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How to choose a conversion tracking setup for Shopify
The categories of tool, what each is actually for, and the five questions worth asking before you pick one - including the one most comparisons skip.
Start by naming the job
Most tools in this space do one of three jobs, and a lot of confusion comes from comparing tools that are not doing the same one.
SENDING: getting purchase events to Meta, Google, TikTok and Pinterest reliably, including from a server so browser blocking does not lose them. Server-side tagging tools and most Shopify tracking apps live here.
ATTRIBUTION: deciding which channel deserves credit for a sale, usually across sessions and devices. Multi-touch attribution tools live here.
TRUTH: reconciling what the platforms claim against what your store actually sold, and against what it cost you. Analytics and profit tools live here.
A tool that does one of these well is not deficient for not doing the others. Buying two tools that both do SENDING, though, is the specific mistake that double-counts your conversions.
Five questions worth asking
These are the ones that separate tools quickly. The fourth is the one most comparison articles never ask.
- Does it deduplicate against what I already have? Ask for the event id format. If the answer is vague, assume it will not, and plan to switch rather than add.
- Does it see checkout? On Shopify, a script in the theme head cannot observe the checkout or thank-you page. Only a web pixel extension or a server-side integration can. A tool that reports pageviews and add-to-cart but no purchases is usually hitting exactly this limit.
- Where does its denominator come from? A tool that reports coverage or match rate as a percentage should be able to say what it divided by. If the denominator is the platform's own estimate, the number cannot tell you what was missed.
- What does it do when it cannot tell? Look for whether it distinguishes 'checked and found nothing' from 'could not check'. Tools that collapse those two are the ones that quietly report a healthy zero.
- What happens to my data if I leave? Especially for attribution history, which is worth more the longer it accumulates.
On running more than one
It is fine to run a SENDING tool and a TRUTH tool together - they do different jobs and do not conflict.
It is not fine to run two SENDING tools at once. They will both report the same purchase to the same platform, almost certainly with different event ids, and the platform will count both. If you are switching from one to another, stop the first before starting the second.
Where Vibel sits
Vibel is a TRUTH tool that can also do SENDING. Its distinguishing property is the denominator: because it reads your Shopify order ledger directly, it can report tracking coverage as a fraction of real orders rather than as a self-reported score - which is what makes it able to show what tracking missed.
If your problem is purely getting events to Meta reliably and nothing else, a dedicated server-side tagging tool may be a better fit and there is no reason to pretend otherwise. If your problem is that your platforms disagree with each other and with Shopify, and you cannot tell which is right, that is the problem Vibel is built for.
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