Even if you’re not yet running Facebook ads, if you haven’t yet set up a “Facebook Pixel” on your website then you’re potentially losing out on a lot of valuable data which you may use at some point in the future.

The Facebook pixel helps you do two things:

1. Show your Facebook ads to the right people – The pixel will collect user data and build audiences for your ads based on people who visit your website or take certain actions on your website
2. Measure the results of your ads – Provide you with in depth analytics and measure the effectiveness of your Facebook adverts after a person sees them or clicks on them

Once you’ve added the Facebook pixel to your website, it will be triggered when a person arrives on your site and/or when they take an specified action (like adding to cart or completing a purchase). This information is then sent to your Facebook Ads Manager (or Events Manager) page where you can take further actions.

Facebook conversion tracking can seem daunting for many beginners – maybe you’re not how to set it up, what you should be tracking, or how to analyse the data?

Our step-by-step guide will show how to track the actions that are valuable to your business and use this data to create meaningful ROI for your ads.

How to Install the Facebook Pixel

First things first, if you haven’t already, get your Facebook Pixel installed. Go to your ‘Events Manager’ within the Facebook Ads Manager back-end. From here, you’ll be able to install the Facebook pixel using one of 3 methods. You can:

1. Install the code yourself on the header of your website.
2. Use a partner integration to install it automatically.
3. Email installation instructions to a developer.

Don’t worry: it’s easier than it sounds! Here’s how to setup your Facebook Pixel on different eCommerce platforms:

• WordPress: We suggest using the PixelYourSite plugin
• Manually / HTML website: Copy your FB pixel code and paste it into the header of every page (or your header template file) just before the code
• Shopify Instructions
• Wix Instructions
• Squarespace Instructions

Alternatively, if you’re not confident about installing your pixel correctly, you can use Upwork to find a freelancer who can help you with this – it should not cost much at all and would take less than an hour.

How to Decide What Events to Track

Once your Facebook pixel is installed, it will automatically begin tracking ‘landing page views’, but to follow when a user converts, you’ll need to track what’s called ‘standard events’

These standard events are everyday actions people take on websites like ‘add to cart’, ‘purchase’, ‘contact’ etc. To see all the standard event options, see Facebook’s event guide.

Your next step is deciding what events are most meaningful to your business. If you’re selling sample libraries and/or plugins, then you’ll want to track events like ‘purchase’, ‘add to cart’, ‘initiate checkout’ and ‘add to wishlist’.

How to Set up Conversion Tracking

Now you’ve decided what you’d like to track, it’s time to install the code that records each action. Just as there are 3 ways of installing the Facebook Pixel, there are also 3 ways of tracking conversions on your site:

Create Custom Conversions

To create a custom conversion, all you’ll need is the URL of the page your customer reaches once they’ve completed your desired action. Custom conversions are usually complementary to adding standard events and further segmentation of important actions taken on your site.

Standard events can track things like button clicks (adding to the cart, hitting a call button, etc.), whereas custom conversions allow you to track a specific URL.

If you’re selling 3 different plugins, the ‘purchase’ standard event won’t tell you exactly what course was bought. Creating custom “thank you” page URLs for each course and tracking each of them using the custom conversions tool will give you a better insight into what’s working well.

How to create a custom conversion: 

• Go to the event’s manager and click ‘create custom conversion.’
• Name your custom conversion, e.g. “Bought product.”
• Define the category of event you’re tracking, e.g. ‘Purchase.’
• Add in the landing page URL you want to track, choosing either URL ‘contains’ or ‘equals’ (if you have a specific thank you page for each purchase, then use “equals“, if your “thank you for purchasing” page is the same for all, then use “contains“)
• Click ‘Next’ and ‘Save.’

You’re done! Now you’re recording your custom conversion.

Add Standard Events Manually

Adding standard events manually to your website’s code requires technical skill. If you’re not used to changing things on your website’s back-end and typically get a developer to help you, installing event tracking should be passed on to them.

If you’re competent in website coding, installing standard events is pretty straightforward to do.

How to install standard events:

• Copy Facebook’s standard event code
• Above the tag in your Facebook pixel code, paste the standard event code that’s relevant to each page.
• Do this for every page that you want to track.

