Solved: Facebook Pixel Not Tracking Purchases?

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! Happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on the pixel tracking issue you're facing. It's a really common problem, and a frustrating one, but it's something that can completly throw off your campaign performance and reporting if it's not sorted out properly. Getting this right is the absolute foundation for any successful advertising on Meta.

We'll need to look at why your pixel isn't firing correctly...

Alright, so the pixel logged purchases two days ago but not today. This tells us it *was* working, which is a good starting point. The issue is likely something that’s changed in the last 48 hours or an intermittent fault. It's rarely a problem with Facebook's system itself, it's almost always something on the website side of things. Let's walk through how to diagnose this step-by-step.

Your first port of call should be the Facebook Pixel Helper. It’s a free extension for the Chrome browser. If you don't have it, get it installed. Once it's on, go to your website and navigate through the entire purchase journey yourself. Add a product to the cart, go to checkout, and complete a test purchase (or go right up to the final click if you can't do a test order). On each page, especially the final "Thank You" or order confirmation page, click on the Pixel Helper icon in your browser's toolbar.

Here's what you're looking for:
-> It should show your Pixel ID and a list of events it has detected on that page.
-> On the final confirmation page, you MUST see a 'Purchase' event. If you don't, that's your problem right there. The pixel isn’t being triggered at the point of sale.
-> The icon will likely be green if everything is okay, but if it's yellow or red, it's flagging an issue. A yellow icon is often a minor problem, like the pixel taking too long to load, but a red one indicates a major error, like it being unable to fire at all. The helper will give you some information on what the error is.
-> Click into the 'Purchase' event in the Pixel Helper. You should see parameters being passed back to Facebook. The most important ones for ecommerce are 'value' and 'currency'. If the value of the order isn't being passed, Facebook might record a purchase, but it won't know how much it was worth. This makes calculating your Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) impossible.

If the Pixel Helper shows the Purchase event isn't firing on the thank you page, the cause is usually one of a few things. Have you updated your website's theme or any plugins recently? On platforms like Shopify or WooCommerce, an update to the theme or a checkout app can somtimes overwrite or interfere with the code that fires the pixel. It's a classic case of one peice of software not playing nicely with another. I'd backtrack any changes you've made in the last couple of days. Did you install a new app? Did you tweak the code in your theme files? That's often the culprit.

Next, you need to go into your Meta Events Manager. This is the backend where you can see all the data your pixel is receiving. Find your pixel, go to the 'Overview' tab, and look at the activity for the 'Purchase' event. Is it showing any activity at all? Are there any errors or diagnostic warnings? Sometimes Events Manager will tell you that it's receiving the event, but it can't match it to a user, which can be an issue with the data being passed. Make sure the pixel is correctly associated with your ad account in there too; a simple misconfiguration can stop data from showing up in your Ads Manager reports.

This whole situation also highlights why relying solely on the browser-side pixel is becoming less reliable. With things like iOS14 updates, ad blockers, and browser privacy settings, the pixel can easily be blocked. To get around this, you should also be using the Conversions API (CAPI). Think of it as a direct, server-to-server connection between your website and Facebook. When someone makes a purchase, your website's server tells Facebook's server directly, bypassing the user's browser entirely. It's far more reliable and accurate. Most platforms like Shopify have a native integration that makes setting this up relatively easy. It works alongside the pixel, so they catch data the other might miss, a process called deduplication ensures the same conversion isnt counted twice. If you're serious about paid ads, CAPI is no longer optional.

I'd say you need a solid tracking foundation to actually optimise your ads...

Fixing the technical issue is one thing, but it's important to understand *why* it's so damaging to your advertising efforts. When your purchase tracking is broken, you're essentially flying blind and telling the Meta algorithm to do the same. It's not just about seeing the numbers in your dashboard; it's about feeding the machine the right data so it can learn and find you more customers.

