Install Bread & Butter on Shopify

Shopify has the richest set of native ecommerce tools of any platform we support: a real Contact Us page, a native newsletter signup section and built-in abandoned checkout emails. Bread & Butter connects to all of it with one script and one custom pixel, and no app to install, the same way you'd add Google Analytics. Paste the script into your theme and the pixel into Shopify's Customer events, and Bread & Butter tracks how real visitors move through your store, all the way to the purchase.

One script in your Shopify theme and one custom pixel in Customer events. Together they put every visit, from the home page to the cart, and every purchase into one visitor's journey.

In short: One script in your Shopify theme connects your store to Bread & Butter, with no app install and no developer required. It shows you who's a real buyer, not just a page view, and which products or campaigns are driving qualified interest. It also picks up Shopify's native Contact Us form and newsletter signup on its own. Add our custom pixel in Shopify's Customer events and every completed purchase is recorded too, including who bought, even if they never filled in a form.

What you get

Once it's running, Bread & Butter watches how real visitors move through your store, not just how many pages loaded. It identifies who's showing real buying intent, builds a profile of what they're interested in, and shows it to you as a ranked list of your best leads instead of a wall of traffic numbers. For a Shopify store, that means you can finally see which products, pages or campaigns are driving qualified interest, and which ones are just generating clicks that go nowhere.

You also see the whole path to purchase. Bread & Butter tracks the full journey through your store, up to the cart, so you can see where interest builds and where it stalls before someone commits to buying.

How checkout works on Shopify

Checkout works a little differently on Shopify. On 26 August 2026, Shopify retired the mechanism that used to let tracking scripts run on the checkout and order status pages. Its replacement is custom pixels: small pieces of code that Shopify runs on checkout in a protected sandbox.

  • The purchase is recorded. Bread & Butter's custom pixel records each completed purchase, with the order, its total and the buyer's email address, so a buyer who never filled in a form is still identified when they buy.
  • It joins their journey on the next page. The purchase is added to their journey the next time they open a page of your store in the same browser.
  • The steps in between aren't tracked one by one. From the cart through checkout to payment, Bread & Butter doesn't see each step, so a visitor who abandons checkout shows as having reached the cart.

Installation steps

Step 1: Get your tracking script

  1. Sign in to your Bread & Butter dashboard.
  2. Make sure your Shopify subdomain or custom domain is listed under Settings, then App & Domains.
  3. Go to Home, then Get Set Up.
  4. Copy the Shopify tracking snippet. It already includes your unique App ID.

If you already use Google Tag Manager on your Shopify store, this is the easiest and most reliable way to install Bread & Butter, and it's the method we recommend. It covers the same storefront pages the script itself would: home, product, collection and cart pages, not checkout. Purchases are covered by the custom pixel in Step 4. See Install Bread & Butter with Google Tag Manager (GTM) for more detail.

Step 2: Add the script as a GTM tag

  1. In your GTM container, create a new tag and choose Custom HTML.
  2. Paste the Bread & Butter tracking snippet into the tag.
  3. Set the trigger to All Pages.
  4. Save, then Submit to publish the container.

Step 3: Confirm it's working

  1. Open your live Shopify store in a new browser or a private window.
  2. Return to your Bread & Butter dashboard and confirm visitor data is coming in.

Managing the script through GTM also means future updates to your tracking setup don't require editing your Shopify theme.

Alternative: install by hand in theme.liquid

If you don't use Google Tag Manager, install directly in Shopify instead.

Step 2: Add it to Shopify

  1. Sign in to your Shopify admin.
  2. Go to Online Store, then Themes.
  3. Find your current theme, click the … menu, and choose Edit code.
  4. Open theme.liquid.
  5. Paste the tracking script just before the closing </head>  tag.
  6. Click Save.

Step 3: Confirm it's working

  1. Open your live Shopify store in a new browser or a private window.
  2. Return to your Bread & Butter dashboard and confirm visitor data is coming in.

