Technological advancements supported by the increasing use of the internet has led to an emergence of massively popular social networks and new startups, as well as traditional businesses, have been lured to expand their advertisement portfolio by reaching out to the billions of people online via these platforms. From an advertiser’s point of view, it’s meriting to commercialise on such platforms given you are smart about your choices.

Facebook is not new to the business, a majority of its revenue comes from advertisements alone and If you are thinking of or are currently running ads on the most popular social network, then you need to use Facebook Pixel, which will help you get the most out of your social ad budget and it’s the first step to a smart choice.

Here’s everything you need to know about Facebook Pixel, how it works and how you can add it to your website in a few simple steps. We’ve also included an explainer for what kind of data Facebook Pixel tracks.

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What is Facebook Pixel?

Facebook Pixel is an analytical tool provided that is in a form of code and is added on the backend of a website. The code then helps in tracking data like subscribers, buyers, lead or inquiry from the site to facilitate conversion from Facebook advertisements and will help you get a clear picture of profit and loss rate on spending expenditure of Facebook ads.

Further, the data benefits in optimising conversions, which means Facebook will automatically surface ads in those user accounts that visited your website and are more likely to end up buying the products listed or further sharing the information you’re disseminating. Also, you can target people who took specific actions on your site like inquiry form submission, adding product to cart, items specifically searched, among other parameters.

With Facebook Pixel not only there will be a targeted audience-driven structural planning in place but also more click means increased SEO rating for your website which is a must-win arena for every website owner.  

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How Facebook Pixel track data?

You can think of Facebook Pixel as a personal watchdog with no extra expense incurred by the company == at the expense of user data — and all it has to do is tail the movements of every visitor and record their behaviours. Such observations are then sent back to Facebook, which identifies the accounts of such visitors and showcases more ads of the same product on their page. It also gives a documented report of its findings that helps in boosting sales.

The Pixel tracks nine chief data parameters, which are listed below, and can also be customised in segments as per user needs.

• Sign-up completion
• In-site registration form completion
• Product page view
• in-site product search
• Product added to cart
• product added to wish list
• payment information page
• Checkout initiation
• transaction completion 

Also, the Facebook Pixel is made up of two components — Base Code and Standard Event Code. The former always stays the same but the latter is dynamic and specifies the above-mentioned tracking parameters.

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How to create and add Facebook Pixel to your website?

Note: Whenever you use Facebook Pixel on your website always provide clear notice onto your site to all the visitors regarding the data collection, sharing and usage. To get further details about the policing go to Facebook Business Toll Terms.

How to create a business manager account?

To navigate through the findings of a Facebook Pixel it is required to have a business manager account with Facebook. If you already have it,  just skip on to the next part else follow the instructions below. 

Step 1:  Open the Business Manager page and click on the Create Account button at the top-right corner of the screen.    

Step 2: A business manager account form will pop-up, fill out all the credentials like business name, email, and click Next as shown in the screenshot below.

Step 3: In the next page add in all the remaining business details starting with your country name to all way down to intended business use of the account and hit the Submit button.  

Step 4: A confirmation message will be sent to your Gmail account. Open the email and click on the Confirm Now button and you are good to go.  

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How to add Facebook Pixel to your website?

Step 1: After your Business manager account is successfully set up, click on the Business Manager icon on the top-left corner of the screen and select Events Manager button from the drop-down menu. 

Step 2: On the Events Manager page, go to Facebook Pixel option and click on Get Started button. 

Step 3: On the follow-up page, input your Pixel name and website URL (optional) and click on the Continue button.

Step 4: To put Facebook Pixel to work mode and begin gathering user data from your website, you first need to install a code on your website. There a few ways to do so depending on which website platform you use.

• If you already have an account in e-commerce sites like Shopify, Prestashop or any Facebook Pixel-integrated partner site builders such as Wordpress, Wix plus CRM and Marketing Software and Tag Manager like Google Tag Manager and many more. You can choose the first option and the Facebook business help centre will walk you through the instructions on how to install the code onto the site. 
• If you already have a developer in place who does all the coding or editing for your site, then by clicking on the third option you can directly send the instructions and documentation required to install Facebook Pixel to your technical team.
• If both the above-mentioned options don’t suit your needs or you’re facing a technical glitch then you can opt to install the code manually.

Step 5: A new page will pop-up after choosing the manual add Pixel Code option. 

• If you only want base code to your site, click the code in the box mentioned above to copy it, and paste the Pixel code into the bottom of the header section of your site, just above the </head> tag.
• Or you can go to the Setting > Head tracking code > Paste the code, and the base code will be installed to all the pages of your website automatically.

Step 6: Scroll down to the previously mentioned page of Step 5 and you will automatically find advanced matching toggle. Turn the toggle to the right to activate advance settings. 

This option matches hashed customer data from your website to Facebook profiles. This lets you can track conversions more accurately and create larger custom audiences.

Step 7: To check whether you have correctly installed the base code to your site or not, go to the third option of the same page and paste the site URL in the search bar and click on the Send Test Traffic button.     

Facebook will send demo traffic to your site and if the status is shown as Active (green light above the search bar), your code has been installed correctly.

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How to install Standard Event Code?

Add the base code to your site first then follow the steps below to add a standard even code.

Step 1: After choosing to manually install code, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the Continue button. 

Step 2:  Click on the Facebook events setup tool button.

Step 3: On the next page enter the URL of the website page where you want to add the standard events and parameters to and click the Open Website button. 

• Now you’ll be able to view the event setup tool. 
• Now use your creativity and customise or track events like content and various push buttons of your website using the tool. 

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