and store takes a couple of minutes, with no technical skills required.

Understanding the Meta pixel

The Meta pixel is an analytics tool that helps you understand actions customers take on your eCom website and online store. The pixel will “know” when your store visitors:

• view products and categories
• search products
• add items to the shopping cart
• enter the checkout flow
• start the checkout
• complete the checkout, etc.

Later this data allows you to:

• Retarget your visitors with ads on Facebook, Instagram, and Audience Network. For example, you can find people who have visited a specific page or taken the desired action in your store and then offer these customers a 15% off coupon through a targeted Facebook ad to spur conversions. Also, the pixel can help you advertise to people similar to your existing customers.
• Measure conversions and sales so that you know exactly how your ads are performing.
• Set up Dynamic Ads to automatically promote multiple products or your entire product catalog on Facebook, across all devices.

You can create ads with the Conversions Objective. This means that Facebook will try to show the ads in that ad set to the people most likely to complete that conversion event. If you want to create events, you should connect your own domain to your eCom site (Instant Site) and verify it on Facebook. You can also set up your Facebook Ads without setting up events.

Verifying your domain on Facebook

After Apple iOS 14 privacy policy updates, Facebook created new algorithms to optimize ad campaigns for iOS 14 users. Now, you have to verify the ownership of your domain so you can create conversion events. For example, you need to verify your domain to create retargeting campaigns.

Once you verify your domain, you can create and manage up to 8 conversion events that can be used for campaign optimization. You can learn more about how Apple iOS 14 release may affect your ads.

Currently, if you sell on the eCom website (Instant Site), you won’t be able to create Facebook ads conversion campaigns. Still, you can create other types of Facebook ad formats. To create conversion-focused events for your Facebook ads, you should first connect your own domain to your eCom site, and then verify it. You can find detailed information about new aggregated event measurement in Facebook Help Center. 

To verify domain on Facebook:

eCom site

1. Get the meta tag from Facebook:
   • From your Facebook Business Suite, go to Settings > More Business Settings > Brand Safety > Domains.
   • Click Add New Domains.
   • Type the address of your site and click Add Domain. The domain will be added to your assets.
   • Click on the domain you want to verify and choose Meta Tag Verification tab and copy your meta tag code.
2. Add the meta tag to your eCom site (Instant Site):
   • From Retail POS, go to Online > Webstore (or Website) > SEO.
   • In the Header meta tags and site verification block, click Add code.
   • Paste your meta tag code.
   • Save the changes.
3. Return to Facebook Business Suite and click the Verify button in the Meta Tag Verification tab.

If you use eCom site with your own custom domain, you have two options to verify the ownership either by adding a meta tag or using the DNS Verification option:

1. Get the TXT record from Facebook:
   • From your Facebook Business Suite, go to Settings > More Business Settings > Brand Safety > Domains.
   • Click Add New Domains and enter the address of your site. Then click Add domain.
   • Click on the DNS Verification tab and copy your txt record.

2. Add the TXT record to your domain:

   • Log into the account with your domain provider to access your domain settings.
   • Add the TXT entry to your DNS records.
   • Add @ to the Host field, if it is required by your domain registrar.
   • Wait till these changes propagate (usually it takes a few minutes, but in some cases may last longer, up to 72 hours), then click the Verify button in the DNS Verification tab.
     The exact steps on adding a TXT record to a domain vary with different domain providers. If you are not sure how to add this record to your domain, please contact your domain provider to get the detailed instructions.

   Any other website where your eCom store is added

3. From your Facebook Business Manager, go to Settings > More Business Settings > Brand Safety > Domains.
4. Click Add New Domains.
5. Type the address of your site and click Add Domain. The domain will be added to your assets.
6. Click on the domain you want to verify and choose one of the three domain verification methods:
   • Add a meta tag to your domain’s home page (recommended).
   • Upload an HTML file to your web directory and confirm ownership of your domain in Business Suite.
   • Add a DNS TXT entry to your DNS record to confirm ownership of your domain.
7. Follow the Facebook wizard to complete the verification. For more details, watch a quick video about verifying a domain on Facebook.

After verifying the domain, you can create and install the Meta pixel to your eCom site and store. You can also configure and prioritize your top 8 events on your domain. You can learn more about configuring events in Facebook Help Center.