Step 4: Add the custom pixel for purchases

Do this whichever way you installed the tracking script.

  1. In your Bread & Butter dashboard, go to Home, then Get Set Up, and copy the Shopify custom pixel code.
  2. In your Shopify admin, go to Settings, then Customer events.
  3. Click Add custom pixel, name it "Bread & Butter", and click Add pixel.
  4. Under Customer privacy, choose the settings that match your store's privacy policy.
  5. Delete any code already in the Code box and paste in the custom pixel code.
  6. Click Save, then Connect pixel.

To check purchases, place a test order, then click Continue shopping on the order confirmation page. The purchase reaches Bread & Butter when the next page of your store loads, and appears in that visitor's journey.

Troubleshooting

  • No data showing up: check that the App ID in the script matches your dashboard, and that your live Shopify address is listed under Settings, then App & Domains.
  • Visits show up but purchases don't: check that the pixel shows as Connected under Settings, then Customer events, and that you opened another page of your store after the order.

Frequently asked questions for Shopify

Does this work on any Shopify plan? Yes. Editing theme code and adding a custom pixel, which is all the install requires, are available on every Shopify plan that includes a full online store, starting with Basic Shopify.

Will this interfere with Shopify Payments or my checkout? No. The tracking script never runs on checkout. The custom pixel runs in Shopify's own sandbox, separate from the checkout page itself, and only listens for the completed purchase. Shopify removed the Additional Scripts field from checkout settings on 26 August 2026, and custom pixels are the method Shopify now provides for every tracking and analytics tool, not just ours.

Can you see who reaches checkout, or who abandons it? Bread & Butter sees who reaches the cart, through the tracking script, and who completes a purchase, through the custom pixel. It doesn't see the steps in between, so it can't tell you who started checkout and then left. A visitor who reaches the cart but doesn't buy shows as having reached the cart. If that visitor identified themselves earlier in the visit, for instance through the Contact Us form or the newsletter signup, you'll know who they are.

Do I need a developer to install this? No. Both steps are copy and paste: the script goes into your theme's code before the closing </head>  tag, the same way you'd add Google Analytics, and the pixel goes into Settings, then Customer events.

Can I add the custom pixel through Google Tag Manager? No. Shopify only runs checkout code that's added in Customer events, so the pixel always goes there, even if you install the tracking script through Google Tag Manager.

Does this work with a custom domain, or only a myshopify.com subdomain? Either. The tracking script is embedded in the page itself, so it works the same way whatever domain your store is published under.

Does this track my native Contact Us form and newsletter signup too? Yes. If a visitor submits your Contact Us page or signs up through Shopify's native newsletter signup section, Bread & Butter identifies them and connects that to the rest of their browsing on your store.

Bread & Butter conversion tools: If you want a dedicated tool on your store to capture email addresses, beyond your native forms, Bread & Butter also has its own optional conversion tools, with no separate app required: Instant Lead Capture, a "Continue with" widget in the corner of any page; Form Booster, one-click verification on top of the forms you already have; content gates for premium assets; and Lead Gen Autopilot, which picks the pages, the tool and the moment for you. See the Conversion Tools overview for the full list.

What about customer account sign-up or login, does that identify someone? It depends on which account system your store uses. If you're on Shopify's newer customer accounts, sign-up and login happen on a Shopify-hosted page rather than your own domain, so the script can't see that step today. If your store still uses legacy customer accounts hosted on your own domain, sign-up and login are tracked like any other form on your website. Either way, a customer who places an order is identified by the custom pixel.

What if my checkout runs on a separate domain or subdomain, possibly on different technology? This is common: for example, a main site on WordPress with a store on a separate Shopify-hosted domain. Bread & Butter uses no third-party cookies; it keeps its own identifier in the visitor's browser. Install the same tracking script on each domain and add the custom pixel to your Shopify store, and Bread & Butter joins the activity into one visitor journey, even across different platforms. See Why Marketers Need Unified Subdomain Tracking.

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