A practical guide to server-side tracking
In this guide, we'll cover nearly everything you need to know to get started with server-side tracking: what it is, how it can benefit your business, and a few ways to implement it.
Table of contents
12 minute read
Updated Oct 4, 2024
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If you’re tired of unreliable data and feel like less and less of your conversions are being tracked each day, you’re in the right place. Server-side tracking is a more accurate, privacy-friendly way to gather insights, optimize your marketing efforts, and make the most of your ad spend.
Server-side tracking involves collecting and processing your website visitors’ activity data directly on a server running behind your website rather than relying on the user’s browser or device.
By doing this, you have better accuracy, more control over personal data collection, and the ability to overcome tracking challenges like ad blockers and iOS tracking prevention — all while respecting user data privacy without third-party cookies.
Sounds almost too good to be true, right? Well, we promise it’s not. Let’s get into it.
What is server-side tracking?
Server-side tracking in digital advertising is a significant improvement in the way we gather, track, and use advertising data.
Traditionally, this tracking happens on the “client side,” which basically means it’s done by the user’s browser (e.g., Chrome, Safari). When you visit a site, your browser runs a number of scripts (like Google Analytics, Meta, etc.), which collect data and send it back to the site owner.
But there it is – the catch. Client-side tracking is becoming less reliable. Hurdles like ad blockers, privacy features (like Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention), and cookie restrictions have made it harder to collect data this way.
This is where server-side tracking comes in. Instead of relying on the browser to collect and send data, a server running behind the website handles the tracking. When someone visits your site and does something important—like making a purchase or filling out a form—the server captures this information and sends it directly to your tracking tools (like Google Analytics 4, Meta Pixel and Facebook Conversion API).
As digital marketing increasingly relies on algorithmic bidding, high-quality data is essential. Without proper data, businesses face lower results and higher customer acquisition costs. With SST you can gain control of your tracking by tracking more high-quality data, and feed it back to your ad platforms. This means ad platform algorithms can work more efficiently for you and bring new clients at a lower cost.
Why is server-side tracking necessary?
Mostly an increase in the desire for cleaner, more accurate data. As we mentioned earlier, server-side tracking bypasses many of the common obstacles that come with browser-based tracking and is less susceptible to the disruptions that can occur on the browser side. This leads to more reliable insights and helps businesses understand their audience without as many blind spots – and ultimately, make more money.
By sending more high-quality data to ad platforms, you’re able to optimize your ad campaigns better and get more out of your marketing budgets, leading to a lower CAC and a better growth for your business.
Finally, while GDPR and CCPA have changed how companies are allowed to collect and store data, server-side tracking gives you the ability to stay compliant whilst still able to track user behavior.
How does server-side tracking work?
We’ll get into the technical implementation a few sections down, but basically, how it works is as follows:
- A user interaction happens: A user visits your website and interacts with it (e.g. clicking a button or making a purchase).
- Your server records the data: Instead of the browser sending data directly to third-party services, your server records the user's actions in a first-party context.
- API Requests: This server then sends this data to defined third-party services through secure API requests. APIs allow your server to communicate directly with services like Google Analytics, Meta, Google Ads, or any other advertising and analytics platforms.
Server-side tracking can utilize first-party cookies, which are cookies that your own domain sets and manages, making them less prone to be blocked by browsers or privacy tools.
Before sending your conversion data to digital advertising platforms, your server can also process and transform the data – things like combining multiple data points, filtering out unnecessary information, or anonymizing user data.
And since the tracking is happening server-side, you have full control and transparency over what data is collected, how it’s processed, and when and where it’s sent.
Benefits of server-side tracking
Any business that is spending money on digital advertising is losing money without server-side tracking. It’s as simple as that.
We touched on this earlier, but there are plenty of additional benefits. For now, we’ll talk about the benefits of server-side tracking for ecommerce and advertising agencies specifically.
Benefits of server-side tracking for ecommerce
Your whole customer journey, tracked accurately 💡
Server-side tracking allows ecommerce businesses to capture and analyze the entire customer journey more accurately. You can track complex events with underlying ecommerce product data, like add-to-cart actions, and multi-step checkouts without losing data.
