das Pixel
das Pixel is By the Numbers’ own tracker for your online store. It records what visitors do on your storefront and links each purchase to its Shopify order, so you can see which ad click came before a sale.
How It Works
das Pixel is a Shopify web pixel. Shopify runs it on every page of your online store, so there’s no theme code to edit. It sends one record for each of these events:
- Page viewed
- Product viewed
- Product added to cart
- Search submitted
- Collection viewed
- Cart viewed
- Checkout started
- Checkout completed
The checkout completed event carries Shopify’s checkout and order IDs. That’s how a visit is linked to its order.
What Each Record Holds
Every record holds:
- The visit: a visitor ID from Shopify and a session ID. The checkout completed event also holds the Shopify ID of the customer the order belongs to.
- The page: its path and title.
- What they looked at: the product, variant, SKU and price shown, the search terms and how many results came back, the collection, and the cart’s value.
- At checkout: the checkout, the order, its currency and its amount.
- The visitor’s IP address and browser: the full IP address and the details the browser sends about itself, whatever the visitor chose on your cookie banner.
- Where they are: country, region, city and an approximate latitude and longitude, worked out from the IP address.
When the visitor allows marketing, and Track Marketing is on in das Pixel’s settings, each record also holds:
- The full page address, with any UTM tags and ad click IDs in it
- The referring site
- A device fingerprint: a one-way hash of browser traits such as screen size, language and time zone
- At checkout, the Meta and Reddit browser cookies, when those platforms’ own pixels set them
A session ends after 30 minutes with no activity. You can set 30–240 minutes in das Pixel’s settings.
Apart from search terms, das Pixel doesn’t record what visitors type. It doesn’t make screen recordings or session replays.
Visitor Privacy Choices
das Pixel tells Shopify that it needs analytics consent and the visitor’s permission to sell or share their data. Shopify then decides whether to load it for each visitor, based on their region and your store’s privacy settings.
- Analytics declined: Shopify doesn’t load das Pixel. If a visitor declines during a visit, das Pixel stops recording them.
- Opted out of the sale or sharing of their data: Shopify doesn’t load das Pixel. If a visitor opts out during a visit, das Pixel stops recording them while Require Sale-of-Data Consent is on.
- Analytics allowed, marketing declined: das Pixel records pages, products, carts and checkouts. It leaves out the page address, referrer, click IDs, fingerprint and ad cookies, so these orders can’t be tied to an ad or sent to an ad platform.
- Analytics and marketing allowed: das Pixel records everything listed above.
When a visitor withdraws consent during a visit, das Pixel deletes its ad click cookie straight away.
How Long Data Is Kept
das Pixel keeps each event for 365 days. It records from the moment it’s connected. Visits while it’s disconnected, or before it was connected, are never recorded and can’t be filled in later.
What It Means for You
- Shopify files an online order as Direct, or records no source, when it can’t tell where the customer came from. For those orders, das Pixel can show which followed a paid ad click.
- Most das Pixel figures take revenue from the linked Shopify order, net of discounts and refunds. Web Analytics Reports and Dashboard lists the reports that use another basis.
- das Pixel can send purchases to Google Ads, Meta, TikTok and Reddit Ads from the server. The platforms then see purchases their own browser tracking can miss.
- das Pixel only sees orders placed through your online store. In-store, draft and subscription renewal orders never pass through a browser.
- Ad blockers and declined cookie banners hide visits from das Pixel. The Orders das Pixel Can See card on the das Pixel page shows how many of your online orders it matched.
- Your store’s privacy policy should cover what das Pixel records, including IP addresses and location.