If you’re not comfortable with this, you can use a free tool like Pixel Your Site to add the events for you. Alternatively, you can use Facebook’s event setup tool – more on that below.

Use the Event Setup Tool

The event setup tool can be a godsend for anyone trying to track conversions without the help of a developer. It gives you the option to track standard events, create custom conversions, and add the value of each conversion, all without the use of code.

It’s user-friendly, highlights the buttons on your site you might like to track, and lets you choose from their multiple tracking options.

Here’s how to use it:

• Go to ‘“Events manager”, select your pixel, and click ‘Settings’.
• From there, click ‘Open Event Setup Tool’
• Add in your website URL and click ‘Open Website’
• The event tool will then appear while navigating your site.
• You can click the highlighted CTA buttons you’d like to track on each page, whether ‘contact us’ or ‘purchase’
• You can also add tracking to specific thank you page URLs you hit and mark them as a ‘purchase’ or ‘lead.’
• Then you need to confirm your tracking.

How Test Your Conversion Tracking

Now that you’ve installed your Facebook pixel and conversion tracking, it’s time to test if it’s working. We highly recommend you do this to avoid any confusion or wasted budget. There are two ways you can test if everything is working correctly.

• Install Facebook pixel helper

Facebook pixel helper is a free tool that will allow you to see precisely what tracking is in place on each page of your website. Add it as an extension on your browser, and once you land on your site, it will show you the tracking it’s picking up.

• Test events in Facebook’s events manager 

To run diagnostics on your pixel and see if tracking is firing correctly, you’ll need to click on ‘data sources,’ then choose your pixel in Facebook’s events manager. From there:

• Choose ‘test events’
• Add in your website URL.
• Navigate through multiple pages.
• Make the conversions you’re trying to track.

Once you’ve flicked through a few pages, Facebook will simultaneously show you precisely what events are firing and when in the results section of your events testing interface. You’ll be able to pinpoint any issues with your conversion tracking and re-install the tracking correctly.

How Create Ads That Convert

Now that you’ve set up your standard event, it’s time to begin creating ads and audiences geared towards fulfilling your desired actions. If you’d like Facebook to optimise a campaign for conversions, follow these steps.

1. Choose the ‘Conversions’ objective when setting up a campaign.
2. Choose the specific conversion you’d like to optimise the campaign for at the ad set level.
3. Ensure the event or custom conversion you choose has a green button rather than a red one beside its name. (this tells you whether the event is active or not.)
4. Consistently analyse the data to see what ads are driving conversions at the best ROI.

There are other objectives when running Facebook adverts also, like “awareness” or “consideration”. For the purpose of this article, we’re assuming that you simply want to make sales immediately from your Facebook ads so in this situation you’d only choose “conversions” as the objective. You can read more about what the other objectives are for here:

https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1438417719786914

Tip: Use Canva to create eye catching and professional looking graphics for your Facebook adverts. Its quick, simple and affordable.

How to Create Custom Audiences on Facebook

Creating custom audiences based on the conversion data you’ve gathered is key to increasing conversions at a lower cost per conversion.

Custom audiences are fantastic for remarketing campaigns and for creating ‘lookalike’ audiences. Lookalike audiences are people that Facebook deems similar to those who have already taken action with you.

You can create a custom audience based on things like: 

• People who have purchased from you before.
• People who have added to the cart.
• People who reached a specific page.
• People who have visited the website.
• People who filled in a contact form.

You can also segment an audience based on more than one event, which is excellent if you want to crossmatch people who have added to the cart but didn’t purchase. Using this data, you can target users based on where they are in the buyer cycle leading to higher conversion rates.

Learn more about creating custom audiences.

How to Analyse Your Facebook Ads Data

To see how every campaign is doing in terms of conversions, go to your Facebook Ads Manager dashboard. From there, you can customise the results you see for each campaign.

• In the top right-hand corner of your campaign results interface, click the button that says ‘Columns.’
• From the drop-down menu, click ‘Customise columns.’
• Now you can choose the custom conversions or specific standard events you’d like shown in your results dashboard.
• You can drill down to things like ‘cost per conversion’, ‘cost per add to cart’ etc., so you can see what ROI each campaign is producing.

