Shopify analytics: the treasure trove of data in every Shopify store
Philipp Scambor
Director E-Commerce & Co-Founder @ Digit-One
Most Shopify merchants only scratch the surface of Shopify's analytics, without realising how comprehensive the available insights are. In just a few clicks you can build detailed reports that give you a deep look into all kinds of store metrics — and of course for any period you like. In this blog post we take a closer look at that functionality.
How to understand your customers better with Shopify Analytics
The analytics page gives you a comprehensive overview of key figures like revenue, orders and store visitors. Here you can analyse how your store is performing across every sales channel and for any period.
Analytics can be displayed for a wide range of areas of your store. They fall into the categories sales, acquisition, orders, finance, behaviour, customers, inventory and marketing. What's particularly impressive is that even users on the smallest Shopify plan have access to every report and attribute.
Let's use the conversion rate report as an example to see how a single report can be broken down to surface valuable insights.
Examples of a detailed conversion rate analysis
Alongside the at-a-glance metrics visible on the standard dashboard, you can add further metrics to it. Where it gets genuinely interesting, though, is when you open a report in detail and start playing with the attributes and filtering.
Below we visualise the steps for viewing the conversion rate metric from entirely different angles in just a few clicks. You can add attributes to compare the conversion rate against them (mobile device vs. desktop device, for instance). And the filter function lets you narrow the analysis down however you like.
- Period currently in view (in our example we've selected Q4 2023)
- Comparison period (in our example we've selected Q3 2023)
- Interval periods (we want to look at the aggregated figures, so we choose "none")
- Filtering
- Metric values
Conversion rate for mobile users vs. desktop users
By adding the "device type" column to the report, it becomes immediately clear how the conversion rate is developing for each device type.
- Metric (here you can choose which data should be compared)
- Individual metric values (in our example we want to compare device types, so we tick that here)
- Filter (you can also apply filters to narrow the results down to the essentials)
- Individual filter values (in our example we only want to compare desktop with mobile, so we tick those)
Useful links
Information on the Shopify analytics page
Shopify analytics reports in detail
Possible discrepancies between Shopify analytics and other software
Please note
The analytics shown in this blog post are for illustration only and are not real figures from our clients.
Conversion rate for search engine traffic
Attributes such as "referrer" make it possible to analyse how your store performs for all kinds of traffic. In the example below we take a closer look at traffic arriving in the store via search engines.
Conversion rate for individual markets
One great feature of the Shopify Winter Editions '24 is that every report can now also be customised via the "market name" attribute. That lets you compare individual markets and optimise your internationalisation with data behind it.
Saving custom reports
As at the publication date of this blog post, Advanced Shopify customers (and above) can save a customised report and call it up later. That means complex reports can be configured once and then revisited regularly.
Conclusion
The Shopify analytics data is there and available to every store owner. In just a few clicks you can gain valuable insights into how your customers behave. So it's well worth exploring these analytics — especially if you're planning to optimise your store. Shopify analytics are available on every Shopify plan, which makes them accessible to the entire Shopify community.