How to add your first Shopify store to PixelProof

Adding your first Shopify store to PixelProof takes about four minutes end-to-end. You paste your storefront URL, confirm the Meta Pixel ID we detect, choose a scan cadence, and pick which email address should receive alerts. This guide walks each step and explains exactly what happens under the hood so you can tell the difference between a normal first-scan warning and a real problem.

Step 1: Sign in and open "Add store"

From your dashboard at /meta-monitor/account, click the "Add store" button in the top-right. You do not need to install a Shopify app, grant OAuth permissions, or paste an API token, PixelProof scans your storefront the same way a shopper's browser does, so all we need is your public store URL (for example, https://your-store.myshopify.com or your custom domain like https://shop.example.com). If you have both a .myshopify.com fallback and a custom domain, add the custom domain, that is the one Meta actually receives events from in production.

Step 2: Let PixelProof auto-detect your Meta Pixel ID

Once you submit the URL, our first request loads your homepage and looks for pixel initialization scripts in three places: the Shopify Web Pixels sandbox (the modern install path documented in Shopify's Web Pixels API reference), the legacy script tags in your theme's theme.liquid, and any Google Tag Manager container that references a Meta Pixel tag. The detection panel shows every Pixel ID it finds along with which mechanism installed it. If more than one Pixel ID appears, that is usually a sign of a previous Meta Pixel that was never removed when a new one was added, a real problem to fix, since duplicate pixels double-count purchases and skew your reported ROAS.

Step 3: Pick a scan cadence

Free accounts get one manual scan per day. Paid accounts default to a scheduled scan every 6 hours, which is enough to catch a breakage introduced by an overnight app update before the next business day of ad spend goes out. Higher-frequency scanning (hourly) is available on the Scale tier and is worth turning on if you are actively running a launch or a high-spend promotion where a silent tracking gap would burn through budget faster than a 6-hour scan can detect. Cadence is set per-store, not per-account, so a single dashboard can watch one high-priority store hourly and three low-traffic secondary stores daily without wasting scan quota.

Step 4: Configure alerts

Alerts are opt-in per finding severity. Critical (pixel not firing, purchase event missing) always emails you; warning (event match quality dropped, checkout event delayed) is opt-in; informational (a new Meta API deprecation is coming up that may affect you) rolls up into the weekly summary by default. Add a second email address here if you want your ads manager or agency to receive the same critical alerts you do, the Meta Business Help Center documentation on the Conversions API is worth pointing them to before your first alert lands, since most fixes involve pairing the browser Pixel with a server-side event.

Step 5: Read your first scan

Your first scan runs immediately after setup and usually finishes in 15-45 seconds. The report has three sections: what fired (green), what fired but with degraded quality (yellow), and what did not fire at all (red). A first-scan report frequently shows one or two yellow findings, for example, an Event Match Quality score below 6, which corresponds to Meta's own internal grade referenced in the Shopify Web Pixels tracking documentation, and those are typically fixable in an afternoon by adding hashed email/phone to your Conversions API events. Red findings on the first scan are the ones to escalate: they mean an event is not reaching Meta at all, and every day it stays broken is a day of ad spend against phantom conversion data.

What the first-scan warning about "checkout events pending" means

If your first scan shows checkout events pending in yellow, that is expected and not a bug. PixelProof's automated first pass loads your homepage and product pages but does not complete a real checkout, real checkout event data requires either a live customer transaction to fire in your Shopify order feed, or a manual test order you place yourself, described in our Meta Pixel troubleshooting guide. The pending status clears automatically the first time a real order flows through, usually within an hour of your first customer transaction.

Was this helpful?

Yes / No

Related articles

Meta Pixel troubleshooting: common errors and fixes

How to cancel your subscription

PixelProof product home

FAQ

Do I need to install a Shopify app to use PixelProof? No. PixelProof scans your public storefront the same way a shopper's browser does. No app install, no OAuth token, no theme code changes.

Can I add multiple stores under one account? Yes. Each paid tier includes a specific store cap, Starter covers 1 store, Growth 5, Scale 20. Upgrade from the account page any time; scan quota adjusts on the next billing cycle.

How soon after signup does the first scan run? Immediately. The first-scan job kicks off within 5 seconds of submitting your storefront URL and typically completes within 15-45 seconds.

What if PixelProof can't detect my Pixel ID automatically? You can paste it in manually. Auto-detection covers the three most common install paths (Shopify Web Pixels sandbox, theme script tag, and GTM), but a few edge cases, pixels loaded from a custom subdomain, or pixels behind a consent gate that blocks bots, need manual entry. Find your Pixel ID in Meta Events Manager under Data Sources.

Still stuck? Email hello@citationsafe.com or hello@argushq.ai.

FAQ

Do I need to install a Shopify app to use PixelProof?

No. PixelProof scans your public storefront the same way a shopper's browser does. No app install, no OAuth token, no theme code changes.

Can I add multiple stores under one account?

Yes. Each paid tier includes a specific store cap, Starter covers 1 store, Growth 5, Scale 20. Upgrade from the account page any time; scan quota adjusts on the next billing cycle.

How soon after signup does the first scan run?

Immediately. The first-scan job kicks off within 5 seconds of submitting your storefront URL and typically completes within 15-45 seconds.

What if PixelProof can't detect my Pixel ID automatically?

You can paste it in manually. Auto-detection covers the three most common install paths (Shopify Web Pixels sandbox, theme script tag, and GTM), but a few edge cases, pixels loaded from a custom subdomain, or pixels behind a consent gate that blocks bots, need manual entry. Find your Pixel ID in Meta Events Manager under Data Sources.