Facebook Pixel for WordPress: What It Is (And How It Works)

Social media marketing works: Recent survey data found that 90 percent of consumers buy from brands they follow on social media apps.

And while the social media landscape is slowly diversifying, there’s still an undisputed market leader: Facebook. As of Q2 2021, Facebook had just under 2.9 billion active users, making the social media service a critical battleground for consumer attention, engagement and conversion.

Creating a Facebook page for your brand is no problem, and most businesses now make this part of their standard marketing strategy. More difficult, however, is measuring the impact of your page on your engagement and conversion: Are users actually clicking through to your site, or simply scrolling past your ads? Are your monetization efforts really working?

Facebook Pixel makes it possible to track, analyze and manage these key metrics. In this piece, we’ll break down what Pixel is and how it works, and then dive into the options for adding Pixel to your current WordPress website.

What is Facebook Pixel?

The official Facebook Pixel resource page puts it simply: “The Facebook pixel is an analytics tool that allows you to measure the effectiveness of your advertising by understanding the actions people take on your website.”

Facebook Pixel designed to accomplish three key goals:

1. It ensures your ads are shown to the right people.

You can use Pixel to find users who have visited a specific page on your site or taken a desired action. Then, you can use this data to create targeted customer profiles that help fine-tune your advertising.

2. It increases overall sales.

Facebook Pixel also makes it possible to set up automatic ad bidding for targeted users who are more likely to make purchases or sign up for email notifications, in turn driving better returns on advertising investments.

3. It measures your ad results.

Pixel lets you track what happens when people see your ads to determine if they’re performing as intended. Do users simply scroll by? Do they pause briefly or click through? What do they do once they're on your website? Equipped with this information, you can make targeted changes that help improve your ad performance.

How do you get a Pixel?

First, head to the Events Manager page in your Facebook account:

Then, click Connect Data Sources and select Web.

Next, you’ll need to select Facebook Pixel and then Connect. You’ll be prompted for a name — pick something you’ll remember — and then enter your website URL to generate your Pixel.

Note that you can only have one Pixel per website.

How Do You Install Pixel in WordPress?

Once you’ve created your Pixel, the next step is installing it in WordPress. Here, you’ve got two options: Do it yourself or use a WordPress analytics plugin.

While doing it yourself isn’t particularly complicated, it does require some familiarity with the WordPress platform. However, it also provides greater control over your Pixel installation.

Let’s look at each approach in more detail.

How to Install Pixel Without a Plugin

If you’ve decided to do it yourself, head back to your Events Manager page and select the Pixel you want to set up. Then, click Manually Install the Code Yourself.

This will give you the Pixel tracking code, which looks like this:

Either copy this code to your clipboard or keep the webpage open. You’ll need it for the next step in the process, which is adding the Pixel code to WordPress.

For the code to work, it needs to be placed in the header of your WordPress pages. Accomplishing this is easiest if you download and install the Insert Headers and Footers plugin, which adds a new Insert Headers and Footers option under your Wordpress Settings menu.

To get your Pixel up and running, simply copy and paste the Pixel code from Facebook into the Scripts in Header section, then click Save.

To check that your Pixel installation is working, download and install the Facebook Pixel Helper for Chrome. If it’s working as intended, you’ll see this:

If not, you’ll see this:

How to Install Pixel With a Plugin

With plugins, this process is more streamlined: Simply download and install the plugin of your choice and then follow its instructions to connect your Pixel.

Here are some WordPress plugins you can use to automatically install your Facebook Pixel:

1. Facebook for WordPress

Facebook for WordPress makes it easy to add Pixel to your WordPress site and allows you to easily capture and manage action data such as Lead, ViewContent, AddotCart, InitiateCheckout, and Purchase events. It also offers support for the Conversions API to help capture Pixel events more quickly.

2. PixelYourSite

PixelYourSite has more than 200,000 as of August 2021. This plugin offers a way to manage Facebook Pixel, Facebook Conversion, and Google Analytics Universal from a single dashboard. It automatically tracks key actions — such as searches, form submissions, comments, and downloads — and sends them to your configured Pixels.

3. Pixel Caffeine

Pixel Caffeine is free and provides both Facebook Pixel and Facebook Product Catalog support. It offers instant installation, the ability to create advanced custom audiences using a host of parameters — such as web pages visited, products viewed or dynamic events recorded — and makes it possible to connect Facebook Dynamic Ads with WooCommerce.

4. Pixel Cat

Pixel Cat lets you add Pixel tracking to your WordPress site in minutes, and provides support for tracking and reporting Facebook conversion events in their exact amount and currency to help improve and optimize ad campaign spending.

Capture Your Pixel Potential

While Pixel doesn’t have all the answers, this Facebook analytics tool offers a host of data to help better target your marketing efforts and improve both click-through and conversion rates.

Getting a Pixel is easy — you can quickly generate one from the Events Manager page in Facebook — and depending on your level of tech savvy, you can install Pixel code yourself on your WordPress page or use an app to streamline the process and add functionality.

Bottom line? Pixel has real potential to boost your social impact and capture a bigger share of attention from your target market to drive more consistent conversion.