Shopify Conversion Tracking: The Complete ClickFlare Guide

If you have an online store, Shopify conversion tracking is an essential part of your growth strategy. Without it, you're flying blind when it comes to what’s working and what’s wasting your budget.

The main problem is that Shopify’s in-platform tracking only goes so far. In this article, we’ll walk you through how to get accurate conversion tracking using ClickFlare to optimize smarter, spend less, and grow your business.

What Is Shopify Conversion Tracking and Why It Matters

Shopify conversion tracking is the process of measuring important visitor actions on your store, such as “Add to Cart” or “Purchase”, to understand how well visitors convert into buyers.

This is especially important if you are running paid ads to promote your Shopify store. You can attribute conversions to specific ads, campaigns, or landing pages. With this data, you can optimize smartly by pausing campaigns or pages that are not working, and doubling down on the ones that are. This helps you cut down on your ad budget and boost ROI.

‍With all this data, you can also improve the customer experience. By pinpointing where exactly your visitors drop off, you can optimize your funnel and improve your overall performance.

Shopify already offers in-platform data, but is this enough?

The Limitations of Shopify’s Built-In Tracking

Shopify offers built-in tracking that shows basic data such as sales by channel (e.g., Facebook, Google, TikTok), Average Order Value (AOV), or basic campaign performance if you’ve integrated your ad networks. But there are a few limitations:

1. The first problem with this data is that it is aggregated, making it difficult to pinpoint what exactly is generating revenue. For example, you can see that you made $2,000 in sales from Facebook, but you cannot see which campaign, ad set, or ad were responsible for this.
2. You cannot see click-level data on Shopify. Shopify’s Conversion Summary offers insight into basic order behavior like initial visit source and number of visits, but it doesn’t provide click-level attribution. Without this data, you cannot calculate your true Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) or Cost per Acquisition (CPA). Optimizing without these metrics can cause you to overspend on ads and scale with incomplete data.
3. This also means that you cannot have true multi-touch attribution. For example, if a customer first clicked on an ad on Facebook, then later converted through Google, this will only count as a conversion from Google.
4. Shopify relies on pixel tracking. This means that if a visitor is using an ad blocker or has opted out of being tracked on their browser, you lose that data.
5. You cannot see your spend and revenue data in one report (so you cannot instantly calculate crucial metrics like ROI), in certain cases you cannot see clicks, impressions, cost, CTR, and more from your ad networks, and you can’t split-test various landing pages within the same campaign.

These limitations can heavily hinder your optimization strategy. This is why most Shopify store owners are using third-party trackers to gain more insights.

Meet ClickFlare: A Smarter Way to Track Shopify Conversions

ClickFlare is a third-party tracker that addresses all the Shopify built-in tracking limitations, and it provides an easy way to integrate your Shopify store and ad networks in just a few steps.

This means that you will see a full data overview from both Shopify and ad platforms like Facebook, TikTok, Google, native platforms etc, in just one dashboard.

ClickFlare offers a server-side tracking solution which tracks first-party data independent of ad blockers or browser limitations. With ClickFlare, you can automatically send this data back to your ad platforms via API for better performance. According to a recent study, using first-party data can generate double the revenue from a single ad placement.  

With ClickFlare, you can also rotate and test landing pages before sending traffic to your Shopify store.

Finally, ClickFlare tracks click-level data so you can drill down into a specific visitor’s journey.

So, how does the setup with Shopify and ClickFlare work?

How to Set Up Shopify Conversion Tracking with ClickFlare (Step-by-Step)

Let’s start with the ClickFlare setup first:

Step 1: Create the Custom Conversions

First, you need to create a custom conversion on ClickFlare for each of the events you’ll be tracking on Shopify.

