The Shopshot pixel catches the sales Shopify cannot attribute. It is a tiny storefront script that records a visitor's genuine first-touch UTM when they arrive, persists it, and hands it to Shopshot at checkout. So the orders Shopify dropped get credited to the campaign that actually earned them. Still single-touch. Just the right touch.
Why it exists
Shopify captures UTMs at checkout, until it does not. Buy Now buttons, dynamic checkout, an ad click followed by a different product, and multi-session purchases all lose the original source. That is where most attribution silently breaks, and where ad spend stops lining up with the orders it produced.
The pixel closes that gap without pretending to know more than it does. It records the real first-touch source on entry and simply keeps it, so a genuine campaign click is not thrown away just because Shopify lost the thread by checkout.
How attribution is resolved
For every order, Shopshot works through the sources in order and uses the first one that has a real answer:
Shopify captured a UTM. For example
?utm_source=facebookcarried through to checkout. Use it, and assign channel-specific CAC.Shopify missed it, but the pixel has a first-touch UTM. The order came through a Buy Now button, a return visit, or an ad-click that ended on a different product, so Shopify has nothing. The pixel checks its stored UTM from the original entry. If one exists, use it, and assign channel-specific CAC.
No UTM anywhere. Organic, direct, or iOS-stripped, with nothing recorded at either layer. Fall back to blended CAC.
This keeps attribution single-touch and honest. The pixel only ever recovers a source the visitor genuinely arrived with. It never invents one.
What it does not do
The pixel does not do multi-touch attribution and does not spread fractional credit across touchpoints. It recovers the one real first-touch source Shopify dropped, and nothing more. Where no source exists, Shopshot says so and uses blended CAC rather than guessing.
How it shows up in Shopshot
Recovered sources flow into the same places as any other attribution: the acquisition type, source, and campaign in an order's Attributions block, the CAC applied in the Orders waterfall, and the marketing metrics on the Profit & Loss page. See the Orders and Attribution articles.
Common questions
Does the pixel change my totals? It changes how orders are credited to channels, which sharpens CAC and ROAS. It does not change Net Sales or the reconciled totals, which still come from Shopify.
What about privacy-stripped traffic? If there is no UTM at either layer, the order gets blended CAC. The pixel never fabricates a source.