Facebook Pixel – What is it, implementing, how is it used to understand user activity and create audiences?

Do you have a website, e-commerce store, or app? You must be familiar with the Facebook Pixel tool, which is especially important for understanding your users. The tool is intended for use both for sponsored advertising on Facebook and for other matters such as analytics.

If you want to know what it is, how to use it and how to add to the website, then this guide is for you.

What is a Facebook Pixel?

Facebook Pixel is an analytics tool that allows you to measure the actions and activities of users on your website, digital store or app. This information is sent to your business account on Facebook so you can learn and gain insights from it.

For example, if you have a website where you sell your products, then you will want to better understand the users of the site. Facebook Pixel helps you know how many people entered your digital store, how many people viewed the products, whether they added products to the shopping cart, whether they proceeded to purchase the product, and so on.

This tool helps you measure results, especially if you market your site through digital marketing solutions such as advertising on Facebook or Instagram, advertising elsewhere, marketing through pages and channels on social networks, and more.

Each time a user performs a particular action on the “conversion” site, an “event” is sent to Facebook about that user. So you can identify the same user when you want to create a target audience for advertising or to optimize your Facebook advertising campaign.

Of course, you can also create custom ads for users who have performed a certain action through remarketing or retargeting.

Advantages of Facebook Pixel

Facebook Pixel offers you many benefits when using it and many reasons why you should use it:

• Gaining insights on website traffic – You can get information and data on how users use your website.
• Create custom audiences – You can create segments and audiences of users who have performed a particular action.
• Campaign Optimization – You can optimize your campaigns according to the marketing goal and data obtained from the campaign.
• Cross-device measurement – You can understand which ads affect users who surf from different devices.
• Free tool – Facebook Pixel is a free tool that is offered to you especially for the purpose of managing your campaigns digitally.
• Advanced Adjustments – You can make advanced adjustments to improve sales and marketing in the business.

Embedding a Facebook pixel on the site

In order for you to enjoy all this data and to improve sales and marketing, you need to create the pixel and then embed (add) it to your website or digital store. To do this, you must have a website and also an access code (or edit with a plugin).

Thus, there are 2 main steps and they are:

1. Create a Facebook Pixel

The initial step is to create a Facebook pixel. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Visit the Event Manager on Facebook here. You can also access it through the menu in your personal ad account or Facebook Business Manager account.
2. Click the “Connect Data Sources” button.
3. Select “Web”.
4. Click the “Start” button.

5. Select “Facebook Pixel” and click “Connect”.

6. Enter a name for the pixel (for future identification).
7. Enter a website address for testing and implementation and click “Continue”.

This is where you created your pixel, now you need to install it on the site as explained below.

Another way: You can also create a pixel by going to Business Manager and then clicking on “Pixels” that appears in the Data Sources menu. There click on the Add button, enter the name and URL.

2. Installing a Facebook pixel on the site

The system will then offer you how to embed your Facebook code. There are 2 main methods:

1. Manual installation

To install manually, click on the “Manually add the pixel code to the site” button and then:

• Click the Copy Code button and click “Continue”.
• Choose whether you want to enable “Automatic Advanced Matching”. This sends customer information securely to match people who have Facebook. By clicking Yes, you can choose what information to send.
• Then click Continue.
• Later you can use the event setting tool without the need to use code (less recommended).

You need to add the code to the section of your website. You can send it to your developer or programmer to do it.

2. Installation with a plugin

Another way is to install through a Facebook plugin for websites or e-commerce sites.

To do this, click “Use Partner Integration”:

• Choose the publisher (tools and services) like WordPress, WooCommerce, Wix, Drupal, Google Tag Manager and more.
• Follow the steps in the following steps.

In fact, you will need to add the plugin to your site.

Checking the implementation

After installing a Facebook pixel on your site, you need to know if it has been properly integrated and indeed data is being sent to Facebook that is being collected.

You can check the integrity of one of the following 2 methods:

• Pixel Helper – There is a plugin for the Google Chrome browser that must be installed here. After installation, enter to your site and click on the extension in your browser to see what data is being sent.
• Event Checking Tool – If you do not want to install the plugin or use another browser, you can access the Facebook Event checking tool. Go to the event manager, select your pixel, select the “Event check” tab in the central part of the page, enter your URL.

Defining events and conversions

Adding a Facebook pixel of the promoted base code, allows you to get information about viewing the page, the general event of Facebook. But you will want to measure additional events like search, add to cart, leave a lead form, and the like.

To do this you need to set up conversion events. There are 3 ways to track conversions:

1. Standard events.
2. Custom events.
3. Custom conversions.

Here is the detail:

1. Standard events

Standard (regular) events are the basic events and rules of Facebook Pixel. These events are predefined by Facebook so you can just use them. Here are the events:

• Add payment details – fbq (‘track’, ‘AddPaymentInfo’);
• Add to cart – fbq (‘track’, ‘AddToCart’);
• Add to wishlist – fbq (‘track’, ‘AddToWishlist’);
• Complete registration – fbq (‘track’, ‘CompleteRegistration’);
• Contact – fbq (‘track’, ‘Contact’);
• Product customization – fbq (‘track’, ‘CustomizeProduct’);
• Donation – fbq (‘track’, ‘Donate’);
• Find location – fbq (‘track’, ‘FindLocation’);
• Initiate checkout – fbq (‘track’, ‘InitiateCheckout’);
• Lead – fbq (‘track’, ‘Lead’);
• Page view – fbq (‘track’, ‘PageView’);
• Make a purchase – fbq (‘track’, ‘Purchase’);
• Search – fbq (‘track’, ‘Search’);
• Schedule an appointment – fbq (‘track’, ‘Schedule’);
• Start trial – fbq (‘track’, ‘StartTrial’);
• Apply – fbq (‘track’, ‘SubmitApplication’);
• Registration for subscription – fbq (‘track’, ‘Subscribe’);
• View content – fbq (‘track’, ‘ViewContent’);

Important Note: Additional information can be added to each of these events. For example: product price, currency, etc.

These events can be embedded directly through the site’s code or through tagging tools like Google Tag Manager.

2. Custom events

If the pre-set events by Facebook are not enough for you or you want to create a special event that suits your requirements, you can create a custom event. For example, you could create an event about “using a discount” when purchasing a product.

For this purpose, the following structure must be used:

fbq (‘trackCustom’, ‘ShareDiscount’, {promotion: ‘discount_20%’});

3. Custom conversions

Custom conversions can be sent to Facebook based on standard events or custom events. For example, if after leaving details, the user goes to the “Thank you” page. You can then determine that a page that includes “Thank you” will be considered a page that leads to a custom conversion.

To create custom conversion events, the process must be performed using Event Manager > Your Pixel on Facebook.

You can get more information about users who visit the site through Facebook Analytics.

Audience-based advertising

As we wrote, Facebook Pixel allows you to reach your target audience that performs a certain action whether it is based on regular events, custom events or custom conversions.

You can create ads in a targeted way according to the type of segmentation of your audience and your marketing goal.

For example, if a customer added a product to his shopping cart on your site, and in the end did not purchase for a particular reason, you can reach him and remind him that his shopping cart is still waiting for him. Also, you can offer them a certain discount to complete the purchase process.