 

Hopefully this article has provided you with useful information on how to setup your pixel, analyse your data and improve your conversions from Facebook ads. This is just a beginners guide to the process – the next step is to test, test, test. Split testing everything will gradually improve your results over time leading to higher conversion rates and lower costs overall.

Our aim at Pulse is to provide companies who use the platform with a solution for improving the download experience for customers, as well as the tools and support to grow their company too such as help with Facebook ads and suggestions for freelancers to work with etc.  Learn more about the features and costs of Pulse here.

With many online re-sellers and distributors to choose from, customers expect (and demand) more from their online shopping experience and you have to work harder than ever to compete for their dollars.

Any business that sells its products online, whether digital or physical, is in a constant battle with the competition for more sales, more repeat customers, and increased profit margins.

Fortunately, there are dozens of ways to get customers to buy more, buy bigger, and keep coming back for more. In this blog, you’ll learn 10 easy-to-implement ways of upping your eCommerce game to increase both your sales and revenue.

1. Cross-Sell and Upsell

Cross-selling is a fantastic way to encourage impulse buys and increase your average basket size. Showing customers a selection of products that go nicely with the item they’re looking at can tempt them to spend more.

For example, say the customer is buying a compressor, you could show them an offer on an EQ plugin at the cart stage if they add it to their cart too. Here’s how Waves do it:

Upselling at the checkout stage is another intelligent tactic to get your customer to spend more. This is a case of giving them an option to upgrade their selection (make sure the price difference isn’t too extreme.)

For example, you could offer the “Pro” version of a sample library (with more presets) for $10 more at the cart stage.

2. Add Videos

Putting a video on your main product pages can significantly boost revenue. Humans process the information in a video much faster than reading a product description. Providing the customer with a visual showing the product in action will speed up their decision process and entice them to take the plunge.

Videos are especially powerful for brands trying to sell products that look their best in action or need a demonstration to show off their features. You can also include customer testimonials in the video. Seeing other people rave about your product might be just what they needed to make a decision.

Tip 1: Ensure you have a very strict structure to your videos along with Youtube “chapters” so the customer knows where to skip to if they want the “walkthrough” or “sounds” section etc.

Tip 2: Use Canva to create eye catching Youtube thumbnails without the need for a designer.

3. Optimise for Mobile

According to businesswire.com, by the end of 2021, mobile sales will account for 53.9% of all eCommerce sales. So if over half of all eCommerce revenue is coming from mobile users, optimising your site for mobile has never been more important.

Here are some key points to keep in mind for creating a mobile-friendly site:

• Text isn’t too long: if the text isn’t readable, or is overwhelming to look at, customers won’t stick around.
• Straightforward checkout: a clunky mobile checkout will frustrate users and lead to cart abandonment.
• Fast loading speeds: nothing hinders conversions more than a slow website.
• Easy to navigate: make sure your most important pages are easy to find and every button is clickable.
• Responsive: check your mobile site doesn’t cut off any design features or mess with functionality.

Tip: Use Responsinator to check how your website looks on multiple devices

4. Capture Cart Abandoners

When customers fill their basket and leave without buying, this is not a loss, but an opportunity waiting to be seized. Customers might drop off due to things like unexpected VAT, lack of payment options, or even just closing the tab and forgetting to return.

Check out our tips below for reducing cart abandonment rates:

• Be upfront about shipping: don’t hide these costs, as you might catch shoppers off guard.
• Include product images: if customers can see exactly what they’re buying, they’ll feel reassured about their purchase, and excited to buy.
• Show checkout progress: this helps to motivate customers to continue to the end.
• Enable guest checkout: Many users see setting up an account as an extra step. Let them complete their purchase in as few clicks as possible with guest checkout.
• Follow up advertising: email reminders and targeted ads can remind users of their forgotten cart and reel them back to your site to complete their order.

Tip: Great cart abandonment platforms include Jilt, Klaviyo and even Mailchimp

5. Show Customer Reviews

Adding customer reviews to your site is an essential trust factor that will make users confident in their purchase decision. According to 3D cart, reviews make customers 71% more comfortable buying a product.

You can place verified reviews throughout your website, under specific products and on your homepage.

