Your purchase data is the tip of the iceberg. Most of the signal is invisible.
The moment a user adds to cart, compares variants, or opens your size guide — they are signaling buying intent your ad platforms never see. Sytrics maps the full picture.
Figures are illustrative industry benchmarks, not Sytrics customer data.
Why your current tracking misses most of the buying signal
Standard analytics setups track the beginning and the end of the funnel: pageview and purchase. Everything in between — the consideration, the hesitation, the comparison — is invisible. In e-commerce, that middle is where most of the decision-making happens.
A user who views your product page 3 times in 2 days is behaving completely differently from one who viewed it once. Standard tracking treats them identically.
You see order completions and order abandonment, but not where in the checkout flow users are dropping. Is it at shipping? Payment? A promo code field? You don't know.
If you only send purchase events to Meta, your Advantage+ audiences are trained on your existing buyers — not the 65% who added to cart and left. You are optimizing for the wrong audience.
The e-commerce microconversion funnel
Each stage represents a distinct intent level. Events within a stage are not equal — some are far stronger predictors of purchase than others.
view_item_listsearch_queryfilter_applycategory_browseview_itemimage_zoomsize_guide_openvariant_selectreview_readwishlist_addadd_to_cartcart_viewcheckout_startshipping_info_addpayment_info_addpurchaseorder_trackreview_submitreorder_intentloyalty_signupEvents shown are illustrative examples. Sytrics detects the specific events relevant to your store.
Five events most stores get wrong
These events are either untracked, misconfigured, or not connected to ad platform audiences in most e-commerce setups.
variant_selectUser actively comparing product options
Variant selection indicates deeper product engagement than a standard page view. Users comparing sizes, colors, or configurations are evaluating — not just browsing.
Ignored entirely in most GA4 setups. Often not mapped to Meta or Google at all, despite being one of the strongest consideration signals.
- ·Meta (ViewContent variant)
- ·GA4 (select_item)
- ·TikTok (ViewContent)
size_guide_openHesitation signal — considering purchase but unsure of fit
Opening a size guide predicts cart addition far better than a standard product view. This is a buyer who wants to purchase but needs one more piece of information.
Almost universally untracked. Most teams assume this is a UX interaction, not a conversion signal.
- ·Meta custom event
- ·GA4 (custom)
- ·Not in TikTok standard schema — use custom
add_to_cartExplicit purchase intent — highest pre-purchase signal
Add to cart is the single most predictive pre-purchase microconversion. Even users who abandon carts after this have shown commercial intent your ads can re-engage.
Frequently double-fired in SPAs. If your cart uses async state updates, you may be sending duplicate events to Meta, inflating retargeting costs.
- ·Meta (AddToCart — standard)
- ·Google (add_to_cart)
- ·TikTok (AddToCart)
- ·Pinterest (AddToCart)
checkout_stepFunnel stage progression — each step reduces churn
Treating checkout as a single event loses the ability to identify where users drop off. Step 1 (shipping) to Step 2 (payment) drop-off often reveals UX friction, not low intent.
Only firing `begin_checkout` and `purchase` with nothing in between. You cannot optimize what you cannot see.
- ·GA4 (begin_checkout, add_shipping_info, add_payment_info)
- ·Meta (InitiateCheckout)
wishlist_addFuture-purchase intent — high lifetime value signal
Wishlist additions are underused retargeting gold. These users have explicitly said 'I want this, just not now.' Remarketing to them with pricing or stock alerts is high-ROI.
Not connected to any retargeting audience in most setups. Sitting in GA4 as a custom event nobody acts on.
- ·Meta (custom audience seed)
- ·Google (custom event)
- ·Klaviyo / email automation trigger
What Sytrics generates for your store
Enter your store URL. Sytrics analyzes your product pages, checkout flow, and site structure — then generates a complete, weighted event system.
add_to_cartvariant_selectcheckout_startadd_payment_infowishlist_addImplementation pitfalls specific to e-commerce
These are the most common tracking mistakes we see in e-commerce setups — mistakes that corrupt your data and distort your ad optimization.
If your order confirmation page reloads on refresh, you will double-count purchases. Always deduplicate using order ID. Use Meta's deduplication_id parameter.
A user who adds a £400 item has different value than one who adds a £9 item. Pass value in your add_to_cart event. Most implementations don't.
view_item_list is mostly meaningless. select_item (clicking into a product from a list) is far more predictive. Most teams track the impression, not the click.
Modern checkout flows often happen in a single URL. If you only have pageview-based checkout tracking, you see nothing of what happens inside the modal or component.
Meta's CAPI and browser pixel both fire on purchase. Without deduplication logic, your reported conversions could be 50–100% inflated, destroying your bidding model.
Search queries are intent goldmines. Users who search for specific product names, SKUs, or "in stock" queries are buyers. Almost no e-commerce stores pass this signal to their ad platforms.
FAQ
A macro conversion is your end goal — the purchase. Microconversions are the intent signals that predict it: add_to_cart, checkout_start, variant_select. Optimizing for microconversions gives your ad platform the signal volume to learn faster, especially in low-traffic situations where purchase data alone is sparse.
In high-volume stores (1000+ purchases/month), purchases alone can be enough signal. Below that threshold, passing add_to_cart, begin_checkout, and add_payment_info to Meta improves optimization quality significantly. Google recommends passing all funnel events via enhanced e-commerce.
Sytrics generates the event schema based on your site's structure. For single-page applications and headless checkouts, we detect the DOM and state change patterns and recommend the correct trigger approach — typically Custom Event triggers in GTM rather than pageview-based.
A simple starting model: purchase (100), begin_checkout (60), add_payment_info (70), add_to_cart (40), wishlist_add (25), view_item (10). Adjust based on your conversion rates at each stage.
For stores dependent on Meta advertising, yes. With iOS14+ limitations, browser-only tracking typically underreports conversions by 20–40%. CAPI with deduplication recovers most of this. Sytrics generates the server-side event schema alongside the browser snippet.
Other industry guides
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