Installing the Meta pixel to your eCom site and store

The installation is easy for everyone regardless of technical skills. You can create new pixel or connect the existing one when connecting your eCom site and store to Facebook. This way is more suitable for those who want to sell on Facebook.
If you don’t want to sell on Facebook, you can generate your Pixel ID in the Ads Manager, the Facebook service where you can view, check and change your Facebook ad campaigns. Then you need to add the pixel to the Online tab in your Retail POS.

To create and install the Meta pixel to your eCom site and store:

If you've already created a pixel, skip ahead to step 7.

1. Open your Facebook Ads Manager.
2. Click on the All Tools icon in the left panel and choose Events Manager.
3. In the left hand-side menu, click on the green Connect Data Source button.

4. In the popup window, hit Web and click Get Started:

   

5. In the Set up Web Events window, select Meta Pixel and click Connect:

   

6. Enter the name of the pixel and the URL of your eCom store in the appropriate fields and click Continue.

7. You’ve created the Meta pixel. The next step is to add it to your eCom site and store. In the Choose how you want to install your pixel code window click the Use a partner button:

   

8. In the Choose a Partner list, choose Ecwid:

   

9. Follow the Facebook wizard to finish adding the pixel to your online store through the eCom admin panel.

   

   If Facebook has issues at the Verify connection step, try to turn off AdBlock if you use one. Also, note that verifying may take up to several minutes. You can always check if the pixel is working at your Events Manager page in Facebook. In the Test Events tab you can check that your events are received correctly. In the Diagnostics tab you can find and resolve issues with the pixel.

Done! Now you have created and added the Meta pixel to your eCom site and online store.

If you've previously added a Meta pixel to your eCom store, you might need to remove its code from your eCom admin before adding a new pixel. Otherwise, it may result in duplicated or partial data.

Meta pixel standard events

After you’ve added a Meta pixel to eCom, the pixel starts counting actions that happen on your online store as events. You can use event data to create personalized ads for your customers.

The following events will be sent from eCom to Facebook:

• ViewContent: for each time a customer visits your product or category pages.
• Search: for each time a customer uses the search box to find products.
• AddToCart: for each time a customer adds products to the shopping cart without finishing the purchase or clicks "Buy now" button on single product page.
• InitiateCheckout: for each time a customer visits the checkout page.
• AddPaymentInfo: for each time a customer enters payment information in the checkout.
• Purchase: for each time a customer completes a purchase and views the thank you page in the checkout.

Learn more about using Meta pixel standard events to create campaigns and track conversions at the Facebook Help Center.

Facebook Conversions API

Facebook Conversions API is a tool that sends information about customer events directly from your website to Facebook. Pretty much like pixel, but while pixel takes data from your clients’ browser, Conversions API gets data from the servers. That allows you to obtain more reliable data to optimize ad campaigns. In particular, Conversions API can retrieve information from iOS devices version 14 and above, where otherwise data cannot be collected due to Apple strict privacy laws and browser cookie policies.

Usually, the Conversions API needs to be set up manually on your website. In eCom, Facebook Conversions API automatically tracks the most important event in your store, Purchase, so you don’t have to manually set it up. Other events apart from Purchase are tracked as usual through your pixel.

The Conversions API automatically works in your store if those conditions are met:

• You connected your store to Facebook after spring of 2021.
• You set up a pixel.
• Pixel and Facebook Page belong to the same Facebook business of the admin user.
• You've enabled the Automated advanced matching toggle when connecting your online store to Facebook.

Removing Meta pixel code from Ecwid

You can remove the existing pixel code from your Ecwid store:

1. From Retail POS, go to Online > Settings > General > Tracking & Analytics.
2. Remove your Meta pixel ID from the Pixel ID field.
3. Save changes.

If you've used a Meta pixel with eCom in the past, you might need to remove its code before adding a new pixel, otherwise it may result in duplicated or partial data. From your Retail POS, go to Online > Settings > General > Tracking & Analytics and remove the Facebook pixel codes, if you have any, from the section Custom tracking code on Order Confirmation page:

Next steps

As an ecommerce store owner, you’ll mostly use Meta Pixel for retargeting (to advertise to people who have visited a specific page or taken the desired action in your store) and conversion tracking (to measure conversions and sales so that you know exactly how your ads are performing and let Facebook optimize your ads for you).

As an eCom merchant with connected Facebook Shop, you can set up Facebook ads yourself using Product Catalog feature.