Affiliate pixel not firing on conversion event

Web Pixels
1

Hi! I am working on launching an affiliate program for our brand using Impact.com, integrating that app with our Shopify store. The traffic tags are working through GTM, but the conversion event (online sale) is not correctly firing the pixel. Once we get to the Shopify checkout page and place an order (originating from the Impact.com testing link), the pixel for the conversion event is not firing. We can see that the checkout is completed when inspecting the element coding of the page, but when checking console, there are multiple error messages relating to Shopify customer privacy and consent.

This is what Shopify Support told us:

“I’m here to confirm that the problem is indeed on our side and relates to cookie handling. After careful examination, it appears that the challenge stems from how Shopify manages cookie consent, which is essential for the tracking functionalities, such as the Impact.com pixel. Specifically, the window.Shopify.customerPrivacy.userCanBeTracked() function is not returning the expected results. This can prevent the pixel from firing correctly during the checkout process, often linked to user consent settings that comply with privacy regulations.”

They didn’t have a solution for us and recommended I post on here.

Any ideas for how to resolve this?

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2

You can get status of the consent with web-pixel

api.customerPrivacy.subscribe('visitorConsentCollected', (event) => {
    customerPrivacyStatus = event.customerPrivacy;
});

AND

analytics.subscribe('page_viewed', (event) => {

    // Prepare payload with event name and customer privacy status
    const payload = {
        eventName: event.name,
        customerPrivacyStatus: customerPrivacyStatus,
    };
    console.log("consent_state: ", payload);
}

will look something like this:

{
  "ad_storage": "granted",
  "ad_user_data": "granted",
  "ad_personalization": "granted",
  "analytics_storage": "granted"
}

you should configure in GTM to use these values if it is not working.
you may need to match them to Set up consent mode on websites  |  Security and Privacy hub  |  Google for Developers to work with native consent modes

Additionally - if shopify native banner is enabled, it will work with any of the pre-built app-store tracking.

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3

To clarify, are you saying that none of those steps should be necessary if we have the Shopify native banner enabled? We have it set to automated but that didn’t resolve the issue.

Screenshot 2025-02-03 at 9.27.48 AM
Screenshot 2025-02-03 at 9.27.48 AM2228×998 150 KB

4

The native banner only works with APPS - if you use a custom web-pixel and GTM then you have to use the additional steps to map consent to gtm

window.Shopify.trackingConsent.currentVisitorConsent(); will also get you the same values though JS.

5

Okay. Impact.com, the affiliate network, is integrated as an App not a custom pixel. However, the original tracking tags were deployed through GTM.

6

correct, the impact app should comply to normal Shopify banner consent rules. It will also place it’s own tagging and including on orders. They place details on orders in custom properties that they then pull with the API to do attribution.
The gtm version isn’t need with the app.

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7

Hm… then how does that explain the Impact app being integrated with our Shopify store, and yet there is still an error relating to user tracking consent preventing the pixel from firing?

8

Hi @Kyle_Watkins,

Shopify apps can define their web pixel privacy requirements in a settings file:

You can ask impact how they set up the privacy settings for their pixel. Depending on the settings and the consent that was provided by the website user, Shopify will or will not fire the app’s web pixel.
For example if the app sets

analytics = true

Shopify will not fire the web pixel if the user hasn’t consented to analytics (in a consent opt-in region) or Shopify’s customer privacy API doesn’t return analytics as an allowed action:

Are you selling hydration products? Perhaps your problem is also elsewhere. Do you use a headless store?
Check that your storefront and your checkout run on the same root domain. If not you might run into cookie tracking issues because cookies from domain 1 are not accessible by domain 2 when users moves from your storefront/landing page domain (e.g. hydrationproducts.com) to the checkout domain (e.g. greathydration.myshopify.com).

These are 2 different domains and cookies set can’t be accessed by the other domain unless they are recreated by some custom script.

In addition myshopify.com is treated by browser as a shared domain and they decline setting cookies on that root domain (because it is shared by many businesses) but only under the fully qualified merchant domain (mystore.myshopify.com).

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9

Hey @Kyle_Watkins

What’s the Shopify store on which you’re testing the impact app? It would be easier to investigate if we could see where the errors come from, etc.

10
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11

So I went and dig a little bit to find what was happening.

Setting customer privacy to automatic means that by default, the pixel will abide to international privacy regulations around sale of data and tracking. @RAD covers this subject really well in their comment.

Since FluidLogic is a custom storefront and that its checkout is served through a different domain, consent cookies won’t work.

To stay compliant, we really suggest following the instructions on how to get the customer privacy API on your custom storefront. The impact app is probably built assuming the API is available on the storefront, so it could explain the errors you were seeing.

:warning: As an escape hatch that we do not recommend, disabling customer privacy could solve the impact app issues.

2 Likes
12

@Kyle_Watkins
I also suggest to assign a public domain to your Shopify instance so that checkout and storefront share the same root domain. A lot of other headless instances do that by using something like checkout.fluidlogic.com. Doing that you can share cookies across your storefront and your checkout and will avoid a lot of headaches.

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