Installing Facebook Retargeting Pixels in Shopify stores is a task that every Shopify store owner should either do or have done. I like to understand how things are done in my stores and with 40 years of software development behind me I thought that it should be a fairly straightforward task. No such luck. The online space is full of misinformation. Much of it dated due to recent changes and much of it can only be followed by a programmer. I decided to take a stab at changing that.
First: This article is part of a three part series that started with Basic Concept of Retargeting Pixels The second article covered Actions Steps for Installing The Facebook Pixel Code on WordPress Sites
Here we are going to talk exclusively about Shopify Stores.
Philippe Kyprianou did a nice video on YouTube showing how to install Facebook Retargeting Pixels in Shopify stores. My only problem with it is that the average Joe will have a difficult time following along. This set of screen shots and explanations should make it much easier.
His YouTube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpLlLk64e5Y
While he covers the topic there are still times when it is difficult to understand where the mouse was clicked or where pieces of code were obtained from. It was especially hard to read some of the code that you needed to type yourself. The difference between curly brackets and parentheses – { and ( – is very difficult to read in a video.
Below you will find a link to PDF file that covers each step with screen shots and descriptions.
Why are We Installing Facebook Retargeting Pixels in Shopify Stores?
First the HOW: We are doing two things here.
- Installing the Google Tag Manager code
- Installing the Facebook Pixel code
The Google Tag Manager Code lets us modify which snippets of code fire on a website without having to constantly edit the web site. Read here for more information https://support.google.com/tagmanager/answer/6102821?hl=en
And Now The WHY: To make more sales! The Facebook Retargeting Pixels in our Shopify Stores allows us to see information about visits to our pages and it creates “custom audiences.” Custom audiences are lists that Facebook keeps. You can send ads to the people on these lists. The original use for “retargeting” was to create a list of people who landed on a sales page and a list of those that purchased from the sales Thank You page. You could then have ads follow a person around Facebook. The group targeted was the people who looked minus the ones that bought. You then “re-showed” the product to people who were interested enough to look but not to buy.
Today these lists are used to target people you can send ads for new, but similar products. This is like an email list, only it is much easier to collect. Since research shows that people don’t usually buy until they have seen a product several times (the number varies from 7 to 20), retargeting allows us to put our products in front of people again and again.
Cool that you can install a facebook trackin pixel in Shopify. I didn’t know that