Custom Conversions is an advanced Facebook advertising technique but is it difficult to create Facebook Custom Conversion? As we will show in this tutorial it is not at all, especially if you’re already familiar with Custom Events and Custom Conversions.
If you are interested in Facebook Custom Conversions in general, we recommend you to read our beginner guide to Facebook Custom Conversions where we explain the following:
- when should you create Facebook Custom Conversions
- Where can you access your Custom Conversions
- Once you created your Custom Conversions how you can use them
- Difference between Custom Conversions, Custom Events and Standard Events
In this guide, we will only focus on the technical step by step process of creating and managing Custom Conversions, so we will show:
- how to create Facebook Custom Conversions:
- with the All URL Traffic method
- from Standard or Custom Pixel Events
- three ways to test if Custom Conversions are working correctly
- how to edit Custom Conversions
- and last but not least, how to delete Custom Conversions.
So, without further ado, let’s get into it!
Before setting Custom Conversions up
Before setting Custom Conversions up, you have to have at least the Facebook Pixel Base code on your website to able to create Custom Conversions with the All URL method.
If you want to filter Standard and Custom Events to create more specific Custom Conversions from them, you obviously have to have those Pixel Events set up on your website.
If you want just a quick beginner video on how to create Facebook Custom Conversions, you can also check out this video:
How to create Facebook Custom Conversions?
So as we said there are two types of Custom Conversions, the All URL method and the Event filter method. As the setup is a little bit different, we will explain them separately.
We will start with the All URL types method as it applies more for beginners.
How to create All URL types Custom Conversions?
As we explained in our guide about Custom Conversions, you want to use the All URL types of Custom Conversions, when you don’t know how to create Standard and Pixel Events but you still want to optimize for conversion events in your Facebook ads campaigns.
In this tutorial, we will set up a purchase custom conversion event, so it is easier to understand how this setup method works.
So, here is how you can set up Custom Conversions with the All URL method:
- In your Facebook Business Manager go to Events Manager
- On the left side of the screen, you will see Custom Conversions, click on it
- You will see all the Facebook Custom Conversions here that you have created so far. You can click on them to get more information, but what we want to do now is click on the Create Custom Conversion button
- A window will pop up, where we can create or Custom Conversion. In the first row, you have to give a descriptive name (our examples if Purchase), and you have the option to add a description as well.
- In the next row, we will have to choose the Data Source where we want to create the Custom Conversion. Make sure to choose the right Facebook Pixel, if you have multiple ones installed on your website.
- Next, we will have to choose the type of Conversion Event. All URL traffic is chosen as default, so we will leave it as is.
- In the next section, we have to decide which Standard Events we want to set as an optimization event. Facebook can also choose this based on the information it has about our business, but I would suggest to choose the one that best applies to your Custom Conversion.
As we want to create a Purchase Custom Conversion event, we will choose Purchase. This way when we run campaigns focusing on this Custom Conversion, Facebook will know that its ad algorithm has to find likely buyers from its huge user pool.
- This next Section labeled as Rules is the most important part of the setup process as we will define the rule that will trigger the Custom Conversion.
You basically have two options here when you use the All URL type Custom Conversion. Most people will choose URL as we will in this example. This will allow you to create a rule so when a URL is equal, contains or doesn’t contain a certain text that you can define in the next row the Custom Conversion will fire.
The second option you have is the referring domain rule. This can be useful if let’s say you want to also measure conversions that come from Google. In that case, you would add as a different condition which would say that the referring domain has to contain the text ‘google’.
In this example, we will define the URL rule as the URL has to contain the text ‘thank-you’: (most websites bring the user to a ‘thank you’ page, right after they purchased something. Make sure to check yours before setting this up.)
- With the Plus icon, you can add more conditions such as the one we mentioned above with the referring domain Google
- As the last option, we can also add a conversion value to our Custom Conversion. In this example, it only makes sense if we have only one product or all of our products have the same value, otherwise, we would skip this step.
If we want to record the conversion value as well, we have to create a Purchase Standard Events. This is one of the things that you are not able to do with Custom Conversions.
- Finally, let’s check if anything is filled up correctly, and then we can click on the ‘Create’ button and our Custom Conversion from All URL traffic will be created.
How to create Pixel Events based Custom Conversions?
If you are not a beginner, you must be here to learn how you can filter one of your Standard Events, or set up one of your Custom Events as Custom Conversions so you can run FB ad campaign to more specific conversion goals.
So, this also should mean that you have to have at least one Standard or Custom Event setup besides the basic PageView event.