1. Go to Settings and select Custom Conversions on the left-side menu;
2. Click on Add to create a new custom conversion;
3. Add all the events you want to track. For Shopify, here are the 5 events you need to include:

Step 2: Create Conversion API Integration

For many ad networks, you will need to connect your pixel and create the Conversion API. This will ensure that we’re posting conversions back to your ad platforms to improve your ad performance.‍

You need to do this step if your ad network is Meta, TikTok, Google, Snapchat, or Microsoft Bing. If you’re running ads on native platforms, you can skip this step. Instead, we will send conversions via postback.

1. Go to Settings and click on Integrations on the left-side menu;
2. Select a Workspace (Public or Private to determine which members from your team can see this integration);
3. Give the integration a Name;
4. Click on the +New Pixel button to connect your pixel. For this, you generally need the pixel name, pixel ID, and Access Token. Note: If your ad network is Google or Bing, you simply need to sign in with your Google account;
5. Under Action Source, select the source that generates events. For example, Website;
6. Under Event Type Mapping, you need to specify which events you want to send back to the traffic source. For example, you might want to send Sale to your ad network as Purchase;
7. If you want to filter out any specific events, you can use the Event Filter option. Let’s say you don’t want to send back any events coming from outside the US, you can create a condition “Filter if Location Country Name does not equal to United States”.

Step 3: Create Cost Integration

With ClickFlare, you can easily integrate your ad account and automatically pull cost via API on all campaign levels (campaigns, ad sets, ads).

You can do this for Facebook, Google, TikTok, Snapchat, Taboola, Outbrain, Bing, NewsBreak, Bigo Ads, Rumble, MediaGo, RevContent and MGID.

For most social platforms, you simply need to sign in with your account, give permission for ClickFlare to access the data, and select which ad accounts you want to pull costs from. For native platforms, you might have to provide an authentication key.

Step 4 (Optional): Create a Lander

If you’re sending traffic to a landing page before Shopify, you need to add this lander on ClickFlare for accurate tracking. If you send traffic directly to your Shopify page, you can skip this step.

1. Go to Landers and click on New Lander;
2. Add the lander URL and give it a name;
3. Specify the number of CTAs this page contains (note: if there are multiple buttons but they all lead to the same page, it counts as 1 CTA);
4. Copy the Click URL that has been automatically generated and add it to all the buttons on your page for proper tracking.

Step 5: Create an Offer

In ClickFlare, an Offer stands for the page where your visitors convert. In this case, this would be your Shopify page.

1. On the left-side menu, click on Offers and then on New;
2. Select the Workspace;
3. Give the offer a unique name;
4. Paste your Shopify store URL under Offer URL;
5. Append the click ID and campaign ID to the offer URL (see the image above);
6. You can skip all the other steps here and directly Save the offer.

Step 6: Create a Traffic Source

1. Once again on the left-side menu, click on Traffic Sources and then on New;
2. Here you will see different templates, you need to click on your ad network;
3. Select the Workspace;
4. Give the traffic source a name;
5. Select the cost currency (i.e., the currency you have on your ad account);
6. The Parameters section is pre-filled in with our template, you don’t need to make any changes;
7. You only need the “Passing conversion info to traffic source” part if you’re not sending conversions back to your ad network via the Conversion API;

8. If you are using the Conversion API, select your pixel under Conversion API Integrations;

9. Select your cost integration under Cost Integration;

10. Save.

Step 7: Create a Campaign

The final step inside ClickFlare is to create your campaign.

1. On the left-side menu, click on Campaigns;
2. Select the Workspace;
3. Give your campaign a name;
4. Select the traffic source (that you created in the previous step);
5. Specify the Country or Device Type (if you’re targeting something specific);
6. Under Cost Model, select the “Not Tracked” option, since we’ll be pulling the cost in via API;
7. Under Use Integrations, select the pixel this campaign will use to send data back to the ad network;
8. For the Transition between ad and campaign funnel, you can leave the default Redirect option on, unless your traffic source does not allow redirects (e.g., Google Ads);
9. Under the Destination tab, you need to specify the flow of your campaign. If you are using the Redirect transition method, you can rotate different landers and offers here. In this case, we’re using an Offers Only flow. Select the offer you created earlier;

10. Under the Tracking tab, ClickFlare will generate your Campaign Tracking URL. You need to use this link as the ad destination on your ad network.

