Tracking Your Shopify Products With Voluum
Shopify is a leading commerce platform that allows anyone to set up their online store presence and sell their products. In terms of relation with Voluum, Shopify can be treated as an affiliate network, but one where YOU add offers (products).
The following guide provides general information on how to set up tracking of Shopify products with Voluum. Because Shopify offers many options, apps, and sales channel, some settings may differ from one case to another. This will give you an overview of how to approach the Shopify platform from an affiliate marketing perspective.
Table of Contents
How Does It Work?
Shopify allows you to use many sales channels, which include:
Online Store
Facebook
Google Shopping
Other
In order for the tracking to work, you need to direct your visitors to your store through a Voluum campaign URL. If you fail to do so, no click ID value will be assigned and no conversion tracking will be possible. You can submit this campaign URL manually to any source of traffic, such as various ad networks. Activation of this campaign URL will be counted as a visit in Voluum.
There are two methods you can use to track your Shopify store:
A direct one, where you put Voluum tracking script directly on your store's page (main or product). This requires having Shopify Plus, as it allows adding codes to store pages.
An indirect one, where you direct your visitors from your sales channel to an external landing page with Voluum script in it and then from this landing page to your Shopify store's page. This does not require hacing Shopify Plus.
Conversion trakcing works the same in both scenarios. The only difference is in the campaign flow.
In Voluum's understanding, each product page is treated as a separate offer. When a visitor completes an order, a Voluum conversion tracking pixel that you have submitted on your Shopify account settings page will run. This pixel will then fetch a click ID from the visitor's cookie and pass it to Voluum, along with some additional information, such as product price or order ID.
Caution
Voluum Note: In order to use a conversion tracking pixel feature, a visitor must have cookies enabled in his or her web browser. Without cookies enabled, conversion tracking will not work. Additionally, the same domain and protocol have to be used in all campaign funnel
Before You Start
You require several things to be able to track your Shopify-powered store products with Voluum:
An active Shopify account with:
A valid payment provider added,
A store created and products added,
Optionally, a custom domain set up.
Optionally, Shopify Plus subscription
An active Voluum account, with a tracking domain that has an SSL certificate enabled.
Caution
Voluum Note: Using an encrypted connection is a requirement in Shopify. If you do not have an SSL certificate enabled on your either dedicated or custom domain, conversion tracking will not work.
Once you have everything ready, proceed to the next step.
I. Get and Modify a Conversion Tracking Pixel from Voluum
In the first step, we describe where to obtain a conversion tracking pixel. In order to get it, perform the following steps:
In Voluum, click the
button to go to the Settings page.
Go to the Tracking URLs tab.
In the CONVERSION TRACKING PIXEL section, click the Copy button next to the conversion tracking pixel to copy it to the clipboard.
Your conversion tracking pixel should look as follows:
<img src="https://voluum_dedicated_domain.com/conversion.gif?cid=OPTIONAL&payout=OPTIONAL&txid=OPTIONAL" width="1" height="1"/>
You need to modify this pixel to include Shopify tracking tokens:
Delete the
cid=OPTIONAL
part of the scriptReplace the
OPTIONAL
next to the payout parameter name with the{{ total_price | money_without_currency }}
Liquid tag.Replace the
OPTIONAL
next to the txid parameter name with the{{ order_number }}
Liquid tag.
The modified pixel should look like this:
<img src="https://voluum_dedicated_domain.com/conversion.gif?payout={{ total_price | money_without_currency }}&txid={{ order_number }}" width="1" height="1"/>
II. Submit a Conversion Tracking Pixel to Shopify
Shopify offers an option to include an additional tracking script on a product order page. You need to submit the Voluum conversion tracking pixel as this additional script to enable conversion tracking. Follow the steps below:
In Shopify, go to the Settings page.
Go to the Checkout view.
In the Order processing section, paste the modified conversion tracking pixel in the Additional scripts text field.
Click the Save button.
The conversion tracking has been set. Proceed to the next step.
III. Add Shopify Products as Offer Elements in Voluum
To be able to create a complete campaign funnel in Voluum, you need to have offer elements added to Voluum, with links to product pages submitted as offer URLs. In order to do so, perform the following steps:
In Voluum, go to Offers.
Click the Create button and select the Offer option from a drop-down menu.
In the New offer form, provide a name for the offer in the Offer name text field.
Paste a link to the product page in the Offer URL text field.
Click the Save button.
Repeat the steps above until you add all products as offer elements to Voluum.
IV. Create a campaign funnel
The last thing to do is to create a campaign funnel. This is where the difference between the two methods comes into play.
Direct method: If you have a Shopify Plus subscription, create a camapign with just a Shopify offer and direct link to it. Put the offer tracking script on your store's page.
Indirect method. Add a lander to Voluum and create a camapign with a lander. Put a lander tracking script on your landing page and then redirect visitors to your store's page.