Help centre

Ads and tracking (Meta and Google)

Everything here lives on one page in your dashboard: Shop, Ads & tracking. Only the shop owner can open it.

What your shop reports

Once connected, your shop tells Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and Google about:

  • Page views on every page.
  • Product views, with the product, its price and its catalogue ID.
  • Add to cart, with the quantity and value.
  • Checkout started, with everything in the cart and the total.
  • Payment details chosen when the shopper submits the checkout form.
  • Purchase, with the order number, the total in rand, every item and the number of items.

A purchase is only reported once the payment is actually confirmed: a card payment when your card provider confirms it, an EFT or on-account order when you mark it paid. It is reported once per order, even if the shopper refreshes the thank-you page.

Connect Meta

  • Step 1: Open Meta Events Manager (business.facebook.com/events_manager2) and click your pixel under Data sources. Meta sometimes calls it a dataset.
  • Step 2: Copy the long number under its name. That is your Pixel ID. If you moved from Shopify, use the same pixel you had there so your ads keep what they have learned.
  • Step 3: On the pixel's Settings tab, find Conversions API and click Generate access token. Copy it straight away, Meta only shows it once. It starts with EAA.
  • Step 4: Paste both into Ads & tracking and press Save changes.
  • Step 5: Press Send test event. You see Meta's own answer on the page. "Meta accepted it" means the pixel and token match.

With the token saved, your shop also reports sales from its own server (the Conversions API). That catches sales the browser pixel misses, for example when an ad blocker is on or the shopper closes the page early. Meta matches the two copies of each event so nothing is counted twice.

Testing with Meta's Test events tab

In Events Manager, open Test events and copy the code shown for server events (it starts with TEST). Paste it into Test event code and save. While it is set, server events show up under Test events and do not count for your ads, so clear it when you are done. It switches itself off 48 hours after you save it, in case you forget.

For the browser side, install Meta's free Meta Pixel Helper extension for Chrome and open your shop.

Connect Google

  • Google Analytics 4: Admin, Data streams, your web stream. Copy the Measurement ID (starts with G-).
  • Google Ads (optional): Goals, Conversions, open your Purchase conversion, Tag setup, Install the tag yourself. You will see something like AW-123456789/AbCdEf. Paste it into Google Ads conversion ID. The part after the slash is the conversion label, and we split it out for you.

The cookie notice (POPIA)

Switch on Ask shoppers before loading ad cookies and each new visitor sees a small notice. Meta and Google only load after they tap Accept, and their order is only reported from our server if they accepted. If they tap No thanks, nothing is loaded or sent.

The trade-off is that shoppers who ignore or refuse the notice are not counted, so your ad reports show fewer sales than really happened. Mention the ad cookies in your privacy policy either way (Shop, Policies).

Your product catalogue

Your product feed is at the address shown on the Ads & tracking page (it ends in /products.csv). It always reflects your live products, prices, sale prices, stock and photos, with one row per variant.

  • Meta Commerce Manager: Catalogue, Data sources, Add items, Data feed, use a URL. Paste the feed address and set it to update daily.
  • Google Merchant Center: Products, Add products, Add from a file, Add a file from a link, daily fetch.

Products without a photo are skipped by Meta and Google, so add one to every product you want in your ads. The IDs in the feed are the same IDs your shop sends with every event, which is what lets dynamic ads show the right product.

When something goes wrong

The page shows what we last sent to Meta and Meta's answer. If Meta stops accepting events (usually an expired or deleted access token), a red notice says so. Make a new token, paste it in, save, and press Try again now to resend the last week's events. Problems with tracking never stop a customer from checking out.

Still stuck? [email protected] or WhatsApp 073 429 5517.