Meta pixel optimisation guide
Improve your pixel's ability to measure events that are valuable to your business.
Start by creating an event for your pixel to capture, such as purchases. Then, use Meta's automation tools to use your pixel more effectively.
Follow the steps below to get the most from your pixel:
Step 1:
Set up events to start tracking results with your pixel.
There are two kinds of events to track with your pixel: standard events and custom conversions.
See Meta's pixel installation guide to resolve common pixel errors.
Standard events are the types of actions people take on your website, such as purchases, leads or scheduling appointments.
It's important to measure events that reflect your marketing goals. For example, if the goal of your ads is to sell more products or services, you should choose 'purchases' as your standard event to track purchases made as a result of your ads.
To see which pixel events are recommended for your business vertical – physical shop, B2B, property, automotive or travel, for example – refer to Meta's industry specifications.
Set up standard events*Only available on desktop
How to set up standard events.
There are two methods to set up standard events on your website: use Meta's event setup tool or manual setup.
Meta's event setup tool saves you time by creating standard events without code.
Method 1:
Create standard events using the event setup tool.
- Go to Data sources in Events Manager, visit the Settings tab and find the section called Event setup.
- Toggle the Track events automatically without code option to ON.
- Then, click the Open event setup tool button, enter your website URL and click Open website.
- In your website browser, click Review next to each suggested event to confirm or dismiss, or click Track new button or Track a URL to create new standard events.
- When you've finished, select Finish setup.
- Visit the troubleshooting guide to resolve any issues.
Method 2:
Create standard events manually.
- To set up standard events manually, refer to the developer toolkit for standard events.
Custom conversions are used to track customer actions in more detail; this can include purchases of a specific product or service, or within a certain colour or cost threshold. For example, while standard events can track all purchases on your website, custom conversions can track purchases of women's shoes over £40.
Once your pixel has tracked this custom conversion enough times, you can target your ads to people who are most likely to act – in this example, people most likely to purchase women's shoes over £40.
Set up custom conversions*Only available on desktop
How to set up custom conversions.
Follow the steps below to set up custom conversions for your website, and reference Meta's best practices for custom conversion setup.
- Get started.
- Go to the Custom conversions page in Events Manager and select Create custom conversion.
- Define your conversion parameters and rules.
- Give your custom conversion a name.
- Under Data source, select your pixel.
- Under Conversion event, choose the event that you want to customise.
- Choose a standard event for optimisation, such as Facebook selected category (recommended) or purchase.
- Add your URL rules.
- Select Create.
- Activate your custom conversion.
- Navigate to the web page that your custom conversion is referencing in order to trigger the pixel.
- Refresh your browser in Events Manager and check that the custom conversion status is listed as active on the Custom conversions page.
Step 2:
Verify that your events or conversions are working properly.
Meta offers two tools to verify that your events are working properly and troubleshoot any remaining issues. This helps ensure that you get the results you want from your pixel, such as improved results tracking, enhanced campaign performance and better retargeting.
Use the test events tool to verify that your standard events are working properly and resolve any unusual activity. For example, you can test a standard event for purchases by going to your website and clicking a Purchase button. If the purchase event is received, it will appear in Events Manager.
- Go to Data sources in Events Manager and navigate to the Test events tab.
- Enter your website URL under Test browser events.
- Click Open website and take the same action that you created a standard event for, such as purchase or contact.
- Events that have been verified to work properly will appear in the Test events tab.
The diagnostics tab in Events Manager allows you to identify and resolve common issues related to event setup.
- Go to Data sources in Events Manager and navigate to the Diagnostics tab to see active, previously detected and ignored status tabs.
- Critical issues have a red icon and warnings have a yellow icon.
- Follow the instructions to resolve any critical issues.
- Maximise the value of your pixel by following the recommendations for warnings.
If you're still getting an error message, refer to this troubleshooting guide for standard events.
Step 3:
Turn on automated tools to improve your pixel performance.
Now that you've verified that your pixel events are working properly, it's time to take a few final actions to improve your pixel's performance.
Go to Data sources in Events Manager, navigate to the Settings tab and follow the three tips below.
Automatic advanced matching can match more of the conversions happening on your website to people on Facebook and Instagram. It also works to increase the size of your custom audience and decrease your cost per conversion.
- Turn on automatic advanced matching by toggling the Automatic advanced matching option to ON.
Automatic events are actions that your pixel receives from your website, often based on your website traffic and button text, which don't require you to add any additional code.
- Under Event setup, turn on automatic events by toggling the Track events automatically without code option to ON.
Conversions API is one of the best ways to combat issues related to signal loss and privacy. Setting up Conversions API can help to reduce your CPR (cost per result), more effectively measure your ad performance and attribution, and optimise your ads for actions that often happen after a customer makes a purchase, such as subscribing to your email list.
- Under Conversions API, choose from one of three installation methods: Conversions API Gateway, set up manually or set up through a partner integration using platforms such as WooCommerce, Shopify or WordPress.
Step 4:
Choose the right campaign objective.
The following ad objectives make the most of the information gathered by your pixel:
- Sales
- Traffic
Optimise for lower-funnel events such as purchases in order to lower your CPR and see a higher ROAS (return on ad spend).
Use data gathered by your standard events or custom conversions to create Custom Audiences from your website and retarget your ads to people who are most likely to act.
Ready to see results from your pixel and create a campaign?
Add standard events or customised conversions to your website, and optimise your pixel with Meta's automation tools.
Only available on desktop