What will you learn from the article?
- What is Shopify Analytics and what features does it offer?
- Why is data analysis crucial to the success of an online store?
- What types of reports does Shopify Analytics offer and how can they support business decisions?
- What are the main advantages and disadvantages of using Shopify Analytics compared to other analytics tools?
- What key analytical indicators are worth monitoring to optimize your store's operations?
What is Shopify Analytics? Why is analytics important? What are the main features of Shopify analytics tools? What types of reports are available in Shopify Analytics? What are the advantages and disadvantages of Shopify Analytics? These are some of the questions we answer in this article.
Why is data analysis important?
Every entrepreneur (not just those focusing on online sales) knows that one of the key elements of running a business is constantly verifying and analyzing data. Why is data analysis so important?
Several aspects are worth mentioning: first, by analyzing data, we can determine whether our sales tactics are effective—in simple terms, whether the conversion rate is satisfactory. If the analysis indicates otherwise, we have a clear signal that we need to change direction. Second, analysis is useful, among other things, for conducting AB tests, and it allows us to determine which variant is more effective. Third, based on analysis, we can predict behavioral trends to some extent and prepare for, for example, increased traffic in a given period based on historical data or, knowing from the analysis that a specific period will be characterized by lower customer activity, plan appropriate marketing and sales campaigns. Fourth, by analyzing data, we can plan optimization activities in almost every area of e-business.
What is Shopify Analytics?
Shopify Analytics is a set of tools for analyzing data in your Shopify store. It offers a range of ready-made analyses and reports covering key aspects of running an e-commerce business. The main goal of Shopify Analytics is to provide the widest possible range of data, allowing you to optimize your store and related operations.
Where can I find reports in Shopify?
Shopify Analytics reports are located in Analytics -> Reports
Key features of Shopify analytics tools
When it comes to the main functions of Shopify analytical tools, we can distinguish three categories: analyses, reports, and live view.
When it comes to analytics, e-commerce owners can analyze total sales, sales by channel, online store sessions, online store conversion rate, total orders, average order value, top-selling products, customer cohort analysis, repeat customer rate, sales driven by marketing, sessions by location, sessions by device type, sessions by source, sales by source, top referring pages by session, sessions by traffic source, sales by traffic source, top landing pages by session, retail sales by checkout staff, retail sales by POS location, order history, customers by time period (new vs. returning), products by sales rate.
Analyses can be displayed with data from today, yesterday, the last 7, 30, 90, and 365 days, and the last month. You can also define a specific date range. Another useful reporting feature is comparison (with the last period, the previous year, the previous quarter, or with Black Friday and Cyber Monday).
As for reports, we discuss them in more detail in the next part of the article.
Live view (i.e. live data) allows you to track traffic in real time: current visitors, total sales, total sessions, total orders, top locations, customers, main products, customer behavior.
This tab is most popular when larger promotional campaigns start, e.g. Black Friday.
Types of reports in Shopify Analytics
When it comes to report types in Shopify Analytics, there are 11 categories: finance, customers, marketing, profit margin, fraud, acquisition, sales, retail, behavior, orders, and inventory. Below are the reports available in each category:
- Finances:
- cost of goods sold
- tips
- taxes
- summary
- payments
- gross payments by month
- payments by type
- discounts
- gift card balance
- net sales
- net sales without costs
- net sales with costs
- shipment
- phrases
- gross profit
- total sales
- Clients:
- customer cohort analysis
- customer history
- one-time customers
- customers by location
- customers by expected spending level
- returning customers
- selling new customers vs selling returning customers
- Marketing:
- conversion on last interaction
- first interaction conversion
- attribution model comparison
- sessions generated through marketing
- sell realized thanks to marketing
- Profit margin:
- profit by product variant SKU
- profit by point of sale location
- profit by product
- Scams:
- acceptance rate
- high-risk order index
- orders canceled due to fraud
- Acquisition:
- session history
- sessions by location
- sessions by referrer
- Sale:
- sales history
- history of average order value
- sales by product variant SKU
- sales by product supplier
- sales by channel
- sales by settlement location
- sales by customer name
- sales by product
- sale by discount
- sales by referrer traffic
- Retail:
- retail by product variant SKU
- retail sales by product supplier
- retail sales by point of sale location
- retail sales by checkout staff
- retail sales by checkout staff (daily)
- retail sales by sales staff
- retail by product
- retail sales by product type
- Behaviors:
- online store cart analysis
- online store conversion history
- conversions for product recommendations in a given period
- conversions from search in a given period
- most popular searches in the online store
- most popular searches in the online store without clicking
- most popular searches in online store with no results
- source product with low recommendation click-through rate
- sessions by landing page
- sessions by device
- website performance
- Orders:
- processing, shipping and delivery times
- shipping labels
- history of shipping labels
- implementation history
- order history
- orders and product returns
- Supplies:
- ABS analysis by product
- month-end inventory snapshot
- remaining days of supply coverage
- percentage of inventory sold
- value of inventories at the end of the month
- sales rate by product
- average quantity of inventory sold per day
These are not all the tools and reports in Shopify Analytics, as there are also so-called custom reports available, where you can choose from templates (i.e. sales history, payment by method, taxes collected over time, session history, customers by order value):
Key analytical indicators
When it comes to key analytical metrics in Shopify Analytics, here are five to pay attention to:
-> total sales
Why? Total sales (total gross sales after adding shipping, taxes, duties, and fees, and after subtracting any discounts and returns. This includes all sales channels) is crucial because it provides a bird's-eye view of the most important metric in a store: sales volume.
