Ecommerce is more competitive now than it’s ever been. But, it’s also more trackable. This means you have access to more information to help make smart choices for your Shopify store. You need a Shopify analytics guide to leverage all this data and turn those numbers into actionable insights, and this guide can help.
Ecommerce entrepreneurs and digital marketing experts use this data every day. The reports from this data provide incredible amounts of data, but sometimes it’s too much. It’s hard to know what to do first, so a Shopify analytics guide should help point us in the right direction.
Shopify Analytics Basics:
Before you can unlock sales growth with Shopify apps for sales, you’ve got to make sure you are set up to capture it all accurately. While you can find reporting differences between the different tiers of Shopify, you can compare the various Shopify subscription plans available to make sure you’re subscribed to the one that best fits your reporting needs.
However, it’s nice to know that they all offer an overview dashboard, finance reports, and product analytics at a minimum. Most critically, as soon as you subscribe, all reporting data starts tracking back to that original date. You don’t have to start tracking at the beginning of the new year to leverage this; start at any time.
What if my reporting isn’t enough?
Sometimes the built-in information isn’t enough to take action or is missing something to complete the entire story of your customer’s journey through the website. But, there are solutions available to overcome these hurdles.
The exporting reports feature allows you to export up to 10,000 rows in a single report, giving you a significant amount of raw data to analyze. For more in-depth analysis, consider leveraging the Shopify app store. It offers various tools ranging from marketing analytics to inventory management.
Some commonly used reporting tools include Report Pundit and BeProfit Profit Calc & Reports. This data, combined with Shopify reporting, provides a comprehensive understanding of your store’s performance.
Unlocking Key Shopify Analytics
Once you capture all the information, you can unlock and leverage its incredible power. It’s always amazing to consider all the data you have available at your fingertips. Still, because it’s overwhelming, most merchants ignore it altogether.
In fact, 80% of marketing executives struggle with making data-driven decisions. Crazy, right? Don’t be intimidated, though; we’ve got your back and are here to walk with you on your journey. Let’s dive into the important types of Shopify Analytics reports available right now.
10 Shopify Report Types
Shopify reports provide a wide variety of insights into your business.
These reports are categorized into several types, such as:
- Acquisition
- Behavior
- Customer
- Inventory
- Marketing
- Orders
- Profit
- Retail Sales
- Sales
- Custom reports
These reports allow you to break down various aspects of the customer journey into different areas. Once you’ve unlocked these reports, you can use data analysis to understand the deeper connections. That’s when Shopify Analytics become essential.
1. Acquisition Reports
Ever wonder where all of your web traffic is coming from? Do you think your recent influencer campaign flopped? Or how much social media is really impacting your bottom line? If you answered yes to any of these, you need Acquisition reporting.
The beauty here is that it is tracked from all your Shopify channels and then conveniently aggregates them into a single report. Easy.
Here are a few key areas that these reports focus on:
- Sessions: These metrics, like “Sessions over time,” show you how often a potential customer visited your website during a specific period (day, week, month, year, etc.). This allows for easy year-over-year comparisons to analyze trends and assess the impact of marketing efforts.
- Sessions by referrer: This report helps determine the effectiveness of various traffic sources. It identifies which websites, links, or campaigns are driving traffic to your store, allowing you to focus on high-performing sources and optimize partnerships.
- Sessions by location: Understanding where your customers are located can significantly impact your business strategies. This data can reveal untapped markets, inform shipping policies, and guide targeted advertising campaigns based on geographic demographics.
It is vitally important to understand a key fact: each of these metrics uses cookies to help you identify individual visitors. Visitors who keep coming back, maybe on their phone one time and then on a laptop later, will be registered multiple times. This is great because, as we learn later, you can use that to drive super-specific messaging.
However, there is a catch. Data tracking stops after 30 minutes. It’s important to keep this in mind when comparing reporting for sessions to other reports. You also don’t want to stress out thinking things aren’t adding up perfectly when they likely are.
Data gets delayed by a couple of minutes because it’s shared over the internet, which, while super fast, still experiences slight blips.
Now you’re a Shopify Analytics Expert. Almost… because we’ve just begun. Next stop: Understanding visitor Behavior through its respective reporting.
2. Behavior Reports
This data is insanely addictive and can help you maximize profits in new and better ways, especially in 2024. Knowing things like products that get bundled often (if they were purchased on the same invoice as other products) means we should probably see if it makes sense to test putting these on the same page or closer together on a category page to see how they convert.
