What is a web pixel
A Shopify web pixel is a piece of JavaScript code used to monitor customer activities on an online store. The information gathered by these pixels is utilized for analytics and marketing purposes.
What do web pixels do?
- Track customer events: Pixels track customer actions, including page views, adding products to carts, and submitting searches.
- Improve security: Pixels boost security for the store and its customers.
- Control data sharing: Pixels enable control over the sharing of customer data with third-party services
- Prevent non-performing JavaScript: Pixels can block third-party code from running underperforming JavaScript.
- Comply with privacy regulations: Pixels assist stores in meeting privacy compliance requirements.
How to add web pixels to a Shopify store?
- App pixels: Install pixels through marketing and data collection apps
- Custom pixels: Manually add pixels through the pixels manager
Benefits:
Web pixel app extensions simplify the management and processing of behavioral data for developers by loading pixels within a secure sandbox environment and offering APIs to subscribe to customer events. Web pixel app extensions offer these advantages to both app users and developers:
- Eliminate or minimize the need for users to add tracking code
- Securely access all surfaces, like a storefront, checkout, and post-purchase pages
- Control what data the developers have access to
- Avoid performance and privacy alerts
- Provide smaller pixel code libraries with the removal of excess DOM manipulation code.
Key Benefits of Using Pixels in Shopify :
- Customizable Data Collection: You can capture and format data to align with your platform’s requirements.
- Real-Time Insights: Pixels enable real-time tracking and reporting of customer behavior.
- Campaign Optimization: Leveraging this data allows for better targeting, retargeting, and performance analysis of marketing campaigns.
- Integration with Third-Party Tools: Shopify’s pixel framework is designed to seamlessly integrate with platforms like Google, Facebook, TikTok, and others.
How web pixels function in Shopify’s ecosystem :
Here’s a more detailed breakdown of the process:
- JavaScript Snippet: A pixel is a brief JavaScript code segment designed to integrate with a merchant’s Shopify store. The aim is to gather information on customer activities, including page visits, clicks, purchases, and other interactions.
- Event Triggering: Customer interactions with the online store, such as adding items to the cart or completing purchases, produce “customer events” that are sent to Shopify’s data layer or event bus.
- Event Subscription: The pixel you’ve created subscribes to these events in the data layer. This involves listening for specific customer interactions relevant to your analytics or marketing platform.
- Data Transformation: The pixel processes and reformats the event’s payload after it has been captured in order to comply with the specifications of the data collection endpoint you are integrating with. For instance, your pixel converts the payload into the appropriate formats if it sends data to Facebook Ads or Google Analytics.
- Data Collection Endpoint: For analytics, optimization, or reporting, the converted data is routed to the endpoint of your platform.
A powerful feature that prioritizes security and privacy while preserving functionality is Shopify’s secure sandbox for apps and custom pixels. The main ideas and their ramifications are broken down here.
What is a Secure Sandbox in Shopify?
- Isolated Environment: The sandbox is a supervised area where apps and custom pixels can function without coming into direct contact with the online store’s main data or functionality.
- Data Security: Shopify’s data layer or event bus limits pixels to the precise data it provides, guaranteeing that they can only access what is specifically permitted.
- Freedom with Boundaries: The pixel script can run anywhere on the website, but it can only do its things and gather data in the sandbox.
Why Use a Secure Sandbox?
- Privacy Protection: By blocking unwanted access, guarantees adherence to privacy laws such as the CCPA and GDPR.
- Pixels sandbox limitations: The restrictions placed on pixels by Shopify’s secure sandbox environment are intentional steps to give merchants’ and their client’s security and privacy a top priority. An outline of these restrictions, their ramifications, and methods for resolving possible compatibility problems can be found here.
Review the following known limitations of the pixel sandboxes:
- Can’t render user interface elements, such as buttons, forms, banners, or modals
- Can’t automatically detect the following information:
- Events from DOM (Document Object Model) scraping
- Metadata from DOM scraping
- User information, such as email and phone, from DOM scraping
- Outbound link clicks from DOM scraping
- Page scrolling
- Clicks and mouse movement to create heatmaps from DOM scraping
When working in Shopify’s Lax sandbox environment, this is a crucial detail. The sandbox’s viewpoint, which may be different from the main window’s URL that users can see, is frequently reflected in the automatic detection of page URLs. As an alternative, you can publish custom events to automatically detect events, metadata, user data, and outbound links from DOM scraping. Publishing custom events might not be supported by all app pixels.
Important to note that there are two types of sandbox environments: strict and lax.
#1 Strict sandbox (Web pixel app extension)
Shopify’s web pixel app extensions use web workers to operate safely in a rigid sandbox setting, giving developers of apps a regulated but adaptable area to use JavaScript.
#2 Lax sandbox (Custom web pixel)
For custom pixels that need a more flexible setup with a controlled level of security, Shopify’s lax sandbox environment is ideal.
Conclusion:
Web pixels are a tool that helps Shopify business owners track their customers’ activity, behavior, and marketing strategies to grow their business and drive them. With the help of Shopify’s structured sandbox, store owners use web pixels for analytics and targeting.
At Startbit IT Solutions, we specialize in Shopify development, tracking solutions, customized stores, and consulting for your store. Whether we can help with app-based pixels, custom pixels, or Shopify e-commerce pixels, our team will help you with Shopify.
Contact Startbit IT Solutions today to enhance your Shopify store with expert web pixel integration and development!