Collect more first-party data 🛡️
With this richer data, you can build larger and more accurate audiences, particularly for retargeting campaigns. First-party data also improves the accuracy of your conversion tracking, enabling algorithms to work more efficiently. This helps you find high-intent customers more effectively while lowering customer acquisition costs (CAC).
Omnichannel marketing strategy made easier 🤝
Server-side tracking is particularly useful for ecommerce businesses running omnichannel marketing strategies. It allows you to connect online and offline purchase data with your advertising campaigns, giving you a holistic view of your customers' buying habits.
Better website performance 🏎️
By offloading tracking tasks to the server, you can reduce the Javascript load on the client side. This leads to faster page load times, a smoother user experience and higher conversion rates by making your site more user-friendly and improving its SEO and user retention. Woohoo!
Enable profit-based bidding 💰
Enabling profit-based bidding through server-side tracking helps eCommerce businesses by allowing ad platforms to optimize campaigns based on actual profit, rather than just revenue or conversions. With more accurate data on your costs and margins, algorithms can prioritize high-profit customers, leading toa better return on ad spend (ROAS) and more efficient use of your marketing budget.
Benefits of server-side tracking for agencies
Provide higher quality, higher value services 🧑💻
Implementing server-side tracking as an agency can help increase the value of your service offerings. It provides you with more accurate and comprehensive data analysis, allowing you to deliver deeper, more useful insights to your clients. By using server-side tracking, you can capture a more complete view of customer journeys, reducing data loss or confusion that can be common with traditional tracking methods.
More reliable, strategic reporting for your customers 📊
This improved accuracy means you can deliver more reliable reporting to your clients. You’ll be able to show precise performance metrics across various marketing efforts, including detailed campaign-level data. This empowers your clients to make smarter decisions about their marketing strategies and budgets.
Advanced tracking services without developer hires 🔥
Some server-side tracking platforms provide user-friendly interfaces and pre-built integrations, making it easy to set up and manage without deep technical knowledge. This means your team can deliver sophisticated tracking solutions, such as cross-platform user tracking and enhanced data privacy controls, while minimizing operational costs. By leveraging these tools, you can scale your services efficiently, providing top-tier tracking solutions without the complexity or expense of building a dedicated development team.
How to choose the best server-side tracking solution for your needs
Like choosing any other software tool, there is a whole market full of options with varying attributes – and not all will be right for your business. When weighing up your options, consider these factors (as a start):
Technical expertise 🧑🔧
Assess your team's skills, realistically. Also, assess your team’s workload now and in the future. Are you ready to assign a person on your team (or hire someone) whose focus will be implementation and maintenance, or would you rather outsource all the tech hassle by utilizing a plug-and-play tool?
Scalability 🚀
Choose a tool that handles high traffic and can grow with your business. For example, whether the platform can track offline conversions or support specific ad platforms. Also, check the pricing structure for the tool you choose – most tiered pricing plans will have a limit on how many events you can track before needing to upgrade.
Cost 💵
Balance the upfront setup and maintenance costs (DIY tools, developer time, hosting costs etc.) vs. subscription fees (with managed tools like Tracklution). A good rule of thumb is that server-side tracking should boost your advertising efficiency by around 10%, so the cost of implementing server-side tracking should be no more than 10% of your ad budget.
Ease of use ✨
Consider not only how easy the tool is to implement and use for non-technical users, but the availability and quality of customer support.
Compliance, data control, and privacy 🛡️
Ensure the tool you choose is GDPR compliant if you operate in the EU, or CCPA in the USA.
How to implement server-side tracking
We like a spot of DIY as much as the next people, but setting up your own server-side tracking is often a task that most people would gladly hand over to someone else. That being said, it’d be unfair if we didn’t explain both ways of implementing it, so here goes. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
1. Implementing server-side tracking: a DIY setup
2. Using a server-side tagging tool like GTM Server Side
3. Server-side tracking with Tracklution
Psst: if you want to skip to the easiest way, click here.
A quick comparison table before jumping to the details, s'il vous plaît!