Maybe create an ad campaign with these commonly bundled items in a nice lifestyle graphic or video using these products and see if people start clicking and buying. And to take that a step further, what if you only showed that ad to a specific segment of people most likely to buy those specific products based on their past browsing history?
Let’s dive into the power behind behavior reporting.
- Conversion Over Time: This report provides insights into the percentage of website visitors who convert into paying customers. By analyzing conversion rates over different periods, you can identify trends, assess the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, and optimize website elements for better conversions.
- Website speed: In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, website speed is crucial for a positive user experience. Slow loading times can lead to higher bounce rates and lost sales. This report allows you to monitor your website’s performance and identify areas for improvement to ensure a seamless browsing experience for your customers.
3. Customer Reports
Let’s dive deeper into those special someones who are most critical to the success of your business—the customers. We’re not talking about customers as a general blob of faceless entities but understanding individuals to better segment these lovely humans to get the most return on every single dollar.
Data helps us do this by providing valuable details about individuals through metrics and reports.
Customer reports in Shopify Analytics can help you understand:
- Customer retention rate: This metric tracks how often customers return to your store to make another purchase. A high retention rate indicates customer loyalty and can be improved through strategies like loyalty programs, personalized email marketing, and exceptional customer service.
- Customer lifetime value (CLTV): CLTV represents the total revenue a customer generates for your business throughout their relationship with you. By understanding CLTV, you can focus on acquiring high-value customers and tailor your marketing efforts to encourage repeat purchases.
- Customer segmentation: Shopify Analytics allow you to segment your customers based on various criteria like demographics, purchase history, browsing behavior, and more. This segmentation enables targeted marketing campaigns and personalized recommendations, ultimately leading to higher conversion rates.
4. Inventory Reports
Inventory management is a critical aspect of any ecommerce business. Efficient inventory control ensures you have enough stock to meet demand without tying up too much capital in unsold goods.
Shopify’s Inventory reports provide the insights you need to make informed decisions about your stock levels.
These reports typically include:
- Average inventory sold per day: Knowing your average daily sales allows you to forecast future demand and adjust your reordering points accordingly, minimizing the risk of stockouts or overstocking.
- Inventory by location: If you manage inventory across multiple warehouses or retail locations, this report gives you a consolidated view of your stock levels. This real-time visibility helps optimize inventory distribution and reduces fulfillment costs.
- Low stock reports: Avoid losing out on potential sales due to stock shortages. Shopify’s low stock reports automatically alert you when inventory levels for specific products run low, giving you time to reorder and prevent missed sales opportunities.
5. Marketing Reports
Understanding the effectiveness of your marketing efforts is key to maximizing your return on investment (ROI). Shopify’s Marketing reports provide the data you need to track campaign performance, analyze customer acquisition costs, and optimize your marketing strategies for better results.
Key marketing reports in Shopify include:
- Sales attributed to marketing: This report shows you how much revenue can be directly linked to your various marketing campaigns. By tracking sales attribution, you can identify your most successful marketing channels and allocate your budget accordingly.
- Conversion by first interaction and last interaction: Understand the customer journey better by analyzing which marketing touchpoints introduce customers to your brand (first interaction) and which ones ultimately lead them to make a purchase (last interaction). This data helps refine your marketing funnel and attribute value to different stages of the customer journey.
- Returning customer rate: This report tracks the percentage of customers who return for additional purchases after their initial transaction. A high returning customer rate is a strong indicator of customer satisfaction and loyalty. Increasing your customer retention rate can significantly impact your profitability, as repeat customers generally spend more than new customers.
6. Order Reports
Order reports provide a detailed overview of all orders placed through your Shopify store. These reports offer granular insights into order volumes, average order values, and customer purchase patterns.
Some vital order reports include:
- Total sales: Track your total sales revenue over a specific period, such as daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly. This information allows you to monitor your sales trends and identify any unusual spikes or dips in order volumes. You can use total sales data to measure the success of marketing campaigns, promotional offers, and overall business growth.
- Average order value (AOV): AOV represents the average amount spent by customers on a single order. Increasing your AOV can significantly boost revenue, and you can achieve this by implementing strategies like upselling, cross-selling, and offering bundled product packages. Shopify’s order reports allow you to monitor AOV trends, identify potential areas for improvement, and measure the effectiveness of tactics aimed at increasing average order values.
