How to get accurate data of website purchase?
Hello guys, what is the best way to track accurate data of website events for my e-commerce store? Data like-add to cart,page view, purchases.
Your answer would be really helpful!
The short answer is:
The best way to track accurate e-commerce data like add to cart, page view, and especially purchases, is to implement a robust, server-side tracking solution.
This involves setting up the Facebook Conversions API (CAPI) alongside your browser-side tracking (Meta Pixel), which you can manage efficiently and cost-effectively using Google Tag Manager (GTM) in a server-side container, often hosted by a service like Stape or your own Google Cloud Platform (GCP) setup.
Using your platform’s APIs (WordPress REST API, Shopify API, Webflow APIs) ensures you capture complete and validated transaction details directly from your back-end, bypassing common client-side tracking failures like ad blockers and browser privacy restrictions.
The long answer is:
The core issue with tracking accurate purchase and other critical e-commerce data today is the unreliability of client-side, or browser-based, tracking due to ad blockers, browser Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) features, and network latency.
The solution is to supplement your existing browser-side tracking (which is still necessary for immediate user-interaction events) with a server-side setup that uses the Facebook Conversions API (CAPI).
To achieve this, you need a system to reliably send events like Purchase, AddToCart, and PageView directly from your server to the advertising platform (like Meta, in this case).
This is where the power of the platform-specific APIs and server-side tagging comes into play.
You can use the WordPress REST API, Shopify API, or Webflow APIs to programmatically retrieve, or use webhooks to be notified of, confirmed, validated purchase data and other key events that happen on the back-end, which is the ultimate source of truth for a transaction.
This ensures that even if a user’s browser blocks the client-side tracking, your server has already confirmed the order and can send the data.
You would typically set up a server-side GTM container, which you can host for cheap on a platform like Google Cloud Platform (GCP) or use a managed hosting solution like Stape to simplify the infrastructure management.
GTM’s server-side capabilities allow you to receive data from your front-end (browser) and your back-end (via APIs or webhooks).
You use your platform’s API to ensure that when a ‘Purchase’ event is sent, it is based on the platform’s confirmed order data, not just the front-end ‘thank you page’ load, which can be inconsistent.
The server-side GTM container then processes this accurate data and forwards it to the Facebook CAPI.
This is crucial because CAPI is designed to receive event data directly from your server.
Sending the same event from both the browser (Meta Pixel) and the server (CAPI) is recommended, but you must ensure you implement deduplication using a unique event_id for each event.
When Meta receives both events with the same event_id, it counts only the server event, prioritizing the more accurate, robust data source, which bypasses the client-side obstacles.
The whole setup is an excellent and cheap solution because the hosting costs for server-side GTM (especially with a service like Stape’s managed solution or a small GCP instance) are often very low relative to the cost of lost sales and wasted ad spend that comes from inaccurate tracking.
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