How to Add a Conversion Pixel to your Products

When you’re selling an online course, you’re often integrating with a lot of different advertising platforms. You may be promoting your course via Facebook ads, Google AdWords, or through the blogs of friends and colleagues. Either way, you want to be able to track your marketing’s effectiveness and figure out which channels are working and which are not.

Conversion Pixels

One of the most tried-and-true ways to track how your marketing is performing is through conversion pixels. These pixels are small, invisible images used to determine when a page has been loaded. These data can be used to track how often a specific campaign results in a successful sale.

Learn more about conversion pixels from Facebook’s beginner’s guide.

Setting up a conversion pixel by hand is not easy. You have to make sure that the pixel is only triggered when certain links are used, and you have to make sure it doesn’t get triggered multiple times, to prevent single purchases from being counted twice. This guide will show you the easiest way to achieve this with the least amount of headache.

Zippy Courses is designed around using a Facebook conversion pixel, but most conversion pixels from other third-party services will also work. To use a Facebook pixel, you will need to install two kinds of code: the pixel base code, on every page of your website, and an event code, on specific webpages. The easiest way to do this is to download a plugin that will add your base code to every page of your site. We recommend the Facebook Pixel by PixelYourSite – Events, WooCommerce & Easy Digital Downloads plugin.

Download the plugin, then install and activate it on your WordPress site. You'll now see a tab in your WordPress navigation menu called PixelYourSite. Click it.

Scroll down, and you'll find the Add your Pixel ID panel. First, we'll have to add your Pixel ID here. To do so, we'll need a Facebook pixel. If you have one already, add it here. If not…

Creating Your Facebook Pixel

Click here to create a Facebook pixel. Click the Create a Pixel button, and a pop up window will appear asking you to name your pixel and agree to the Facebook Pixel Terms.

Do so, and click Next. You’ll see a loading bar appear which shows the progress of the pixel creation process. Once it’s complete, you’ll be walked through the installation process. Zippy Courses has made it so easy to use the Facebook pixel, though, that we’ll be skipping most of it.

You’ll then be asked how you want to install the pixel. Click Copy and Paste the Code.

This will begin a 3 step process, but we’re only interested in Step 1.2 Copy the entire pixel base code and paste it in the website header.

Locate this panel, and find your Facebook pixel ID (your pixel ID is highlighted in blue, but we’ve highlighted where you can find your pixel ID further in the above screenshot). Write this number down, and return to your Zippy Courses site, and enter it into the Add your Facebook Pixel ID field. Scroll to the bottom of the PixelYourSite page, check off the Activate plugin general settings checkbox, and click Save Settings.

Note: If you run into any issues during this process or have trouble locating your Pixel ID, visit PixelYourSite's support guide on getting started here for more information.

Tracking Your Sales

The Pixel Your Site plugin takes care of the base code. Now we need to track purchases. To do so, go to Products in Zippy Courses, and create a new product or locate and click on an existing product you wish to track. Click the Advanced tab, and paste the event code into the Facebook Conversion Pixel field.

The purchase event code looks like this:

fbq('track', 'Purchase', {value: 0.00, currency: 'USD'});

The only thing you’ll need to change is the value. Enter the price of your product here, then click Update.

Now return to Facebook, go to Facebook Ads Manager, and select Pixels from the top menu. If the status is Active, your pixel has been installed correctly. It may take up to 20 minutes for your pixel status to change after installing it.

How the Conversion Pixel Works

When people buy your conversion pixel-enabled product, their purchase process will proceed exactly like a normal Zippy Courses purchase. The student will complete a purchase, then be prompted to register an account on your site.

Once a student registers an account, they will be taken to your site’s Dashboard, where they can view the course or courses they have purchased.

Your conversion pixel will be loaded onto this dashboard page, and a successful conversion will be recorded in your advertising analytics. This conversion will only be triggered once, so as soon as a student views this page for the first time, they will not trigger your conversion pixel again. That way, you know that each hit to your conversion pixel translated to a successful sale.