Step 8 (Optional): Create an Organic Traffic Campaign

We recommend creating an organic traffic campaign to capture direct visits, email, influencers, or SEO traffic that would otherwise go untracked.

1. Duplicate the existing campaign;
2. Create a new traffic source called Organic for this campaign;
3. Use the same offer as before;

If this is a direct campaign, you need to inject the ClicFlare direct tracking script in the page inside theme.liquid:

https://trackin_domain.com/cf/scripts/direct?cpid=CLICKFLARE_ORGANIC_CAMPIGN_ID

The rest of the setup takes place inside Shopify:

Step 9: Add ClickFlare Script to Shopify Theme

1. Go to Online Store and click on Themes;

2. Click on the three dots next to your active theme and then on Edit code;

3. Click on the Layout folder and open theme.liquid;

4. Scroll down to the bottom of the file and paste this script before the closing </body> tag. Make sure to replace the part that says “tracking_domain.com” with your own tracking domain.

<script async defersrc="https://tracking_domain.com/cf/scripts/shopify"></script>

Step 10: Add Webhooks to Track Shopify Events

This is a crucial step, because these webhooks notify ClickFlare when events like purchases or checkout initiation happen. If you do not add them, conversions will not be recorded.

1. In Shopify Admin, go to Settings and click on Notifications;
2. Scroll to Webhooks and click on Create Webhook;
3. You need to add the following webhooks:

✅ Webhook 1: Checkout Initiated

• Event: Checkout creation
• Format: JSON
• URL: https://tracking_domain.com/cf/shopify/webhook
• API Version: Use the latest version

✅ Webhook 2: Order Completed (Sale)

• Event: Order creation
• Format: JSON
• URL: https://tracking_domain.com/cf/shopify/webhook
• API Version: Use the latest version

After adding these webhooks, they will appear in your Webhook list like this:

Common Shopify Conversion Tracking Mistakes to Avoid

Here are a few common Shopify conversion tracking mistakes, and how you can avoid them:

1. Not Verifying Setup: Tracking is tricky. One typo or broken link can cause you to miss out on data, so it’s always important to verify your setup before setting your campaign link. Click through the campaign tracking link on ClickFlare and complete a test checkout. If you go to Reports and then look at the Conversions column on ClickFlare, you should see the event (e.g., Sale or Checkout Initiated) for the campaign you tested.

2. Having Mismatching Timezones & Currencies: When you are using different accounts (e.g., Shopify, different ad accounts and networks, ClickFlare), it’s common to run into accounts having different timezones or currencies. This can make it hard to match conversions to ad spend and get correct data. With ClickFlare, you can select a default timezone & currency, and all your reports will be automatically converted.

3. Missing Conversions: As discussed above, Shopify’s pixel-tracking leads to missed conversions and lost data. ClickFlare’s server-side tracking together with the Conversion API ensures you receive correct conversion data and allows you to send this data back to your ad platform automatically.

4. Manual Tracking Link Errors: Creating manual tracking links often leads to errors, because it’s very easy to miss a parameter, have an extra space, or have a typing mistake. ClickFlare auto-generates and manages your tracking links with dynamic parameters, minimizing errors and saving time.

Conclusion

Shopify’s built-in tracking is a good starting point, but for larger brands running paid traffic, it’s simply not enough. It lacks click-level data, accurate attribution, and the ability to see all your data in one place.

This is why most ecom advertisers opt-in for third-party trackers, like ClickFlare. With ClickFlare you can track click-level data, see unified cost and revenue in one report, and get complete conversion data, independent of ad blockers or other privacy limitations.

The integration between Shopify and ClickFlare is seamless, and you can do everything in just a few steps. Whether you want to cut wasted spend or boost ROAS, this solution is for you.