The Core 5 ecommerce events you need to track (and why)
26 September 2025
Charlie Semmence
Ecommerce brands live and die by their data. Accurate, abundant conversion tracking is what fuels paid media ROI and ensures your reporting can be trusted. Without it, ad platforms are left to optimise on shaky signals, meaning spend efficiency drops and decision-making becomes guesswork.
Your tracking setup can be as sophisticated as you need it to be - with custom events and advanced parameters offering deeper insights into customer behaviour and product performance.
But at the heart of it all, there are 5 essential events that every ecommerce brand needs to have in place. And if these aren’t being tracked properly, everything else falls apart.
We call them the Core 5, and here we break down what they are and why they matter to both your marketing performance and the accuracy of your data.
The Core 5 ecommerce events
Every shopper’s journey looks a bit different, but there are five moments that matter above all others. These are:
Page View: the starting point. It tells you where users land and helps identify key entry points to your site.
Product View: signals interest in an item and shows what customers are browsing.
Add to Cart: the first major step of intent. If someone adds a product, they’re seriously considering buying it.
Begin Checkout: one of the strongest buying signals. It’s also where friction often causes drop-off.
Purchase: the final conversion. This is where ad spend translates into measurable revenue.
Together, these events give you a complete picture of the customer journey - from first interaction to final sale.
Why these events matter
Each of these events represents a different level of intent. Page views and product views capture awareness, while add-to-cart and checkout events show customers moving closer to purchase.
By sending this data back into platforms like Meta and Google, you allow their algorithms to:
Build richer audiences: An abandoned cart, for example, becomes a segment you can retarget with highly relevant ads and offers.
Direct spend toward the right users: Checkout and purchase events signal strong intent, allowing platforms to bid more aggressively on audiences that resemble your best customers.
Deliver tailored creative: When product-level data is included, ads can dynamically feature the exact items someone viewed or added to their cart, making every impression more personalised.
Strengthen attribution and reporting: Clean event data helps credit conversion to the right channels, giving you a clearer picture of what’s really driving performance.
Take a simple example: a customer adds a product to their cart but doesn’t check out. With proper tracking, that single action can trigger multiple responses. Meta can show them the product again in a dynamic ad, Google can steer bidding toward users who share similar attributes, and Klaviyo can follow up with a personalised email reminder.
Without these core signals, platforms can only optimise for weaker actions like clicks or impressions. That means wasted budget and campaigns that never reach their full potential.
Where to start
The Core 5 ecommerce events (Page View, Product View, Add to Cart, Begin Checkout and Purchase) might sound simple, but they are the foundation of profitable marketing. They provide the signals ad platforms rely on to spend your budget efficiently, and they give you the clarity to trust your reporting.
Most brands don’t have these events firing correctly - that’s where we come in.
We can review your current setup to show you what’s missing and how you can fix it. Book your free audit here to take the first step towards better paid media ROI and a stronger foundation for growth.