Get started with Tikra

Names in bold such as Home, Orders, Platforms, Events, Incidents, Billing and Help are pages and buttons of the Tikra app. You open it from Apps in your Shopify admin.

Tikra is server-side tracking for Shopify: it sends each paid online order of your store (an order placed through your store's checkout) from our servers to the ad and analytics platforms you connect, after it checks the buyer's consent. Point of sale sales, draft orders marked as paid, subscription renewals and orders that other apps create are stored but not sent. A new Shopify store starts on the free diagnosis, which shows what is wrong with its tracking and sends nothing. This article covers the install, the free diagnosis, your first platform, choosing a plan and what to expect in the first 24 hours after that.

1. Install the app

Install Tikra on your Shopify store. Shopify's install screen says the app needs access to View customer data ("Sensitive data, device and activity data"), View staff and contributor data ("Store owner") and View and edit store data ("Customers, products, orders, store analytics, Shopify admin"). "Sensitive data" is there because Tikra asks Shopify for the buyer's name, email, phone and address on each order; Tikra keeps them only as one-way hashes, apart from the postal code and the country. It sends them only to Meta, and only when the buyer's consent allows, so Meta can tell which of its users bought. Tikra changes nothing in your store except adding its web pixel. Click Install.
Open Tikra from Apps in your Shopify admin. The app opens on Home. The menu has Home, Orders, Platforms, Events, Incidents, Billing and Help. Help has these articles, our support address and the legal texts.
The first time, Home asks you to accept the Terms of Service and the Data Processing Agreement. Read them at the links, tick I accept the Terms of Service and the Data Processing Agreement for your store and click Accept and continue. The store owner or an admin of the store does this; on Shopify, a staff account that can open the app may do it only if the store owner allowed it, and by ticking the box that person confirms this. Until then Tikra stores nothing from your store: no orders and no data about your customers. When we update these documents later, Home shows Updated terms with what changed and a box to accept the new versions. Until you accept, your store keeps working and the Data Processing Agreement you accepted still applies.

Tikra then sets itself up. You do not need to add any code:

Shopify tells Tikra about each paid order.
Tikra adds its web pixel to your storefront and checkout. It sends no purchases to any platform itself.
Every hour Tikra reads your recent orders from Shopify, so an order is not missed when a notification does not arrive.

2. Read the free diagnosis

Your store starts on the free diagnosis, without a plan and without charge. Home shows Tracking diagnosis:

the problems found, each with Critical, Warning or Note;
Paid orders of the last 7 full days, counted in your store's time zone;
Orders from ad clicks: how many of them came from a Meta, Google or TikTok ad;
Reported by the browser: how many paid online orders the shopper's browser reported, and how many buyers declined cookies;
Meta counted, once you connect Meta: how many purchases Meta counted. Only a key that can read your pixel's statistics gets this count. The key from the 3 steps in Connect Meta, made under Conversions API in Events Manager, cannot. With that key the line says "Not available" and "Meta did not let us read its counts with the saved pixel ID and access token." This is expected. The key still sends your orders.

Below it, What Tikra would fix lists the steps and the plan that covers your store. On the free diagnosis Tikra sends none of your orders to your platforms, not even as test events. With no findings, Home shows Healthy and "No issues found. Next check in 7 days."

For each order paid on the free diagnosis Tikra keeps only what the diagnosis needs: the order's ID and number, payment time and amounts, whether it is a test order, whether the buyer is in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland, and your customer's consent choice. It deletes them 30 days after payment. When you choose a plan, Tikra stores and sends the orders paid from then on. Orders paid on the free diagnosis are not sent later.

If Home shows Setup is not complete, read the message under it:

"Part of the setup with Shopify did not finish. We try again every hour." You do not need to do anything.
"Shopify did not renew this app's access to your store." Reload the page. If the message stays, reinstall the app.

Go to Platforms and scroll to Consent mode. A new store starts in Strict: Tikra sends an order to a platform only when the buyer accepted cookies for that purpose. Keep Strict if you sell to the EU, the UK or Switzerland. See Consent: strict and standard modes.

4. Connect your first platform

Go to Platforms.
Find the card of the platform, for example Meta or Google Analytics 4.
Fill in the fields. Each field has a note under it that says where to find the value. For Meta, Tikra fills in the pixel ID when it finds your pixel on your store, and Get your key in Meta opens the page where you make the key.
Click the card's button: Connect Google Analytics 4 on the Google Analytics 4 card, Connect Meta on the Meta card (or Add the key by hand where the card shows Connect with Meta), Save and check on the others. In the Shopify admin, click Save at the top of the page instead. Where the platform allows it, Tikra checks the details with the platform before it saves them.