According to BrightLocal, 68% of customers leave a review after being asked to do so. You can automate emails to invite users to leave a review post-purchase and even offer a reward for their trouble, like entry to a competition or a discount code for their next purchase.

Tip: The most popular reviews platform is YOTPO but it can be very expensive. Alternatives include Trustpilot or even Mailchimp (using review email automations)

6. Split Test

Split testing, aka A/B testing, is a method used to improve conversion rates. In a nutshell, it’s the process of showing website visitors the same page but with one element changed for half of the visitors.

Something as simple as your CTA text, banner image, or button colours can have surprising effects on purchase behaviour.

Data is power, and once you know what’s driving revenue, you can use that information to make changes to your website over time. You can also split test ads by using two versions of the text, visuals, or CTA buttons.

Tip: Use Optimizely or Crazy Egg.

7. Re-Target your Customers

Retargeting is one of the best ways to increase eCommerce sales. You create audience lists of people who have taken specific actions on your site, and retarget them with ads.

This could be groups of people who have visited your site, people who have landed on specific web pages, those who have purchased from your site before, and so on. Your copy and visuals should be crafted based on their action.

For example you might create a Facebook video ad that’s a quick 3 min walkthrough video of your plugin if they’ve already added something to the cart but haven’t purchased it.

One of the most effective ways to drive people back to your site is to show them the exact products they viewed or similar products. This helps to keep your brand top of mind and nudge them towards a sale. You can setup re-targeting adverts on Facebook to target users who have visited your cart page but not completed a purchase for example.

Tip: Try out Adroll to retarget users via adverts on other websites around the web. Its quite low cost and can provide good results.

8. Send “Drip” Campaigns

Drip campaigns are a set of automated emails that are sent to a customer based on their activity. They’re a highly targeted way of reactivating audiences who may not have purchased in a while and turning website visitors into repeat purchasers.

Some examples of drip campaigns might be:

• Recommendations: here’s another chance to cross-sell to your purchaser audience by sending them an email with similar products.
• Personalised discounts: a great way to drive more conversions is to trigger an automated email that thanks your customer for their loyalty and offers them an exclusive discount on their birthday.
• User re-engagement: “we haven’t seen you in a while, would you like to see our new plugin?”. Sending emails to only customers who haven’t opened an email in X months can be a useful way to target them specifically and help them “re-engage” in your emails, thus increasing your open rates in the long run. This campaign could have 3 stages:
  
  1. “We haven’t seen you in a while, here’s a 20% off code for any product“. If customer opens the campaign, they’re re-added back into your main “segment”. If they don’t open, then they’re sent the next email:
  2. “We hate getting too many emails too – are you still interested in ours?“. If customer opens the email, they’re re-added back into your main segment. If not, they are unsubscribed from your email list and sent one more email:
  3. “We hope you come back to us”. Customer has been unsubscribed, but this email contains a “resubscribe” button which they can click on to get re-added back into your newsletter.

Tip: Removing contacts from your email list who never open emails is beneficial in the longrun and is integral to maintaining a high open rate, which will convert to higher revenue over time.

9. Examine Analytics

If you’re an eCommerce business, chances are you’re running paid ads on the likes of Google and Facebook, have email marketing in place, and a site that’s optimised for SEO.

Constantly checking in on each channel to see what’s driving sales is crucial to improving your site’s overall profitability.

You can set up tracking in your ad campaigns and monitor results in Google Analytics to measure what campaigns specifically are giving the best ROI. Ensure your team regularly evaluates what’s working and what’s not, then adjusts campaigns and SEO accordingly.

This ensures you’re not wasting money on ineffective channels, and can spot opportunities for improvements across every platform.

Additionally, take a look at your “Goal Flow” in Google Analytics to see if people are dropping off at a certain point in the purchase process (cart page or checkout page) and see if you can reduce bounce rates at those parts to increase overall revenue in the long run.

10. Offer More Payment Options

Offering more payment options at the checkout page can result in a far higher conversion rate and lower dropoffs at the end of your sales funnel.

