If you're using website analytics tools to track people who visit your website, you might notice differences between the number of people who click on your Facebook ad and the number of website visitors your analytics tool records. This difference can be even larger when people are viewing your website on mobile devices.

There are many reasons why you may see these sorts of differences, such as slow mobile site loading times and the way that third-party analytics tools work. Below are a list of possible reasons why reporting differences may exist and recommendations on how to improve your mobile site performance to get more value out of your mobile ads.

• Sites load more slowly for people browsing on slower Internet connections: On slower mobile connections, it takes much longer for a mobile site to load. A person may leave before the site fully loads, which results in a drop-off between link clicks and site visits recorded by your analytics tool.
• Your website may not be optimised for mobile devices: Your mobile site's loading time may be impacted by your content delivery network, website server, redirects or plugins used and whether or not your site is optimised for mobile. Any of these variables may result in a drop-off between clicking on an ad and viewing a fully loaded site.
• Your analytics tool may measure site visits differently from how Facebook records a link click: Most site analytics tools will record a site visit only after their pixel fires on your website. Because pixels are embedded within the code of your site, they typically only fire once the site is fully loaded. A slower network connection and the location where a pixel is placed on a page may impact whether or not a site visit is recorded by your third-party site analytics. Facebook records a link click when it occurs on an ad, which is a different point in time than when a site analytics tool records a site visit.
• People might close their browser before your website loads: People may click on an ad, realise that they didn't intend to go to the site and close the page before it loads or a pixel fires. If this occurs, it may result in a link click being reported but no third-party site visit being recorded.
• People might be using ad blockers or set their browsers to prevent tracking: People may use ad blockers or set browser preferences that stop your third-party site analytics from recording their site visits or collecting data.
• Your analytics tool may not recognise Facebook as the referrer due to people browsing Facebook using HTTPS: Many third-party tracking providers use referrer URLs to credit conversions back to ads. These providers generally under-report Facebook conversions. This is due to the fact that some people browse Facebook using HTTPS instead of HTTP and when someone clicks on an ad on Facebook and converts on a site, the referrer cannot be recorded since they left an HTTPS environment and entered an HTTP environment.

You can reduce the differences between link clicks on Facebook and site visits reported in your analytics tool by making a few changes to how you run ads on Facebook:

Use the Facebook Canvas ad format: The Canvas ad format (https://canvas.facebook.com/) is a full-screen, mobile-optimised post-click experience that can bring your content to life in a fast loading and seamless experience on Android and iOS. Canvas leverages the same technology used to display photos and videos quickly in the Facebook app, and loads up to ten times faster than the standard mobile web. You can use Canvas instead of linking to your mobile site to improve click-through rates, though if your ad includes links to your mobile site, you may still run into the issues described above.

Optimise for landing page views. This can improve the quality of your traffic by showing your ads to people we believe will actually land on your ad's destination URL, not just click its link. For example, if someone clicks your ad's link, but then closes the page before it loads, that would count as a link click, but not a landing page view. Learn more about landing page view optimisation.

Optimise for conversions: If you care most about getting people to take a specific action on your website, consider choosing the Website Conversions objective when creating an ad instead of just sending people to your website. You can do this by installing the Facebook pixel and, when you create an ad for website conversions, selecting the conversion event that you want to optimise for (e.g. a purchase page or a "Thank you" page). Learn more about how to get more conversions from your ads.

You can reduce visitor drop-off and improve the performance of your site on mobile devices by making some of these recommended changes:

Make sure that your site is optimised for mobile: Make sure that your website is optimised for mobile, which should help improve loading and pixel firing times. See below for a list of suggestions to improve the mobile experience of your site:

• Minimise landing page redirects, plugins and link shorteners.
• Compress files to decrease mobile rendering time.
• Improve server response time by utilising multi-region hosting.
• Use a high-quality content delivery network to reach your audience quickly.
• Remove render-blocking JavaScript.

Install the Facebook pixel: The Facebook pixel will allow you to get more insights on what actions people are taking on your site. Having a Facebook pixel makes it easier to troubleshoot any drop-offs occurring between link click and site visits. If you have the Facebook pixel installed on your site, you can also run ads that use the Facebook pixel to optimise for the conversion events most important to you.

Move your site analytics tracking pixel code higher up on your site: Moving your pixel code higher on your web page may help ensure that it fires as quickly as possible. If a pixel code is too low on a page, the pixel may take too long to fire and a new website visit may not be counted.

Implement server-side analytics: Using a server-side analytics tool can improve your site measurement and minimise any site visits missed due to a low pixel-firing speed. This works because site visits would be captured by the server, not just when your web page loads and your pixel fires.

Make sure that third-party tags are set up correctly in Facebook: Many third-party site analytics use referrer URLs to understand where traffic is coming from, and credit conversions back to ads. If you want to track your ads using these third-party systems, we recommend you have at least two persistent tags, one for your ad source (Facebook) and the medium (ads). For example, if you are using Google Analytics, your UTM tags would look like 'utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=ads'. You can also pass additional insights parameters back to your analytics platform by including your campaign name, ad set and ad as additional URL parameters, provided your tracking software supports this. For example, if you are using Google Analytics, your UTM tags could also include the following variable names:

• utm_campaign=Your_Facebook_Ad_Campaign_Name
• utm_term=Your_Ad_Set_Name
• utm_content=Your_Ad_Name

* Nguồn: Facebook