As in the previous section, we will use an example so it is easier to understand the instructions. We will make a Custom Conversion from a standard Purchase event that will record purchase where the conversion value is higher than 200 USD.
The process described above is absolutely the same as the All URL method until step number 5, so if you skipped that part, check it out again above.
1.-5: Follow the instructions explained in the above paragraph.
- Choose the Standard or the Custom Event you want to customize. In the case, we will choose Purchase
- In the Rule section, you can also choose URL and Referring Domain to filter the event, but the option of Event Parameters is also added. We will choose that so we can also filter based on the value of the event parameter
- We will choose the ‘value’ event parameter and use the ‘is greater than’ condition and add the value 200 to the row below
9. We can add more conditions if we want to. For example, if we have a multi-currency website, we could also add that the currency has to be USD so the Custom Conversion won’t get triggered if someone reached the 200 order value in another cheaper currency.
- At the end, we can also add a conversion value to the Custom Conversion, but it doesn’t really make sense here so we leave it empty and click on the Create button.
From now on, when someone purchases on your website and the order value is bigger than 200, this Facebook Custom Conversion will be triggered and reported in your reporting view
What to do after creating a Facebook Custom Conversion?
Once you created a Custom Conversion, the Pixel will start logging it and send all the Custom Conversions data to Facebook. You can also start creating campaigns that will optimize the ad delivery for a specific Custom Conversion. If you want to know how you can do that, check out our guide to Custom Conversions.
Testing Custom Conversions
One thing you should do before start running a Facebook advertising campaign with your new Custom Conversion is to test if the Custom Conversion fires for the right user actions and the Pixel collects and sends the right data to Facebook.
You have three options to see if they are set up the right way or you have any errors with your Custom Conversions.
The easiest thing you can do is to check if the Pixel is logging any Custom Conversion in the page where you can see the overview of your Custom Conversion. When you Click on a Custom Conversion, you will see the daily breakdown of your Custom Conversion firing, so you will see immediately if it stopped recording events.
You can also use the Test Events feature in the Data Sources section, where you can plug in the website and Facebook will record all the Pixel Events and Custom Conversions that are firing while you are browsing your website and it will share any issues or errors it can detect.
The third option you have is to use the Facebook Pixel Helper Chrome Extension to see if the implementation of Custom Conversions is perfect on your website. It should be used in pretty much the same way as the Test Events tool.
You should browse your website as a real user would do and the Pixel Helper will show all the Standard and Custom Events and Custom Conversions that are firing on while you are interacting with the website.
So, all you have to do is to simulate the user action that should fire your new Custom Conversion and the Pixel Helper will show if the Custom Conversion was fired and what values were sent in. Custom Conversions will shop up with black star icons as shown below:
If you want to know more about how to use the Pixel Helper, be sure to check out our in-depth article on it.
How to edit a Custom Conversion?
You can only edit the description, the name and the conversion value of a Custom Conversion, once you have set it up, you can’t edit the Custom Conversion rule and the conversion category. If you want to edit any of that, your only option is delete the Custom Conversion (see how to do it below), and create a new one.
To edit the editable parts of a Custom Conversion, do the following:
- In your Events Manager, go to the Custom Conversion Page, by clicking on the left part of your screen
- Here you will be able to not just create new Custom Conversions but also see and manage all your active Custom Conversions.
- Click on the one you would like to edit. You will get more information about the Custom Conversion such as a chart showing. the daily breakdown of the Custom Conversion, the description, the rule and the value of that specific Custom Conversion. In order to edit the Custom Conversion, click on the Manage button
- A window will pop up where you can edit the description and conversion value of the Custom Conversion and eename it by clicking on the Rename button
- Once you edited the information you wanted to, click on Save changes
How to delete a Facebook Custom Conversion?
The process of deleting a Custom Conversion is similar to editing a Custom Conversion.
- Go to your Events Manager in the Facebook Business Manager.
- Click on the Custom Conversions.
- Search for the Custom Conversion you would like to delete and click on it
- A window with the information of the Custom Conversion will pop up
- To get the Delete button, click on the down arrow like shown in the picture below:
Having issues with/need help setting up or managing Custom Conversions?
If you need professional help with setting up Facebook Custom Conversions, or you have a Custom Conversion that doesn’t work the way it supposed to, we will be able to help you with that or anything related to Facebook Technical setup. (Facebook Pixel, Standard and Custom Events, Dynamic Product ads, etc.)
Just click on this link, describe what is your issue and we will get back to you.