Paypal is one of the most popular payment options, followed by card (Stripe / Braintree etc.) but there are a lot of alternative payment solutions you can offer your customers also. For example:

• Partial.ly – customers can setup payment plans to purchase your product
• Amazon Pay – allow customers to pay via their payment details stored in their Amazon account
• Bitpay – receive payments via cryptocurrency
• Alipay – a Chinese digital wallet with over 1 billion users
• iDeal / Giropay / SOFORT – European bank transfer solutions

Tip: if you want to go further down that rabbit hole, you can offer select payment options to customers based on their location. For example, its likely European customers wouldn’t want to see Alipay options and vice versa.

This is of course not a definitive list and there are plenty of other options you can try to increase your revenue.

An alternative way to increase revenue is by decreasing your costs – Pulse can help with this. Pulse can reduce your Amazon S3 costs by up to 50% (while increasing download speeds for customers) as well as reduce customer support emails (reducing money spent on customer service) freeing up your time to focus on more important tasks like developing new products. Contact us to setup a developer account for free and try it out!

By now, you’ve probably already had the joy of a retargeted ad stalking you all over Facebook and Instagram for weeks after browsing an online shop. There’s a reason why they’re so popular – they work.  

If you don’t already, you should be running Facebook ads for your sample library or plugin. They’re simple, effective and if setup correctly can generate a steady income stream for your products. This guide will tell you everything you need to know to get started. 

Now we’re not going to beat around the bush, navigating your way around Facebook Ads Manager takes some getting used to. But with practice, it will become second nature!

We’re going to give you a good grounding in the basics of setting up a campaign in this ultimate guide to running Facebook Ads – just keep on reading!

Step 1: Set Up Facebook Ads Manager 

The first step is to create your Facebook ad account. To do this, you can head to this url: 

https://www.facebook.com/business/tools/ads-manager  

Then click on the button that says ‘go to Ads Manager’. This will bring you to the page with step-by-step instructions to create your account, which is simply a case of filling in: 

• Your ad account name
• The page you’d like to run ads from (If you don’t have a business page set up already, you’ll need to do so to publish campaigns)
• Contact information
• Payment details

Step 2: Choose Your Ad Objective

When you’re in the Ads Manager dashboard, there will be tabs labeled as: 

Account Overview

Campaigns

Ad Sets

Ads

Navigate to the ‘campaigns’ tab and you’ll find a big green button that says ‘create’. This will take you to your first step in creating your campaign which is to select an objective. 

Now, the objectives are often confusing for beginners, and rightly so. There’s so many options and it’s difficult to know what to choose.

Whichever objective you choose will tell Facebook the results you want from your campaign, whether that’s more clicks to the website, more awareness, more purchases, and so on.

Choosing the right objective

In our experience, the Facebook Ads that get the best results are typically ‘traffic’, ‘lead generation’, and ‘conversion’ ads. 

It’s easier to measure the real-life results from these objectives, as you can see exactly how many clicks you’re getting through to the site, how many conversions the ad achieved, and at what cost. 

Objectives such as ‘brand awareness’ and ‘reach’ aren’t a great option for a small budget, because they rarely produce tangible results. The campaign will be optimised to get more views on the ad, but won’t show it to the people most likely to click through to the website. 

Click here to learn more about Facebook Ad Objectives and choosing the right one for your business. 

Pro tip for beginners:  Almost every button, and every step in Facebook Ads Manager is accented with a little ‘i’ button that will give you more information on each tool/ action when you hover over it. 

Think of it like Facebook holding your hand as you take each step towards publishing your campaign. It’s a great way to learn as you go!

Step 3: Create Your audience

Now that you’ve decided on your objective, it’s time to get to the juicy part; choosing who you’re going to target with Facebook’s highly sophisticated targeting system. 

Important note:  With Facebook Ads Manager, the best way to test multiple audiences is to do an A/B split test, where you can show the same ad to two different audiences, and see which one performs better. 

This helps to increase your ROI and make sure you’re spending money on the right people. (The A/B test will show up as an option at the audience creation stage.) 

Understanding Facebook’s targeting tools

You can create an audience based on their age, gender, demographics, behaviours, career, life events, interests, and much more. 

Once you get the basics filled in like their age, gender, and location, experiment with detailed targeting by typing in interests or behaviours related to your business. If you’re stuck for inspiration, try clicking the browse button to look at their targeting options. 