-> conversion rate
Why? Conversion rate represents the percentage of sessions that resulted in online store orders out of the total number of sessions. It allows us to verify, among other things, how much traffic we need to generate to reach our sales targets.
-> cart abandonment rate
Why? Knowing the scale of abandoned shopping carts, we can prepare an appropriate strategy to rescue them, for example through marketing automation and Shopify Flow .
-> average order value
Why? Average order value is gross sales (minus discounts) divided by the total number of orders. It doesn't take into account things like exchanges or returns made within an order after it's been placed. Knowing the average order value allows you to implement appropriate cross-selling and up-selling strategies.
-> returning customer rate
Why? Your repeat customer rate in Shopify Analytics is the percentage of customers who placed more than one order with your store, out of all customers who placed an order during a selected date range.
Integration with Google Analytics
Shopify Analytics is one of the options for analytics and data acquisition, but of course we cannot forget about Google Analytics, with which integration in the Shopify store is very simple.
Once you have your Google Analytics account set up and configured, you can connect it to Shopify by clicking Online Store -> Preferences -> Set Up Google Analytics
Then select 'Install':
In the last step, we connect the store to our Google account:
In the case of shop owners Shopify Poland We recommend using both Shopify and Google Analytics.
Advantages and disadvantages of Shopify Analytics
Like any system or tool, we can point out both advantages and disadvantages of Shopify Analytics.
When it comes to advantages, Shopigfy Analytics is undoubtedly the sheer number of reports you can download and the variety of reports they can provide. Verifying the best sales times and days by week, month, quarter, or year is a popular option.
The advantages include the fact that Shopify Analytics is a free and native tool, so we don't have to worry about the costs of the application or the entire implementation process.
Shopify is constantly evolving, and over the years, it's clear how much it's invested. These investments haven't been spared in analytics, and it's clear that we're making steady progress in this area as well. Shopify users can therefore rest assured that new developments in analytics will continue to emerge over time.
Many Shopify store owners also cite the live view option as a key advantage of Shopify Analytics. It's also worth noting that the entire analytics database has a very intuitive and user-friendly interface for managing and browsing.
When it comes to the disadvantages of Shopify Analytics, it can certainly be noted that in the lower plans (Basic and Shopify), reporting is not as extensive, only in the Shopify Advanced and Shopify Plus plans we have advanced reporting with the option of creating custom analyses.
Another potential disadvantage is that if someone, for some reason, decides to migrate from Shopify to another system, they will not be able to transfer the database of data collected in analytics, because Shopify Analytics is closely and inextricably linked only to this sales engine.
Summary
- Shopify Analytics is an analytical tool offering a wide range of reports and analyses, helping to optimize online store operations, monitor sales, conversions and customer behavior.
- Shopify Analytics Key Features include sales, session, conversion and customer analysis, as well as a “live view” function for tracking data in real time.
- Types of reports in Shopify Analytics covers categories like finance, marketing, sales, fraud, customer acquisition, inventory, and more, with customizable date ranges and comparisons.
- Key analytical indicators These include total sales, conversion rate, average order value, cart abandonment rate and the number of returning customers, which help monitor the store's effectiveness.
- Advantages of Shopify Analytics it offers free access, a rich set of reports, integration with Google Analytics and an intuitive interface, however, lower plans offer limited reporting features.
- Disadvantages of Shopify Analytics These include the inability to transfer analytical data during migration and limited features in cheaper subscription plans, which may require upgrading to a higher plan for advanced reporting.
