Online advertising depends on high-quality conversion data to optimise delivery, measure performance, and understand the customer journey. Historically, this data has been collected using only client-side (browser) tracking, but browser privacy changes and technical limitations now make this singular approach unreliable.
Server-side tracking addresses this by capturing conversion events directly from your store’s backend and sending them to ad platforms via secure APIs.
Why Server-Side Tracking Is Needed for Ads
Client-side tracking relies on browser scripts firing correctly. In practice, signals are often lost due to:
Browser privacy restrictions and consent requirements
Ad blockers and tracking prevention
Script limitations or removals on storefronts
Express checkout flows that bypass standard page loads
When conversion signals are missing or inconsistent, ad platforms receive incomplete data. This weakens attribution, slows optimisation, and reduces the effectiveness of automated bidding.
Because it does not depend on the shopper’s browser. Events are captured directly from Shopify and transmitted server-to-server, ensuring conversions are recorded even when client-side tracking fails.
Server-Side Conversions in Blend
Blend uses server-side tracking to capture high-intent and revenue-critical events, including:
Purchase - Records a completed transaction and represents the primary business outcome. Purchases remain the core optimisation and reporting metric across the account.
Initiate Checkout (Begin Checkout) - Records when a shopper enters the checkout flow. This signals strong purchase intent and is primarily used for funnel visibility and retargeting audiences.
Micro-conversion signals - Used for funnel insights and audience creation.
These events work together to provide a complete and reliable view of performance without inflating or distorting conversion metrics.
How Server-Side Tracking Works
Shopify emits server-side events
Shopify sends webhook events when checkout progresses and when an order is completed.
Blend ingests and classifies events
Events are treated as Initiate Checkout, Purchase, or supporting funnel signals.
Event enrichment for attribution
Where possible, Blend enriches events with identifiers collected earlier in the session (e.g.
gclid,utm_*, and other IDs).Best case: Deterministic matching using cart or order tokens
Fallback: IP, user-agent, and time-window matching
If identifiers are ambiguous, enrichment is intentionally skipped to avoid incorrect attribution.
Server-side upload to Ads
Conversions are sent via Google & Meta Ads Conversion APIs using a server-side (enhanced) flow.
Server-side tracking ensures all conversions are measured accurately and reliably, supporting better attribution, smarter optimisation, and stronger retargeting. This keeps funnel insights intact and helps ad platforms drive real results, even as tracking environments change.