Why check before Christmas
Black Friday was a test you already ran. Four days of peak traffic put your tracking under the most load it gets all year. The gap between each platform and your orders for 27 to 30 November is the clearest map you have of what to fix.
Bidding follows what reaches the platform. Google's help says a sudden drop or increase in tag fires for a conversion action used for automated bidding "can result in a drop in serving and spending". A fault in the week before Christmas changes how your budget is spent, not only how the report looks.
The window to send purchases again is short. Meta's Conversions API takes events up to 7 days old. If any event in a request is older, Meta returns an error for the whole request. A purchase missed on 14 December cannot reach Meta after 21 December.
December orders look different. Pre-orders for January stock and try before you buy orders are counted by Shopify in its own way, so your platforms and your Shopify reports can disagree for reasons that are not faults.
The checklist
- 1Count BFCM against your orders. In Shopify, export your orders by date for 27 to 30 November. The export has a Source column (web, draft order, POS), a Financial Status column and a Paid at date. Keep web orders that are paid and count them by the day they were paid. Then read the purchases each platform received for the same days, and in Google Ads use Conversions (by conv. time), which Google says helps when you compare with Shopify. The full method is in How many Black Friday and Christmas sales did Meta miss?.
- 2Fix the largest gap first, and finish by Monday 7 December. That leaves a full week of traffic to check the fix against your orders before the freeze in step 9.
- 3If Google Ads tracking broke during BFCM and you use Smart Bidding, add a data exclusion. Google recommends data exclusions for conversion tracking issues and says to apply them as quickly as possible. They apply to clicks, so cover the days of clicks that could have led to the affected sales; Google's advice is to exclude at least 90 % of those clicks. Google also says fluctuations can last 1 to 2 conversion cycles when a week or more of clicks is affected.
- 4Check your theme and apps again, above all if you switched to a holiday theme. Shopify's help says apps you added to the old theme "won't be active by default" in the new one, so open Online Store > Edit theme > App embeds and switch your tracking apps back on. Then open Settings > Customer events and check that each app pixel you rely on is still listed. Shopify pixel disconnected covers what to do if one is not.
- 5Mark your shipping cutoff days. Check your carriers' cutoff dates and write down the last day you promise delivery before Christmas. After that day, orders for physical products can fall. A drop on that day is demand, not tracking, as long as Shopify and the platforms fall together. Google says Smart Bidding already manages seasonal events and that seasonality adjustments are meant for short events of 1 to 7 days with major changes in conversion rate, so keep them for a real one, such as a last delivery day sale.
- 6Check pre-orders and try before you buy orders. Shopify says a pre-order can collect full, partial or no payment when the customer places it, with the rest collected later. Try before you buy ships the order before payment. Find out whether your tracking reports them at checkout or at payment, and with which value, so you know which column to compare with.
- 7Test your cookie banner again if anything changed. Shopify says that in markets that require consent, web pixels run only when visitors give the permissions the pixel needs. In Settings > Customer events, click Test on an app pixel to open the Shopify Pixel Helper; if it shows "Pixel is awaiting consent", give consent and watch the purchase fire. Shopify consent settings and missing purchases explains each setting.
- 8Repeat the test steps from the Black Friday tracking checklist after your last change: a test event to each platform, one test order, and a look for a second source of the same purchase.
- 9Freeze tracking changes from Monday 14 December to Monday 4 January. Nobody changes the theme, tracking apps, pixels, consent banner or conversion actions in that time. Write down who can still make an emergency change. Boxing Day and the first days of the January sales fall inside this window, so the freeze protects them too.
If purchases drop after a change you did make, start with purchases dropped after a theme or app change.
FAQ
What is the last safe day to change my tracking before Christmas?
Aim for Monday 7 December. A week after the change shows whether each platform still matches your orders, and leaves time to undo it before the freeze on 14 December.
Sales fell after our last shipping day. Is tracking broken?
Probably not, if Shopify's paid orders fell on the same day. Tracking is the cause only when the platforms fall and Shopify does not.
Something broke during the freeze. Should I fix it?
Yes, if the cause is clear, such as a disconnected pixel or an app embed switched off. Meta takes purchases up to 7 days old, so a tool that sends from a server can send them again within the week. For Google Ads, add a data exclusion for the affected clicks. Do not add a second tracking tool during the peak.
Our Google Ads numbers for the last days look weak. Should I lower bids?
Wait. Google Ads reports conversions by the day of the ad click, and Google says this lag can make CPA look inflated and ROAS look deflated for recent days. See Google Ads conversions delayed on Shopify.
What Tikra's free diagnosis shows
The free diagnosis shows your store's paid online orders of the last 7 days and how many of them the shopper's browser reported. When you connect Meta with a key that can read your pixel's statistics, it also shows how many purchases Meta counted. When a platform counted less than 97 % of your paid orders, Home also shows Paid orders, Order value, From ad clicks and Missed by for that platform. The diagnosis sends none of your orders anywhere.
With a plan, Tikra sends paid online orders from its server to the platforms you connect. A platform gets only the orders paid after you connected it, so connect before your last safe day. When Meta goes live, Tikra checks every hour for the first 48 hours that Meta does not get a second copy of your purchases, and pauses its Meta sending if it does. Tikra also checks every hour that each platform got at least 97 % of the orders it should get in the last 24 hours, and opens an incident when one falls below. Tikra gives a written guarantee for eligible orders: at least 97 % reach each platform, fixed within 12 hours or a month's fee credited (Terms, section 8). Terms apply.