As the name sounds, pixel tracking is a small pixel-sized image which allows organisations keep track of their website visits, their email tracking, sales conversions, advertising brands and other activities that take place on their web page. Read on to discover more about the pixel tracking and who is using it.
Pixel tracking mostly deals with you placing a GIF which is a clear graphic file on your web page. However, most times, the pixel is not necessarily clear. The pixel can be used to track any element that is found on your web page. But the invisibility of the pixel only helps to blend the gif with the page so that it won't be obvious. What the tracking pixel majorly does is to hold information of every device that logs on to your web page and delivers the information to you. And in most cases, they provide useful information.
The use of pixel tracking is has been in existence since the beginning of the web. But web designers stopped using it for a while. Probably because they thought it was not of paramount importance. However, some marketers now take great interest in the use of the tracking pixel. Perhaps because they now realise the importance of the pixel tracking and how useful it could be. Therefore, they are going back to the use of the basic pixel tracking to get information of the number of people that visit their web page. And with the information gotten from the pixel tracking, they can develop a better strategy.
Often, a tracking pixel can be found on the confirmation page of e-commerce web pages. This makes the retailer gather the information of the visitor's device's cookies, process the collected data as part of the transaction that took place on the web and sends it to the platform. With this, the web page owner can have information about the visitors that he/she had on his web page. The tracking pixel interacts with the computer's cookies and extracts the information such as the campaign's name which was as a result of the click-through and the date and time of the transaction that can be gotten from the cookies.
Also, the more basic types of the pixel tracking do not extract sensitive personal information, and they do not keep track of the consumers whenever they make a transaction. Therefore, multiple pixels tracking from different systems can be on one web page. And this does not mean that the sale has been logged more than once. This is majorly used in analytics and widely known targeted advertising strategies, for instance, retargeting.
To utilise a tracking pixel, the email sender or the website operator should include the tracking pixel code in the email or the HTML code. The tracking pixel code has an external link to the pixel server. Therefore, whenever a user logs onto the website, the user's browser processes the HTML code. Hence, the browser follows the link to open the graphic. After that, the call is registered and recorded in the log files.
Furthermore, some other information of the user is also extracted via this method. And to some extent, JavaScript is needed to gather information about the browser type or the operating system of the device. Some of the information that can also be collected is the operating system of the device, the screen resolution, the activities that took place on the website, the browser used, and the IP address of the visiting device.
As a matter of fact, utilising track pixels is beneficial for those who send emails and also very useful for web designers and operators. This is simply because they can make use of the information gotten from the pixel tracking to improve their online services and make them more comfortable to use. Also, it will help website operators identify the most common browsers that access the website and adapt their offers more to those browsers.
Furthermore, making use of the pixel tracking is also more useful than cache in browsers. And in a case where JavaScript is used, more information such as the browser support used plugins and screen resolution. Therefore, the website operator can quickly identify bots and users. Besides, you can also use the IP address of the visitor to create navigation paths. What's more, the use of tracking pixel can also help you analyse email newsletters that are sent. This is also because the opening rates of some newsletters are shown through the user statistics data.
The tracking pixel is very small and has a dimension of 1x1pixels. Its small size makes it very difficult for the email receivers and the web page visitors to see it. Furthermore, the tracking pixel is either partly or structured to camouflage in the website's background colour. This is mainly to keep it hidden. And the primary purpose of hiding the tracking pixel is for users not to see it.
Mostly, all advertising agents or web pages can make use of the tracking pixels. This is major because the tracking pixel file is simple to use and all they just need to do is to attach a small image to an HTML file which executes each time the web page is logged on to. However, the tracking pixel is not only meant for the advertising agents. Anyone who has a website and wants to keep track of the website visits and wants to know each time the web page is visited can make use of the tracking pixel.
With the use of pixel tracking, you can get a better understanding of the actions carried out on your website by your users. With this, you will be able to design new ads to promote your products or redirect your services towards users that have visited some particular pages on your website. Good Luck!