Written by:
Max Fellinger
If you’re tech savvy you may have heard of pixels while setting up your Shopify site. All the major marketing channels use pixels to in order to retarget visitors of your site to ads that your run through their platform. Ever wonder how you visit a shop and then the next 5 instagram ads are all from that brand? Pixels are behind the magic of that.
A pixel is a simply way to tie all the actions a user takes on your site, bundle them up, and do something useful with the data. In Facebook’s case, their pixel is used to show ads of the product you just visited but didn’t purchase across their platforms. They’ve masted using web analytics to get their users to make a purchase. They’re not the only ones, you’re email marketing tool almost certainly uses a pixel also.
Any given Shopify store might have 5 or more pixels running in the background helping to power their small piece of your ecommerce store. But do those apps know your customers better than you do? I doubt it.
That’s why we built the BrightWorks pixel, to give you the data to make insights only you can make. Data is all about connecting the dots, so who better to connect those dots than the people who know the products and customers they serve best. We know not everyone reading this has a PHD in data science (kudos if you do), so we made it super simple with a drag and drop interface that we know you’ll love.
Here are a couple reasons you need a BrightWorks Pixel:
Advanced Analytics
The most popular reporting apps on the Shopify app store are Data Export IO, Better Reports, & Report Pundit. Each with over 1,000 5-star reviews but none of them can tell you anything about the customers that didn’t purchase from you.
Every website, from ecommerce, banking, to news, has a goal metric that they like to track that has a direct impact on their business. Part of running a successful Shopify site is deeply understanding the 95-98% of visitors who don’t make a purchase and a pixel can help with that. The following metrics are crucial when analyzing a shops funnel and are only possible with a pixel:
- Bounce Rate – You’ve done the hard part of getting people to your site, you don’t want to see them go after one page view. Analyzing bounce rate gives you good insights into the landing pages your customers enter on. A higher bounce rate can mean customers didn’t know what action you wanted them to take next or didn’t see the value in sticking around.
- Percent to Product Detail Page (PDP) – A key, but often overlooked stat in the conversion funnel is your ability to get visitors to a product page ASAP. The higher up in the funnel you can convey value and present the right product, at the right time the better your % to PDP will be.
- Exits – Exits provides a good understanding of the last page your customers where on during their session. Ideally, this would be the order confirmation page, but if not it can provide some great insights on pages that might need a refresh.
2. Competition
Competition is everywhere in the ecommerce space and everyone’s competing for wallet share from customers. Gone are the days of competing with a couple other Shopify sites selling similar products, now the little guys are competing with the big guys and vice versa. It’s time to start taking inspiration from how the largest ecommerce sites in the world track metrics.
74% of the FORTUNE 500 are using Adobe Analytics to track conversions on their site. That’s 370 of the largest companies in the world (not just ecommerce) are all using Adobe Analytics according to Business Wire. Billion dollar commerce behemoths like Walmart, Target, & Home Depot all utilize Adobe Analytics to drive design decisions, prioritize their product road map and come up with new A/B tests.
So… Why don’t I just use Adobe Analytics then?
These companies have massive analytics teams that spend all day ‘tagging’ their site. They can tag all the different page types, product IDs, and the different conversions to derive insights from. If you have the resources and the know how that option might be appealing to you. Since Shopify sites are all structured the same way on the backend, we’re able to do all that tagging for you to provide the same insights for $19 a month. The big guys pay millions a year to Adobe.
Summary
If you’re a little bit of a data junkie and like having everything available to you from the start you’re going to love the power of BrightWorks app. Some apps provide sales reports, others provide heat maps and session replays, but no other app provides the advanced analytics provided by BrightWorks. Discovering actionable insights about your shop that drives meaningful improvements to conversion and AOV are an install away.
In no time you’ll be a data savant slicing and dicing your way to ecommerce victory! If you’re excited and want to learn more, email me! [email protected] I’d be happy to provide a demo!