# Customer Events pixel extension > How Ordinary's Shopify Customer Events pixel works, where it runs, and how to verify it's firing on your storefront. Source: https://help.tryordinary.com/integrations/customer-events-pixel --- Ordinary ships a **Shopify Customer Events Web Pixel Extension** — a small first-party script that Shopify loads into your storefront on every pageview, cart update, and checkout step. This is the data source for almost everything in Ordinary: attribution, funnel, sessions, customer behavior. ## What it is Shopify's Customer Events system is a privacy-compliant, sandboxed way to run tracking scripts. Instead of pasting JavaScript into your theme, pixel extensions are: - **Installed by the app** — no copy-paste. Appears in Shopify admin → Settings → Customer Events as "Ordinary". - **First-party** — events come from your store's domain, not a third-party script. Survives ad blockers and iOS privacy rules. - **Sandboxed** — can't read arbitrary page content or interfere with your theme. Shopify runs pixels in an isolated iframe context. ## What events it captures Ordinary subscribes to all 15 of Shopify's standard Customer Events: **Browse & discovery** - **page_viewed** — every page load. Ties session start to landing URL, referrer, and UTM params. - **product_viewed** — product detail page views. - **collection_viewed** — collection page views. - **search_submitted** — onsite search queries (which queries lead to ATCs / conversions vs. zero-result queries). **Cart** - **cart_viewed** — cart page views (distinct from add-to-cart events; lets us split cart-page-revisit volume from net cart-add volume). - **product_added_to_cart** — add-to-cart activity. - **product_removed_from_cart** — items removed from cart before checkout (a real cart-decay signal). **Checkout (each step its own event)** - **checkout_started** — buyer reached the checkout page (the classic abandoned-cart boundary). - **checkout_contact_info_submitted** — buyer entered email/phone. - **checkout_address_info_submitted** — buyer entered shipping address. - **checkout_shipping_info_submitted** — buyer selected a shipping method. - **payment_info_submitted** — buyer entered payment details (the last step before confirmation). - **checkout_completed** — order confirmation. **Storefront diagnostics** - **alert_displayed** — UX alerts the storefront showed the buyer (shipping-rate unavailable, item out-of-stock at checkout, discount-code-not-applicable, etc). - **ui_extension_errored** — checkout/cart UI extensions that crashed mid-session (silently degraded conversion otherwise). Each event carries: an anonymous browser identifier, the session ID, the referrer, UTM parameters, and the full payload Shopify exposes for that event type — including line-item composition, cart attributes, applied discount codes, shipping address, marketing-consent state, and so on, where the event provides them. Capturing the full payload means Ordinary can answer questions about the storefront experience that shallower pixel implementations cannot. ## How we install it The extension is deployed automatically and activated when you install Ordinary — no copy-paste, no merchant action needed. ## Verifying it's firing 1. Open your Shopify admin. 2. Settings → **Customer Events**. 3. Under **App pixels**, find "Ordinary". 4. Status should show **Connected**. If it says **Disconnected**, see [Pixel says "Disconnected"](https://help.tryordinary.com/troubleshooting/pixel-disconnected). ## Live event check 1. In Ordinary: **Settings → Integrations → Shopify**. 2. Below the connection card, look for **Pixel events (last 5 min)**. 3. Visit your storefront in a new tab and click a product. 4. Refresh the Settings page — the counter should tick up. If events don't appear within ~30 seconds of activity on the storefront, your pixel is not firing. See [Pixel says "Disconnected"](https://help.tryordinary.com/troubleshooting/pixel-disconnected). ## If you see two Ordinary pixels If your store shows two Ordinary pixels: - **Ordinary** app pixel (listed under App pixels) — **Keep Connected**. - Any other Ordinary-labeled pixel (listed under Custom pixels, not App) — **Disable**. Both firing at once will double-count events. The app pixel always wins. ## Data flow Events flow from the shopper's browser through Shopify's Web Pixel runtime to Ordinary, then into attribution / funnel / session reports. Typical latency from event to Ordinary UI is 10-30 seconds. ## What "pixel coverage" actually means Ordinary tracks how many of your storefront orders have a matching pixel session, and surfaces this as your pixel coverage health. You don't need to do anything with it — it's a quick way to confirm the pixel is firing across your storefront traffic. Two important things this metric ISN'T: 1. **Not "did the visit have UTM params"**. Most storefront sessions are direct, organic, or returning customers — they have no UTMs, and that's normal. A 0% UTM-tagged-orders org is NOT a 0% pixel-coverage org. 2. **Not "every channel uses the pixel"**. POS sales, admin-created draft orders, headless Storefront API orders, and third-party app orders bypass the storefront pixel by design. The page filters those out of the denominator and shows them in a separate "Non-web" column so the channel mix is visible without polluting the pixel-health metric. So a healthy merchant who sells 80% on the storefront and 20% via POS will show ~95-100% pixel coverage (the storefront fraction) and the 20% POS share visible separately as "Non-web". ## Privacy - We don't collect PII (names, emails, phone numbers) through the pixel. PII comes from Shopify webhooks post-checkout. - Events are stored anonymously keyed by an opaque browser identifier. - Customer consent is respected — if Shopify's Customer Privacy API indicates the visitor has declined analytics, the pixel emits no events. ## Related articles - [What is a first-party pixel?](https://help.tryordinary.com/concepts/first-party-pixel) - [Pixel says "Disconnected"](https://help.tryordinary.com/troubleshooting/pixel-disconnected) - [Shopify — the base integration](https://help.tryordinary.com/integrations/shopify)