What Is Facebook Pixel?
Facebook pixel is a web analytics script and tool that enables the optimization of Facebook advertising effectiveness. It helps you better understand what actions people take on your website.
The pixel itself is a script added to the code of a website, and its found in the Event Manager within Facebook Business Manager or Ad Manager.
The pixel collects essential data from every action from your website that enables you to create ad campaigns that increase your chances of maintaining a profitable Facebook ad campaign.
Using it enables you to add powerful features to your ad campaigns such as remarketing, conversion optimization, and in-depth audiences.
Learn more about Facebook ads.
Earlier, you used a pixel installation to provide you access to Facebook analytics, which helped you create better data-driven decisions about your online business. You would have to use the events manager to analyze user behavior.
Nowadays, you can also use Facebook Insights, which won’t require pixel installation but won’t give on-website analytics.
In this article, we’ll dig deeper and explain everything you should know about Facebook pixels and why it’s crucial: including its benefits, its installation, and importantly what it can do for you for business.
Skip ahead to read where to get and how to install the Facebook pixel on your website.
So What Does Facebook Pixel Do?
To simplify the pixel connects the data of a website user and its actions to match a Facebook profile. You can use the data to improve the results of ads, use retargeting ads, or even improve your website through conversion optimization.
Using the data to understand better your target audiences is essential for growing online business as a core element of social media marketing analytics.
After setting it up, it’ll run in the background of your website and track user actions without further work from you, unless you want more customization of the tracked data.
It really can show you the impact of social media marketing on your websites.
You might have a set of audiences that all differ from each other by only a couple variables, which enables you to reach the type of people you need and want every time you start advertising for a variety of goals.
Even if you’re not advertising on Facebook, the many benefits of the data the pixel collects is an excellent addition to your website’s user analysis.
And if you think you might want to advertise, later on, installing the pixel early on, helps you discover the opportunities of web data to better your future ads. The data that pixel collects is available for 180 days, so having it early on will be beneficial for you!
The Benefits Of Facebook Pixel
- Free
- Show ads for the right people who take specific actions, which leads to data-driven decisions.
- Gain more sales and revenue by optimizing ads for people who are most likely to do a specific action.
- Measure the effectiveness of Facebook ads
- Conversion tracking
- Facebook Analytics (Revenue reporting, alternative view for website analytics)
- Better understand your audience
- Scale your Facebook ads profitably with lookalike audiences
Opens Up Facebook Analytics
Facebook pixel isn’t only for the use of advertising. Installing it will give you access to pixel-based Facebook Analytics.
Much like page analytics, pixel analytics shows the data collected on website visitors and their actions with a clean dashboard where you can learn more about your website and its performance.
Facebook pixel can track many behavioral and acquisition metrics of the visitors of your website, which leads to better understanding and enables you to test new things more easily on how people react to the changes implemented on them.
Every website manager can benefit from the analytics, but especially useful for online store managers as it can show crucial data on your online store performance.
For example, you can getter a better view of:
- How your users use your website
- The traffic sources of the visitors (For instance, SEO Traffic)
- Audience demographic data
- Facebook Analytics funnels that Facebook identifies from your website
- User retention
- Customer journeys
- Best performing content
And online stores can find out data on:
- All of the above
- Revenue development
- Track purchase events
- Customer lifetime values
Customize your Facebook analytics with improved pixel data to optimize and improve your online business to achieve more growth.
While Facebook analytics shouldn’t replace your other analytics tools (like Google Analytics), it offers another great free point of view for optimization and a more in-depth analysis of your visitors.
Facebook Ads Result Optimization And Conversions With Pixel Events
Without a pixel, you’re more likely to lose money with Facebook ads. Pixel allows you to optimize your campaigns toward more profitable goals.
If you want to get the most results from your ads on Facebook, pixel again is the crucial element to make that happen.
For example, when only relying on surface-level campaign options that Facebook provides, such as clicks or impressions, while at times, they might bring the needed results. In most cases, not optimizing for conversions can lead your campaigns not to be the most profitable they could be.
Even if you’re using non-conversion campaigns in Facebook ads, the use of pixels is still highly recommended. Improved data collection can lead to unnoticed opportunities you can use at any given time.
Facebook Pixel Retargeting
Without installing the pixel code to your website, you can’t retarget people who visit your site or interact with your Facebook ads.
The benefits of increasing marketing attribution in online ads are staggering to not use in your online ad strategy.
With the use of events and custom conversions, you can create complicated and straightforward combinations to retarget your customer the way you want.
Pixel enables you the use of Facebook ads in more efficient ways to improve its results and profitability.
Audience Optimization and Custom Audiences
One key element of Facebook ads is how you use custom audiences based on the website data you collect with the pixel.