Meta's advertising algorithm is incredibly powerful, but it's only as good as the data you give it. When you run a campaign with the objective of 'Conversions' and select 'Purchase' as your event, you're telling Meta: "Go find me people who are most likely to complete this specific action". The algorithm then analyses the characteristics of people who have already purchased from you and looks for new people with similar behaviours, interests, and demographics. If you stop feeding it new purchase data, it can't learn. The optimisation process grinds to a halt. It will keep spending your money, but it won't be getting any smarter about who it's showing your ads to. Your cost per result will likely go up, and your return will go down.

This leads to the next massive problem: calculating your Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). This is the single most important metric for any ecommerce business. For every £1 you spend on ads, how many pounds are you getting back in sales? If your pixel isn't tracking all your sales, or isn't tracking the purchase values correctly, your reported ROAS will be wrong. You might think a campaign is failing when it's actually profitable, or worse, you might think a campaign is doing great and scale up the budget, only to find out later you were losing money all along because the tracking was inflated. You cannot make sound business decisions with bad data.

I remember one client we worked with who was selling cleaning products. Their tracking was off by about 30%, just missing random sales here and there, a bit like your situation. They thought their ROAS was hovering around 2x, which was barely breaking even for them. They were about to give up on Meta ads entirely. After we implemented a robust tracking setup with both the pixel and the Conversions API, we discovered their actual ROAS was closer to 3.5x. It totally changed their perspective. It meant they could confidently reinvest in their ads. We then went on to properly optimise their campaigns and eventually got them to a 633% return on Meta ads. This is similar to another client where we achieved a 691% return on women's apparel using a mix of Meta and Pinterest ads. Fixing the foundational tracking problem made all of this possible.

Finally, broken tracking cripples your ability to build your most powerful audiences. Your best audiences for retargeting and creating lookalikes come from pixel events.
-> Retargeting (BoFu - Bottom of Funnel): You want to show specific ads to people who added a product to their cart but didn't buy. To do this, you need an audience of 'AddToCart' events and you exclude an audience of 'Purchase' events. If your Purchase event is broken, you'll end up showing 'abandoned cart' ads to people who actually bought the product. That's a waste of money and a poor customer experience.
-> Lookalike Audiences (ToFu - Top of Funnel): The most profitable lookalike audiences are almost always built from your best customers. You create a custom audience of everyone who has purchased, and then tell Meta to create a lookalike audience of people who are similar to them. If your source audience of purchasers is incomplete because the pixel is missing sales, the quality of your lookalike will be diluted and less effective. Garbage in, garbage out.

You probably should restructure your campaigns to make the most of the data...

Once you've got your tracking absolutly nailed down and reliable data is flowing into Events Manager, the next step is to make sure your campaign structure is set up to actually use that data effectively. A lot of people just throw a bunch of interests into one ad set and hope for the best. A more methodical approach based on the marketing funnel (ToFu, MoFu, BoFu) almost always performs better.

Here’s a simplified way to think about it:
-> ToFu (Top of Funnel): This is your cold traffic. People who have never heard of your brand before. The goal here is to introduce them to your products and drive them to your website. Audiences here are broad, based on interests, behaviours, and lookalikes of your website visitors or purchasers.
-> MoFu (Middle of Funnel): This is your warm audience. People who have engaged with you in some way but haven't taken a high-intent action yet. This could be people who have watched your videos, engaged with your Instagram page, or visited your website but didn't add anything to the cart. The goal is to build more trust and get them to take that next step.
-> BoFu (Bottom of Funnel): This is your hot audience. These people are on the verge of buying. They've added a product to the cart, initiated checkout, or viewed specific products multiple times. The goal here is to get them over the finish line, often with a direct call to action or a reminder.

You should have separate campaigns for these different stages. Why? Because the messaging and the audience are completely different. You wouldn't talk to a stranger on the street (ToFu) the same way you'd talk to someone who is standing at your checkout with their wallet out (BoFu). By separating them, you can tailor your ad creative and budget to each stage. Your BoFu retargeting campaign will likely have a much higher ROAS but a smaller audience, while your ToFu prospecting campaign will have a lower ROAS but is essential for bringing new customers into your ecosystem.