- Orders by discount code: If you use discount codes in your marketing efforts, this report provides insights into their effectiveness. By analyzing order data based on discount code usage, you can measure the success of promotional campaigns, understand customer response to specific offers, and optimize future discounting strategies for maximum impact.
7. Profit Reports
Profitability is the lifeblood of any successful business. Shopify’s Profit reports offer insights into your earnings, costs, and margins, helping you make data-driven decisions to optimize your pricing strategies and overall financial performance.
These reports can help answer questions such as:
- What is my gross profit margin? Gross profit margin represents the percentage of revenue remaining after subtracting the direct costs associated with producing and selling your products (COGS or Cost of Goods Sold). Monitoring your gross profit margin is essential for understanding your pricing strategy’s effectiveness and overall business profitability.
- What is my net profit margin? Net profit margin considers all business expenses, including operating costs like marketing, salaries, rent, and utilities. Tracking your net profit margin is crucial for understanding your business’s overall financial health and identifying areas for cost optimization.
- How are my individual products performing in terms of profitability? By analyzing the profit margins of individual products or product categories, you can identify your top performers and areas where costs might be cutting into your profits. This data allows for strategic decisions like adjusting pricing, negotiating better rates with suppliers, or discontinuing low-performing items.
8. Retail Sales Report
For businesses with physical retail stores integrated with their Shopify platform, the Retail Sales reports offer valuable insights into in-store performance.
These reports provide a consolidated view of both online and offline sales, allowing you to:
- Track sales trends across all channels: Understand how your sales perform across online and offline channels. Identify trends, compare performance, and adjust strategies based on insights gleaned from this holistic view of your sales data.
- Analyze the impact of omnichannel strategies: If you offer services like “buy online, pick up in-store” or accept online returns at physical locations, retail sales reports provide data on the effectiveness of these omnichannel strategies. Understanding how customers interact with your brand across different touchpoints helps you create a seamless and integrated shopping experience.
- Manage inventory and staff more efficiently: By understanding peak shopping hours and product demand patterns across online and retail stores, you can optimize staffing levels and inventory distribution to ensure you meet customer demand without overstretching resources.
9. Sales Reports
Sales reports delve deeper into your sales data, offering a granular understanding of revenue streams, customer behavior, and product performance.
These reports empower you to:
- Analyze sales by product: Identify your best-selling products, understand which items contribute most to your revenue, and make informed decisions about inventory management, marketing promotions, and product development based on real-time sales data.
- Track sales by sales channel: Gain insights into the performance of different sales channels, such as online stores, social media platforms, marketplaces like Amazon or Etsy, and physical retail locations if applicable. This data helps you optimize your channel strategies and allocate resources effectively.
- Monitor sales by discount and promotions: Analyze the effectiveness of discount codes, promotional offers, and sales campaigns. Track revenue generated through these promotions, understand customer response rates, and optimize future marketing strategies for better results.
10. Custom Reports
While Shopify’s pre-built reports provide a wealth of information, you can create custom reports tailored to your business’s specific needs. These reports offer the flexibility to combine various data points, apply filters, and generate visualizations that align with your unique analytical goals.
Custom reports are particularly beneficial for:
- Tracking unique key performance indicators (KPIs): Define and monitor the metrics that matter most to your business. Whether tracking customer acquisition costs, average order values, or conversion rates for specific products, custom reports provide a focused view of the KPIs driving your business’s success.
- Conducting cohort analysis: Group customers based on shared characteristics, such as acquisition date, purchase history, or engagement levels. This allows you to analyze customer behavior over time, identify trends within specific customer segments, and tailor your marketing efforts accordingly. For instance, you can compare the lifetime value of customers acquired through different marketing channels or analyze the retention rates of customers who made their first purchase during a specific promotional campaign.
- Creating custom dashboards for different stakeholders: Tailor data visualizations and reports to meet the specific needs of different teams or individuals within your organization. Provide your marketing team with a focused dashboard tracking campaign performance and customer acquisition costs while offering your operations team insights into order fulfillment efficiency and inventory turnover rates. Custom dashboards streamline data communication and empower different departments to make data-driven decisions relevant to their areas of responsibility.
Dario`s Conclusion
No matter the size of your business or experience, remember one important truth: a successful online store starts with understanding your customers and using a Shopify analytics guide to help influence smart, data-driven business decisions.
With these insights, the possibilities to help your store grow and become successful are truly limitless. This Shopify analytics guide is just the start, go explore.
Frequently Asked Questions