On the free diagnosis you can connect each platform the Platforms page offers: today Meta and Google Analytics 4. The page lists only the platforms you can connect; Google Ads, TikTok, Pinterest and Snapchat are not offered yet. Each card then shows the note Free diagnosis: no orders sent yet. and "Tikra checks this platform for free. Sending starts when you choose a plan." The platform gets nothing from Tikra, so keep the store's own tracking on for now. Connecting Meta adds Meta's own count to the diagnosis only when the key can read your pixel's purchase count. A key made under Conversions API in Events Manager cannot, so for most stores Meta counted on Home says "Not available". The Meta card says after the check whether your key can read it.

Once your store has a plan, what happens depends on the platform:

Meta starts in a check before sending. Meta gets nothing from Tikra until you click Go live and, on that step, tick that you understand what turning off the store's own Meta connection stops. The check shows when no other connection sends your purchases to Meta, and Home then says that Meta is ready to go live. Nothing starts on its own: you turn off the store's own Meta purchase tracking, then click Go live and tick. With a key that cannot read Meta's count, such as the key from the 3 steps in Connect Meta, there is no count to compare, so Home never says Meta is ready: click Go live yourself.
Google Analytics 4 starts sending at once. Before you save, you confirm that the store's own Google Analytics purchase tracking is off, and that you understand Google Analytics 4 then gets only purchases from Tikra. See Connect Google Analytics 4.
Google Ads, TikTok, Pinterest and Snapchat are not offered yet, so the Platforms page does not list them.
A platform you connected on the free diagnosis waits in the check before sending. Click Go live on its card. The Set up Tikra guide on Home shows the steps, with a line such as "1 of 3 done": connect a platform, check that it works, and go live. The guide goes away when they are done.

Before any platform goes live, turn off the store's own purchase tracking for it, or the platform counts each purchase twice. The store's own connections also send page views, product views, add to cart and checkout events, and Tikra sends only purchases today, so turning one off stops those events too. See Turn off the store's own tracking for what each one stops.

Once you have a plan, it decides which platforms you can connect and send to. See Plans, trial, order limits and billing.

To confirm a connection works, click Send test on the platform card.

5. Choose a plan

Sending your orders to your platforms starts with a plan. Go to Billing, choose a plan and approve the charge in Shopify. Your 14-day free trial starts when you choose your first plan, not when you install, and Shopify charges nothing until the trial ends. The first time the diagnosis finds a problem, Home and Billing may also show an offer with the date and time it ends. See Plans, trial, order limits and billing.

6. The first 24 hours with a plan

Orders lists each paid order shortly after payment (a few seconds on Shopify, usually within a minute or two on WooCommerce).
A platform gets only the orders paid after you connected it. Older orders show Not connected for that platform.
For each order, Tikra waits up to 20 minutes for the consent choice from the pixel. Then it decides once, and that decision is final for the order.
Meta stays in the check before sending for at least 48 hours, unless you go live yourself.
Home has one card, Orders sent to your platforms, with a choice between Last 24 hours and Last 7 days. One row per platform: Orders to send, Reached, Held back: no consent and Status (last 24 hours).
The hourly check opens an incident for a platform once it has at least 10 orders in 24 hours. Until then the Status column says Too few orders to judge and no new incident opens; an incident that is already open is judged with fewer orders. See How the 97 % check and the 12-hour guarantee work.

Test orders, for example orders paid with Shopify's Bogus Gateway, are marked Test. They go only to platforms in test mode, so a live platform shows them as Skipped. They do not count toward the match rate or your plan's order limit.

WooCommerce stores

For WooCommerce, our team sets Tikra up with you. WooCommerce stores have no free diagnosis: the 14-day free trial starts when we set up your store.

Tikra runs as a plugin of two files in your site's wp-content/mu-plugins folder, plus a few settings in wp-config.php. We install them, or we send them to your developer.
We ask for a WooCommerce REST API key with read access, so the hourly check can read your recent orders. In WordPress, go to WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced > REST API and click Add key. Use the description Tikra backfill and the permission Read.
Settings > Permalinks must not be set to Plain.
Tikra reads the buyer's choice from your consent tool. See the WooCommerce section of Consent.
When we add your login, you get an email from Tikra with the dashboard address and what your login can do (owner, admin or viewer).
To sign in to the dashboard, enter your email address and click Email me a sign-in link. The link works once, for 15 minutes.

Still stuck? Email support@tikratracking.com with your store address.