Full DIY solution Build server-side tracking from a scratch | Server-Side GTM Self-service tool for configuring and managing server-side tagging | Tracklution Plug-and-play server-side tracking tool for any website | |
|---|---|---|---|
Technicality rating | 10/5 🫣 | 4/5 🫡 | 1/5 😎 |
Implementation time | 3-12+ months | From weeks to months | From 5 to 30 minutes |
Maintenance | Full-time job...? | ~Half-time job | Managed by the Tracklution crew ⚡️ |
For who? | Team of engineers | Web analytics specialist or engineer | Practically anyone can plug it in |
Scalability | Depends how you've built it | Ensure having enough server capacity | Scales as you scale |
Integrations | Build yourself what you want and need | Build yourself or utilise templates to help | Utilize ready-made integrations 🪄 |
API updates | Update manually | Update manually | Handled by Tracklution |
Support | If your tech team counts, then yes | Paid services available (e.g. consultants) | Included in the monthly fee |
1. Implementing server-side tracking: a DIY setup
Difficulty rating: 10/5 👿
Step 1
Set up your server
To start, you’ll need access to a web server that will process incoming data. This could be hosted on a cloud platform like AWS, Google Cloud, or any other server you manage.
Some important server requirements:
- Programming language: Choose a server-side language you're comfortable with (e.g. Node.js, Python, PHP, Ruby, or Go).
- Database: If you plan to store data temporarily, choose a database like MySQL, PostgreSQL, or MongoDB.
- SSL/TLS Certificates: Ensure your server uses HTTPS to secure data transmission.
Step 2
Create data collection endpoints
You’ll need to create endpoints on your server that can receive tracking event data (e.g., page views, other funnel events, conversions). These endpoints act as listeners that take incoming data, process it, and forward it to the necessary destination.
Step 3
Process the data
Once the data reaches your server, you’ll need to process it before forwarding it to your analytics or marketing platforms of choice (e.g., Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, or your own internal system). Processing includes things like keeping sessions together, connecting data points, hashing data, and transforming it in the correct format separately for each Conversion API.
Step 4
Forward the server-side data
Once the data reaches your server, you’ll need to process it before forwarding it to your analytics or marketing platforms of choice (e.g., Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, or your own internal system). Processing includes things like keeping sessions together, connecting data points, hashing data, and transforming it in the correct format separately for each Conversion API.
Step 5
Get your privacy/compliance bases covered
Making sure your setup complies with data protection and privacy regulations like GDPR, CCPA includes things like:
- Consent management: consent is king, and you must receive it before tracking
- Anonymization: Mask or hash personally identifiable information (PII) like IP addresses
- Data retention policies: Define how long someone’s data will be stored and make sure to delete it after the retention period
- Opt-out mechanisms: Provide users with the ability to opt out of tracking (and easily!)
Step 6
Set up error handling and logging
For your setup to run smoothly, you’ll need to implement proper error handling and logging mechanisms on your server. You should track failures in data processing or transmission, and fire retries where necessary.
Step 7
Test, debug, maintain, further development (regularly)
Before going live (and periodically forever), thoroughly test your server-side tracking setup. Ensure that data is accurately captured, processed, and forwarded. Use debugging tools to inspect incoming HTTP requests and responses, and verify that your tracking logic works across different browsers and devices. Also, you’ll need to set up a plan to not only maintain your setup’s efficiency but scale it too to handle growing amount of traffic and new data destinations.
…simple, right?
Yeah, we thought so. And would you believe it? The next option isn’t even the easiest way.
2. Using a server-side tagging tool like GTM Server Side
Difficulty rating: 4/5 😅
We’ll tell you all about that even easier way in a moment, but for a middle-of-the-road example, the generic setup of a server-side tagging system in Google’s Server Side tool looks like this:
Step 1
Set up cloud hosting
Create a Google Cloud Project, enable billing, and set up App Engine on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
Step 2
Create a server-side container
In Google Tag Manager, create a Tag Manager Server container, deploy it on GCP, and get the container URL.
Step 3
Set up a custom domain (optional)
Configure your domain’s DNS settings to route traffic through your server container. For example, you might set up a subdomain like track.yourdomain.com and point it to the App Engine instance. This will make your tracking more secure and maintain first-party context for your data.
Step 4
Update client-side tags
Modify your client-side GTM tags to send data to your server container. This typically involves replacing or modifying existing tags to route data through the server-side container.
Step 5
Forward the data
In the server-side container, set up tags to forward data to third-party services like Google Analytics or Facebook Pixel. This is the most resource-intensive part, as you must configure each data destination separately. Yep, that means hashing, payloads, data layer work, pixel setups, conversion API configurations, and deduplication have to happen one by one.
Step 6
Test data flow
Test your implementation to ensure data is being passed correctly from the client (browser or app) to the server-side container, and then to your tracking platforms (GA4, Facebook, etc.). Use tools like Preview Mode in GTM and browser developer tools to check that the tracking requests are working as expected.
Step 7
Debug, maintain, further development (regularly)
Once live, continue to monitor your sGTM setup for performance and any potential issues. sGTM requires ongoing maintenance to ensure data accuracy and system efficiency. Regular monitoring helps you catch issues early and optimize your setup for better performance. This includes checking server logs, making updates to tags and CAPIs as necessary, and ensuring the server remains stable and cost-effective.
3. Server-side tracking with Tracklution
Difficulty rating: 1/5 🥳
We’ve covered the basics of a DIY setup, Server-Side Google Tag Manager, and now it’s time to show you how simple it is with Tracklution.
We take care of the difficult, time-consuming part, while you use a simple pixel-only setup — and still get all the benefits of server-side tracking. Installing Tracklution solves tracking for multiple ad platforms at once.
Step 1
Set up Tracklution data collection
5-30 minutes
This important step helps you collect data from your website and send it to the server. You can install Tracklution just like any other tracking pixel. Plus, Tracklution can also gather data from backend systems, like your CRM or CDP, for even more insights.
Step 2
Enable first-party tracking (DNS setting)
3 minutes
With a quick DNS setup, your tracking scripts will load under your own domain, making them first-party. While it's not required, we highly recommend this step—it only takes a few minutes! It helps protect your tracking from iOS restrictions, VPNs, antivirus software, and ad blockers and lets you use first-party cookies.
Step 3
Connect ad platforms
3 minutes
You can easily activate the Conversion APIs for multiple ad platforms with just a few clicks—no technical setup needed! We’ll take care of all the development and maintenance, so you don’t have to worry about a thing.
That’s it! Tracking data starts flowing via the server to your ad platforms. Too easy.
Where do you want to install Tracklution?
🎉Woohoo, you're all done with setting up server-side tracking to your website!
Woohoo, you're all done with setting up server-side tracking to your website!
What kind of results can I get with server-side tracking?
You’ve probably figured it out by now, so in the interest of full transparency, we are a bunch of conversion tracking nerds with a pretty slick server-side tracking tool. So for this section, we’ll just share a few results that our own customers have seen after implementing server-side tracking with Tracklution.
🏎️ Simple and fast tracking implementation
When we say fast, we mean it. Like, set up within the time it takes to drink your morning coffee fast.
P.s. you can read what these people actually say riiiight here. Even the morning coffee part.
🌟 Increased conversion tracking accuracy
The average increase in tracked conversions right after switching from traditional tracking pixels to Tracklution’s server-side tracking is as high as +32.1%. In general, our users report much more accurate tracking, with improvements ranging from 11-67%.
📉 Reduction in customer acquisition cost (CAC)
Our customers see, on average, reductions of 5% to 20%, but even as impressive as 50%—which means they spend less to gain new customers.
📊 More flexibility in experimentation
Our users can easily experiment with new marketing strategies and channels without needing to rely on developers. This makes it easier to try new things and adjust their approach quickly.
🏪 Ability to combine online and offline conversions
Tracklution users can easily combine offline sales and other valuable offline-world happenings to their website activities and online conversions to improve data quality.
🤑 Ability to easily optimize for profit (not just revenue!)
While most tracking setups allow you to optimize for revenue, Tracklution’s profit tracking allows you to optimize for… profit!
Better yet, want to try it out for yourself?
Try Tracklution for free 🔥
Set up server-side tracking for your business in 30 minutes or less, no developer help needed.
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