How to set up Triple Whale for your Shopify store

Triple Whale has 4 tiers. The differences matter and the website undersells them.

Inspire (~$129/mo): basic Shopify + Meta + Google. No Triple Whale Pixel (TW Pixel). No Sonar (server-side pixel). No Moby AI. Fine for stores under $100K/mo wanting a single dashboard — but you do NOT get the attribution engine that makes Triple Whale Triple Whale.

Grow (~$299/mo): adds TW Pixel + basic attribution + 1 Sonar integration. This is the floor for actually using the platform as intended. If you're below $300K/mo on Shopify, this is usually your tier.

Scale (~$629/mo and up): adds multi-pixel attribution, full Sonar, Moby AI, cohort analysis, and creative analytics. Required if you run multi-brand or multi-store. The math justifies it around $500K/mo Shopify revenue.

Enterprise: custom-priced, adds dedicated CSM + custom integrations. Only relevant at $5M/yr+ Shopify revenue.

Pick the tier ONCE you know what you need — don't start on Inspire and upgrade mid-setup, because the data won't back-fill cleanly for attribution metrics that require the higher-tier pixel.

In Triple Whale → Settings → Integrations → Shopify → Connect.

OAuth into the Shopify Admin account that owns the store. You need full admin — staff accounts with limited permissions cannot grant the scopes Triple Whale needs.

Triple Whale syncs the last 90 days of orders, customers, and product data on first connect. This takes 30-90 minutes depending on store size. DO NOT touch other integrations until this finishes — concurrent syncs slow the process and occasionally corrupt the initial baseline.

After the sync, open Dashboard → Summary. You should see Total Revenue, Orders, AOV, and Gross Profit for the trailing 90 days. If these numbers don't match Shopify Admin → Analytics within 1-2%, something is wrong — usually a missing app permission or a Shopify Markets multi-currency config that needs manual mapping.

Verify the COGS field is populating. If Shopify "cost per item" is empty on your products, Triple Whale shows $0 gross profit and every margin-based number is broken. Set COGS in Shopify Admin → Products → Variants before continuing.

Settings → Integrations → Meta Ads → Connect.

On the Meta OAuth screen, you MUST select all ad accounts you want Triple Whale to read, and you MUST keep all default permissions checked. If you uncheck "Manage your business" or "Read insights," attribution will be partial and Sonar (server-side conversion API) will fail later.

Meta sometimes throws "permissions error" — this usually means the Facebook user authenticating doesn't have the right Business Manager role. The user needs at least "Advertiser" + "Pixels: Manage" on the Business Manager. Have your agency or partner grant this before you click Connect.

Settings → Integrations → Google Ads → Connect.

OAuth with the Google account that owns or manages the Google Ads account. If your account sits under an MCC (manager account), connect at the MCC level so future child accounts auto-flow.

After both connect, wait 60-90 minutes for the historical sync. Triple Whale pulls the last 90 days of ad spend, clicks, impressions, and platform-native conversions.

In Triple Whale → Settings → Pixel → Install.

Triple Whale offers two install paths: (1) "Recommended: Shopify App" — the TW Pixel auto-installs via the Triple Whale Shopify app and uses Shopify Customer Events. (2) "Manual: Additional Scripts" — legacy, deprecated on stores using checkout extensibility.

Use Path 1 (Shopify App) on any store. Path 2 stops working in 2025 because Shopify deprecated checkout.liquid.

In Shopify Admin → Settings → Customer events, verify the "Triple Whale" pixel appears as a connected custom pixel with status "Connected" + permission "Default permission."

Open your storefront in an incognito browser. Trigger the developer console. Type `window.TriplePixel` — you should see the pixel object. If it returns undefined, the pixel is NOT installed despite what the dashboard says.

Run a real test purchase in incognito mode (use a real card, refund yourself after). Within 5 minutes, the order should appear in Triple Whale → Sonar → Recent Events with the right channel attribution.

Triple Whale offers 4 attribution models, and the model picker is hidden in Settings — most users never touch it and end up reading Last-Click numbers thinking they're looking at TW Pixel-based attribution.

Triple Whale Pixel attribution: uses TW Pixel cookies + Sonar server-side data to track which ad a customer actually saw before converting, even across devices and ITP browsers. This is the model you're paying Triple Whale for. Default for most accounts.

Last-Click: same as Shopify's default. Whatever channel sent the final click before the order gets all the credit. Good for sanity-checking against platform-native dashboards.

First-Click: gives all credit to the first touchpoint. Useful for understanding upper-funnel campaigns but undervalues lower-funnel.

Multi-Touch (Linear or Time-Decay): splits credit across all touchpoints. Most "accurate" in theory but hardest to action because no single number is a clear signal.

Recommendation: set default to "Triple Whale Pixel" for the main dashboard. Add Last-Click as a secondary view for cross-checking against Meta/Google's own numbers.

Note: changing the model retroactively recomputes all historical reports. Pick once, commit for 30+ days, then evaluate.

Dashboards → + New Dashboard → "Morning Summary."

Add these widgets in order: (1) Net Revenue (last 24h vs prior 24h), (2) Blended ROAS (last 7d), (3) New Customer Revenue %, (4) Spend by Channel (last 7d), (5) Top 5 Products by Revenue, (6) Pixel-attributed Revenue by Channel.

Do NOT add: 30+ widget walls of every metric. The point of this dashboard is something you can read in 60 seconds with morning coffee. Optimize for actionable signal, not completeness.

Set the dashboard as your default landing page (Settings → Default Dashboard → Morning Summary).

Pin the dashboard URL or use Triple Whale's Slack integration to push a daily digest at 8am.

Wait 7 days after pixel install and integration connects. The first 7 days have noisy attribution because the TW Pixel needs time to fingerprint returning customers across devices.

Audit 1: Triple Whale Total Revenue vs Shopify Admin Total Revenue — should match within 1-2%. If off by 5%+, there's a sync issue or multi-currency config gap.

Audit 2: Triple Whale Meta Spend vs Meta Ads Manager Spend — should match within 1%. Mismatch usually means a missing ad account in the integration.

Audit 3: Pixel-attributed Revenue / Total Revenue — should be 50%+ within 14 days, 70%+ within 30 days. If it stays below 40% after 30 days, the pixel isn't firing on all transactions (usually Shopify Checkout customizations or third-party checkout apps interfering).

If any audit fails, fix the underlying integration BEFORE reading any number in the dashboard. Bad audit = bad data = bad decisions.