To create a custom audience using pixel data, you need to head over to “Audiences” within your ad account.
First, choose “website” as a data source, and make sure you see the right ad account and pixel there.
From here, you can start building your custom audience.
By default, Facebook provides you some basic events to choose from:
- All website visitors
- People who have visited specific pages
- Visitors by time spent
- Events from your website
- PageView
- ViewContent
- Any event you set up earlier (standard and custom events)
Choose how many days you want the people included in your audience to stay in your audience, you can choose between 1 – 180 days.
To refine your audience, add the URL (Like your landing page) OR parameters like value or currency.
For example, you can create different audiences based on the pages they visit, enabling you to create powerful sales funnels for your ads.
Let’s say your sales funnel includes four different pages. Then you can break down your funnel into four audiences.
1. The first stage (include the first page, they visit)
2. The second stage (include the first and second)
3. The third stage (add the previous ones)
4. The final phase (The final conversion)
By advertising to these audiences in different funnel stages, you can retarget to different people at different stages on your funnel, increasing your conversion rate.
Online stores can also create value-based audiences within the same screen by adding values to the events.
For example, you could create separate audiences depending on their spending in your store so that you can advertise the right products for the right people with specific spending habits in the store.
Lookalike Audiences
Arguably one of the best features which pixel enables you is the use of lookalike audiences in your Facebook ads.
With lookalike audiences, you can quickly reach new people and customers who have the same characteristics of the people already doing the actions on your website.
For example, you can create lookalike audiences that buy from your online store, add to carts, and much more.
The lookalike audiences become available when at least 100 visitors in one country or region do one action, such as buying something.
The lookalikes enable you to scale your advertising furthermore profitably than only relying solely on interests-based campaigns or retargeting.
You can create a lookalike audience from any event or page on your website as long as it has enough conversions from your visitors.
You can further optimize your lookalike audience by selecting an audience size from 1-10% of the target market. 1% meaning the closest to your original parameters and 10% being the furthest.
In your ad sets, you can modify your lookalike audiences with more specific demographic info such as age, gender, language, and location.
As lookalike audiences are assumptions from Facebook that these people might act the same way than your earlier visitors, it’s not a guarantee. You need to test a lot with lookalike audiences to find which combinations bring the most results for your business.
Conversions: Standard Events and Custom Events
Measuring and optimizing conversions is the step you can never forget when you’re advertising online.
Without a pixel installed on your website, you can’t measure the results of your Facebook ads directly on Facebook. Of course, you can and should use Google Analytics goals to measure your conversions from all your campaigns in one place.
But without pixel, Facebook can’t optimize your ad campaigns to improve conversion, which makes it essential, when advertising there.
Through a pixel, there are standard events which it tracks automatically. Such as purchases, add to carts, page views, and more. You can customize these standard events also to set up custom conversions.
The available standard events as of now are:
- Add to cart
- Initiate Checkout
- Lead
- Purchase
- Add Payment Info
- Add to Wishlist
- Complete Registration
- Contact
- Customize Product
- Donate
- Find location
- Schedule
- Search
- Start Trial
- Submit Application
- Subscribe
- View Content
You can apply standard events to your website using the Event Setup Tool, which you can find in the overview of Event Manager in the bottom as Add Events and selecting From The Pixel.
But if you need more, or your business has specific goals from advertising, you need to set up custom events for the pixel to track and use later in the ad optimization.
Custom events can track any action from your website. For example, you can create custom events with Google Tag Manager.
An important note, custom events require you to create a custom conversion, or Facebook can’t use them in ad optimization.
To create a custom conversion, you need to go to the events manager and click on ‘create’ and choose custom conversion. Find your custom event, add rules if needed, and a value if you want. Now you can use your custom event in ad optimization.
Where To Get Facebook Pixel?
Getting your unique pixel code and id for your website is pretty straightforward. The first couple of things you need first:
- A Facebook business manager account or Facebook ad account
- A website, in which you can insert the script
- Optional but highly recommended: have actions on your site that are important to measure as conversions (like buttons, thank-you pages, affiliate links, and more.)
Creating Your Facebook Pixel Id And Receiving Your Code
First, you need to head over to the Events Manager, click on “Connect Data Sources,” choose the website option, and then choose Facebook pixel.
Give it a name, and optionally let Facebook check your website’s platform if there’s an easy way to set it up.
Next, it’ll prompt you to insert the code manually (which you can copy and paste into your code) or use a partner integration solution.
You can always find your pixel id from the settings in the Event Manager.
In the next section, we will explain how to install your Facebook pixel on your website.