Here’s a very basic structure you could use as a starting point. This is for an ecommerce account but the logic applies to almost any business.

When you're picking your audiences, you need to prioritise. For a new account, you start with detailed interest targeting to gather data. Once you have at least 100 purchases (but ideally more like 500-1000 for a really strong signal), you can create a high-quality lookalike audience of those purchasers. This will almost always outperform a lookalike audience of just 'all website visitors'. You're telling Meta to find people who look like your *buyers*, not just your *browsers*. The same goes for retargeting. An audience of people who have added to cart is much more valuable and higher-intent than an audience of people who just visited your homepage. Prioritise your budget towards these higher-intent audiences.

You'll need realistic expectations for your costs and returns...

So, once tracking is fixed and your campaigns are structured well, what kind of results should you expect? This is the 'how long is a piece of string' question, but based on our experience running hundreds of campaigns, we can give you some ballpark figures. It's important to have these in mind so you know if your performance is in a normal range or if something is seriously wrong.

For an ecommerce store selling products in developed countries (like the UK, US, Canada, Australia), the numbers often look something like this:

-> Cost Per Click (CPC): You can generally expect to pay somewhere between £0.50 and £1.50 for a click to your website. This can be higher in very competitive niches (like fashion or beauty) or lower in less saturated markets.
-> Website Conversion Rate (for purchases): A typical ecommerce store sees a conversion rate of between 2% and 5%. This means for every 100 visitors who land on your site from an ad, 2 to 5 will make a purchase. If your rate is below 2%, there might be issues with your website, pricing, or product-market fit. If it's above 5%, you're doing very well.
-> Cost Per Purchase (CPA): Now we do the maths. If you have a CPC of £1.00 and a conversion rate of 2%, your CPA is £50 (£1.00 / 0.02). If you have a CPC of £0.50 and a conversion rate of 5%, your CPA is £10 (£0.50 / 0.05). So, a realistic range for your cost to acquire a customer is somewhere between £10 and £75. It's a huge range, I know, but it shows how much small improvements in your CPC and conversion rate can impact your bottom line.

Your actual CPA will depend heavily on your product's price. If you're selling £20 t-shirts, a £50 CPA is a disaster. If you're selling £500 custom furniture, a £50 CPA is fantastic. That's why ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) is the ultimate measure of success. If your average order value is £100 and your CPA is £25, your ROAS is 4x (£100 / £25), which is great. If your CPA is £50, your ROAS is 2x, which is likely just breaking even after you account for product costs and overheads.

Achieving a high ROAS is entirely possible, but it starts with getting the basics right. We've seen it time and again. We worked with a subscription box company and got them to a 1000% ROAS (a 10x return) on Meta ads. We also helped a client selling women's apparel achieve a 691% return using a mix of Meta and Pinterest ads. These results aren't typical for every business, but they show what's possible when you have a solid foundation, a well-structured campaign, compelling creative, and a constant process of optimiseing.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

This is a lot to take in, I know. To make it more manageable, here’s a summary of the main steps I’d recommend you take, in order of priority. This is the main advice I have for you:

Following these steps will put you in a much stronger position. It moves you from just 'running ads' to building a proper, data-driven advertising system for your business.

While the advice above gives you a solid roadmap, the implementation and ongoing management can be a full-time job in itself. It’s not just about setting it up; it's about the constant testing, analysing the data, and knowing which levers to pull day-to-day to reduce costs and increase returns. There's a significant differance between knowing the theory and having the years of experience to apply it effectively across different accounts and industries.

That's often where working with a specialist can make a huge impact. We live and breathe this stuff every day, so we can often diagnose problems faster, build more effective strategies, and manage the optimisation process to get you to profitability much quicker than going it alone.

If you'd like to chat through this in more detail, we'd be happy to offer you a free, no-obligation consultation call. We can take a look at your ad account and website together and give you some more specific pointers on your setup and strategy.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh