What is a Conversion Pixel?
A conversion pixel is just a snippet of pre-defined JavaScript code that can be added to a site where the Feathr Super Pixel has already been placed. It uses the feathr global variable created by the existing Feathr Super Pixel code to send additional analytics to Feathr to indicate that a “conversion” has happened, e.g., someone registered for an event, bought merchandise, renewed their association membership, etcetera.
In today’s digital marketing landscape, it is important that marketers are able to accurately track conversions in order to measure the effectiveness of their efforts and make sure they are making the best possible use of their marketing budgets. Unfortunately, tracking conversions accurately often requires technical expertise that is not immediately available to marketing teams. That’s where you come in!
How to add a Conversion Pixel to your site
The conversion pixel consists of a single function invocation. The goal is to call the function with the right parameters at the right time. Let’s take a look at each of the parts of this function invocation and its parameters to understand what needs to be customized for our specific use case.
- The conversion pixel consists of a single call to the feathr global function created by the Feathr Super Pixel. This is why it is essential that the page you are adding a Conversion Pixel to already have an existing Feathr Super Pixel implementation.
- The first argument is the string “convert”. This simply tells the feathr function what kind of action we want it to take. We want to mark a conversion so we use the string “convert”. This should be already set in the Conversion Pixel code provided to you by your marketing team, so no edits are required from you for this parameter.
- This is the unique identifier for this Conversion Pixel. This tells the feathr function how to identify the conversion activity so it can be used in reporting for the campaigns the marketing team has configured in Feathr and consists of 24 hexadecimal characters. The id in the screenshot above is simply an example and the correct identifier should be already present in the Conversion Pixel code provided to you by your marketing team, so no edits are required from you for this parameter.
- The third parameter of the feathr function in the Conversion Pixel is an object with up to three keys. The first key, “amount”, is required while the other two are optional. The “amount” key should have a value of type number, and the number should represent the monetary value of the conversion to your organization. For example, if the user of your site is buying a $200 ticket to attend a convention, the value should be 200. Alternatively, if the user is making a purchase in an online store, the value should be the total value of the goods in their cart, and so on. It is up to you as the developer to derive the correct “amount” number to provide here to accurately represent the amount of money your marketing helped deliver to your organization.
- The second key of the third parameter is “currency”. This key is optional and the value is defaulted to “USD” if not provided. If provided, the value of this key should be an ISO-4217 compliant currency code. This is used to appropriately display conversion values in Feathr reports where the transaction takes place in currencies other than United States dollars.
- The third key of the third parameter is “category”, and is optional as well. If your marketing team is tracking many different kinds of conversion activity, such as ticket purchases as well as membership renewals and merchandise purchases, it can be useful for their reporting to be able to distinguish between those kinds of conversions and see how much revenue came from each kind. The value of this key can be any string.
With an understanding of the Conversion Pixel’s functionality established, we can consider when it should be invoked. Ideally it should be invoked as soon as possible after the valuable activity has taken place. For example, on the final step of a checkout flow of an online store, when the user clicks the “Confirm Order & Pay” button, the conversion pixel should execute with the amount and currency appropriate for the purchase being made. This may be accomplished by an “onclick” event listener function attached to the button.
How to know if the Conversion Pixel has been added correctly
The correctness of the conversion pixel implementation can be verified in Feathr. Once you have tested your changes to your site by doing the action tracked by the conversion pixel, a Feathr user can navigate to the Community > Conversion Pixels page and look at the table row for the conversion pixel being implemented. If the “Times seen” and “Last seen” columns show the number of times you have done the action and how long ago you last did it, the conversion pixel has been implemented correctly.