There’s an audience size dial on the left-hand side of your screen which will show you whether your audience is becoming too big or too small for your budget, and will also give you estimated clicks/impressions, etc. 

Placements

Facebook will give you the option of choosing ‘manual’ or ‘automatic’ placements, we’d advise going for ‘manual’. This way you can click the placements that get the most engagement which are the Instagram/Facebook newsfeeds, and Instagram stories. 

This will ensure that you get the best bang for your buck, and don’t waste money on placements people don’t click on as often. 

Optimisation

This tells Facebook what you would like the audience to do with the ad, whether that’s click on it, view the landing page, or make a conversion. 

We would recommend always choosing ‘landing page views’ over ‘link clicks’, because with landing page views, you’ll only pay when someone waits to load up your page. 

Creating a custom audience

Under ‘audience’, you’ll see an option to ‘create a custom audience.’ This is a place where you can create audiences based on users that have taken action with your website, your previous ads, or your Facebook/Instagram pages in the past. 

Pro tip:  Click ‘create’ and set up these audiences at the beginning, so that it can start collecting data for a few weeks. 

This is essential if you want to retarget customers down the line who have already shown interest in your business a.k.a high-value audiences. 

But you need to have what’s called a ‘Facebook Pixel’ installed if you want to collect this data and track conversions on your site. You might need a developer’s help with this, or you can install it yourself using one of their integration options.

Alternatively, if you have a mailing list, you can upload your list of customer emails to Facebook and they will match the emails to Facebook accounts so you can retarget those customers with ads on Facebook / Instagram.

Learn more here about installing a Facebook pixel. 

Step 4: Create Your Ad

Now that you’ve decided on your audience, budget, and date, it’s time for the fun bit: creating your ad! 

This is where you can get really creative with your ad copy, and imagery or video. In the ad creation section, you’ll see boxes for: 

• Format: You can choose a single image, video, carousel, or collection here. For your first ad, we’d recommend keeping it simple with a single image or video. (Carousel and collection ads are most often used for eCommerce businesses to show multiple products at once.)

Pro tip: Videos tend to get much higher engagement with social media ads, and there are plenty of platforms where even beginners can create engaging videos like Promo.com.

If you choose to go with an image, make sure it doesn’t have too much text on it. Websites like Canva.com have great templates for free to help you create enticing Facebook banners. 

• Image Size:  Ensure you create your banner in 2 sizes for newsfeed and story placements: 

• • 1080 x 1080 pixels (newsfeed)
  • 1080 x 1920 (stories)

• Headline: Make sure your headline is super to the point and convincing. If you can, pull the user in with an enticing special offer. Always think: “would I click on this?” The headline will appear in bold and usually catch the viewers attention more than the primary text, so make it count. 

• Primary text: Keep your text as short and to the point as you can. If your text is too long, people will tend to skip past it. Add emojis to emphasise key points and add a splash of colour. Also, make sure you’re capturing your audience before the text cuts off.

• Description:Write in a key USP and a call to action here. This doesn’t always show up, but make sure it’s filled in as it could help push the user to click. 

• CTA:Now, you’ll just want to choose a CTA for your ad. This is the button the user will click to your website, or in the case of a lead generation form to sign up to your mailing list. 

Finally, add in your landing page URL, and make sure you edit the display URL so you can control how it will appear to the ad viewer. Your real URL won’t be affected.

Step 5: Review, Publish and Go!

Before publishing, ensure your ad adheres to Facebook’s advertising policies. If it doesn’t it will get rejected, so be careful here! 

Congratulations, you’ve just created your first Facebook ad! Now it’s time to click publish. Next, your ad will go through the review process which takes a few hours and you’ll be notified when it’s live. 

Step 6: Keep An Eye on Important Metrics

You can view the results of your campaign in your Facebook Ads Manager dashboard. You’ll be able to see how many clicks it’s getting, how many people have seen it, how many times it was seen, and more. 

Learn more here about analyzing Facebook metrics.

Looking to improve your customer experience for your product delivery? Pulse is the industry standard for downloading, installing, updating, and managing your sample libraries – all in one place. Download at blazing fast speeds and retain access to your products forever. If you’d like to learn more about our services, chat to us today!