How To Install And Setup Facebook Pixel Guide
Installing a Facebook pixel is simple. You can either just copy the code you get when creating the pixel in Event Manager and add it to your website’s bottom of the header section just above the /head.
You can also use partner integrations, and depending on the type of website you’re running and there might even be available quick installations depending on the platform you’re using.
Many platforms enable you to install a Facebook pixel by just adding the id in their settings.
Next, we’re going to look at how to install the pixel on some different platforms.
With Google Tag Manager (GTM)
For the easiest way to install Pixel with Google Tag Manager, open up, partner integration, and connect to your Google Tag Manager account.
It’s going to install from thereon instantly.
Alternatively, you can install the pixel from Tag Manager itself:
-> Create a new tag -> Choose custom HTML -> Paste your the pixel code within the HTML Field -> Under triggering choose all pages.
In Shopify
To install pixel in Shopify, you need to go to your online store preferences in Shopify and paste your Pixel Id where it says so.
Learn the benefits of Shopify from our blog.
In Squarespace
To install pixel in Squarespace, you need to go to your Marketing settings. You can find your marketing settings going from Home Menu -> Click Marketing -> Click Facebook Pixel & Ads and paste your pixel id in the field.
In WordPress Or Woocommerce
Install Pixel in WordPress and WooCommerce with Facebook plugin
Start by going to the partner integration section in the pixel setup and choose either WooCommerce or WordPress. It will give you a link to download the plugin.
Install the plugin in WordPress and add your id in the fields.
OR
You can also use other WordPress plugins that enable you to insert code inside your header.
For example, you can use the Insert Headers and Footers – plugin.
In this case, start by choosing “Copy Code” and paste it within the fields of your chosen plugin.
OR
If you dislike the use of too many plugins, just add the code within your header.php file. Go from Appearance -> Editor -> find Header.php and paste code before the closing and update file.
In Wix
To install pixel in Wix, you need to go from your Home to Marketing Tools -> select Marketing Integrations -> Select Connect (Facebook Pixel).
Multiple Pixels on a Website
In some rare cases, you might need to add the functionality of two or more pixels. For example, if there are multiple ad accounts, and you want to have the data separated. Or just for testing purposes.
To enable multiple pixels, you will have to manually insert the code, which would allow you to modify the code so you can include the second-pixel id within the same code.
Just add another line of code of “fbq(‘init’, ‘YourID’);” under the first id.
Make Sure Your Installation Is Working
It’s crucial to make sure your installation is working, and you can quickly check if the pixel is working as intended by using the “test events” – tab next to the overview and entering your URL.
You should see your activity in real-time right away if everything works correctly.
Make sure you see all events you added in the event setup tool in the test. For example, if the page view isn’t triggering, you might need to double-check the installation again.
Especially check that your custom conversions work the way you wanted.
Sharing Facebook Pixel
By default, the Facebook pixel you just set up is only available for the ad account/business account you created it in.
You can share your pixel for the use of other ad accounts and business accounts by opening the event manager and the pixel in question and opening the settings.
In the settings, you will find a section that says ‘Sharing’ that you can share with a business account and with an ad account.
Sharing the pixel is essential if you’re outsourcing your Facebook advertising. Without sharing it, the ads won’t have access to the data the pixel provides, leading to lousy ad results.
Data And Competitive Advantage
The more in-depth website visitor data you can track and analyze can have a drastic and positive impact on the way we grow businesses through online methods.
As data is crucial for digital marketing, not having a pixel installed on your website may lead to not understanding how your audiences react to your business’s products and services.
While pixel is adopted by many, many online businesses are still not on board with using it unless they are advertising on the platform, which might give you a chance to learn something new about your audiences and optimize them.
It boils down to give you a competitive advantage if you decide to use it, and importantly implement the data into your daily workflows.
However, you need to understand the metrics that matter the most to you as it’s easy to fall into a rabbit hole with new data.
Analyze the essentials. Every once in a while, take a more broad approach to your pixel data and stay competitive.
Conclusion
To conclude, the Facebook pixel is all about improving your advertising results on the platform, and through collected data, it helps you improve your website.
Without it, you’re going to lose more than you might think, even if you’re not advertising on Facebook.
The way we collect data and use it to analyze our current situation in our businesses and websites is the method of finding new avenues of growth.
And to achieve our goals of a better online business.
And as the pixel itself is free, relatively simple to install and set up, and most importantly, to analyze and use, many businesses can start using Facebook pixels very quickly to gain its benefits.
Whether you use it for advertising, optimizing websites, or enhancing your conversion funnels, the pixel is an essential tool for online marketers and businesses alike.
We hope you learned enough about Facebook pixel to get you started, or start using it more efficiently.