Shopify analytics: How to track and improve store performance
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Running an online store can be a difficult balancing act. Between managing inventory, marketing campaigns, and customer service, you can easily lose sight of what’s working and where adjustments can be made. That’s where Shopify Analytics comes in handy.
Shopify Analytics is a powerful tool that provides a wealth of data to help better understand your customers, track sales trends, and identify areas for improvement.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through the Shopify Analytics dashboard, breaking down key metrics and offering actionable tips on how to use them to grow your business. By leveraging the insights you gain from using Shopify Analytics, you can make informed decisions regarding your store to optimize its performance and increase sales.
Main takeaways from this article:
Shopify Analytics equips you with a comprehensive dashboard, offering reports that delve into sales, customers, marketing, inventory, finances, and more.
You can leverage metrics like sales trends and customer behavior patterns to make informed decisions to optimize your store's operations and boost your bottom line.
Shopify Analytics seamlessly integrates with your Shopify store, eliminating the need for a complex setup.
While Shopify Analytics excels in ecommerce-specific metrics, you can also integrate Google Analytics for even deeper insights into user behavior across different platforms.
What is Shopify Analytics?
Shopify Analytics is a tool on the Shopify platform that provides detailed insights into various aspects of an online store’s performance. It offers a range of reports and dashboards that cover metrics like sales, customer behavior, and marketing effectiveness that help you make informed decisions to improve and optimize your store's operations.
Types of Shopify reports
Shopify offers various reports that provide insights into every aspect of your ecommerce business. Let's explore these reports in detail.
Sales reports
Sales reports in Shopify provide insights into your store's revenue and help identify trends over time. Here's how you can track sales using these reports:
Sales by product: Identify which products perform best and contribute the most to your revenue.
Sales by month: Spot seasonal trends and adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.
Sales by channel: Learn from which sales channels (online store, social media, etc.) your revenue is generated.
Discounts: See how promotional discounts are impacting your overall sales.
Customer reports
Understanding your customer base is crucial for any ecommerce business, and Shopify's customer reports make it easy to dive deep into customer data. Here's what these reports help you identify:
First-time vs. returning customers: This report shows the number of new customers versus those making repeat purchases, helping you gauge customer loyalty.
Customers over time: Track how your customer base grows over weeks, months, or years, providing insights into long-term trends.
Returning customer rate: Understand the percentage of customers who return to make additional purchases, indicating your retention success.
Customer cohort analysis: Analyze groups of customers who made their first purchase in a specific period to identify purchasing behavior patterns over time.
Acquisition reports
Shopify's acquisition reports provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of your marketing channels. Here's how:
Sessions over time: This report shows the trend of customer visits over a selected period, allowing you to gauge the impact of your marketing efforts.
Sessions by location: This data helps you identify where your site visitors are coming from geographically, allowing you to more effectively target location-based marketing campaigns.
Sessions by device: Gain insights into what devices your customers use to access your store, enabling you to improve the user experience across different platforms.
Sessions by traffic source: Learn which channels (e.g., organic search, paid ads, Google ads, social media) are most effective in bringing visitors to your store's landing page.
Behavior reports
Behavior reports in Shopify Analytics provide you with a deep understanding of how visitors interact with your store. Here are some key points:
Product views: Shows which products attract the most attention, helping you focus your marketing efforts effectively.
Online store conversion over time: This helps you understand how well your store converts visitors into customers over different periods.
Landing pages: Indicates which pages visitors land on first, revealing the content that draws the initial interest.
Referrer URLs: Shows where your traffic is coming from, allowing you to assess the effectiveness of different marketing channels.
Finance reports
These reports enable you to understand your store’s cash flow and financial health effectively. Here are the insights you get from this report:
Gross sales: Track the total sales generated before any deductions for discounts, returns, or taxes.
Net sales: Understand your actual sales revenue after accounting for returns, discounts, and taxes.
Total sales: Sum of all sales, covering all purchases made within the selected timeframe.
Taxes: Get insights into the taxes collected from your sales, which is crucial for compliance and financial planning.
Marketing reports
Marketing reports in Shopify offer invaluable insights into the effectiveness of your marketing and promotion efforts. Here's what these reports help you uncover:
Sales by marketing campaign: This report shows the sales that result from your marketing campaigns, helping you measure their effectiveness.
Sessions attributed to marketing: See how many sessions on your store can be attributed to specific marketing efforts, providing a clear view of what's driving traffic.
Attributed marketing sales: Understand the direct sales generated from your marketing activities, which will allow you to gauge the success of individual campaigns.
Customers by marketing source: This data details the number of new and returning customers acquired through various marketing channels.
Inventory reports
On Shopify, inventory reports are indispensable for tracking your products and understanding their availability. Here's the information you get via these reports:
Current inventory level: This shows how many units of each product are currently in stock, helping you monitor inventory in real-time.
Low stock: Alerts you about products that are running low on stock so you can restock them promptly.
Inventory over time: Provides data on stock levels over a specific period, giving insights into how inventory fluctuates.
ABC analysis by product: Categorize your inventory items based on their importance for your business so you can prioritize stock management efforts.
Profit reports
Profit reports provide a vital snapshot of your Shopify store's financial performance. By analyzing these reports, you can gain a detailed understanding of:
Total returns: Monitoring returns ensures you know how often customers return items, affecting your net profit.
Total shipping: Monitor the shipping costs associated with fulfilling orders, as these can affect your overall profit margins.
Net sales: Net sales represent the total revenue earned after accounting for discounts, returns, taxes, and shipping costs.
Total cost: This includes the cost of goods sold (COGS) and other expenses directly tied to products sold.
Fraud reports
Protecting your Shopify stores from fraudulent activities is crucial for maintaining a healthy business; this is where fraud reports become indispensable. Let's look at what these reports provide:
Fraud analysis indicators: Evaluate various signals, such as the AVS result, CVV result, IP geolocation, and customer order history, that might point to fraudulent behavior.
Risk assessment tools: Understand the fraud risk scores to assess the likelihood of suspicious activities quickly. These scores are based on multiple criteria evaluated for each transaction.
Detailed order insights: Access in-depth data for each order, including billing and shipping addresses, payment methods, and any unusual activity associated with the order.
Automated alerts: Receive notifications about high-risk orders so you can take immediate action, preventing potential loss or chargebacks.
Order reports
Understanding your customers' buying patterns helps optimize your store's sales performance. With order reports, you can track:
Open orders: Focus on orders that haven’t been fulfilled yet to prioritize your fulfillment processes.
Unfulfilled orders: Identify gaps in your order completion process by tracking orders that are still pending.
Cancelled orders: Monitor the reasons behind order cancellations to improve customer satisfaction and reduce churn.
Returned orders: Analyze returned orders to identify common issues and areas for product improvement.
Live view
This window into your store’s real-time operations can help you make swift, data-driven decisions. Here's a look at what it entails:
Interactive map: Visualize visitor activity around the globe on an interactive map.
Visitor funnel: Understand the different stages of your visitor's journey, from landing on your site to purchasing a product.
Trend identification: Spot trends as they happen to take immediate action when needed.
Custom reports
With custom reports, you can dig deeper into various aspects of your store's performance, ensuring that you capture the most relevant metrics for your goals. Here’s how you can leverage custom reports:
Create tailored reports: Build reports focusing on specific metrics and dimensions critical to your business.
Filter data: Use advanced filters to narrow down your reports to the most relevant information.
Save custom views: Save your customized reports for easy access and repeated use.
Share insights: Easily share your custom reports with your team to keep everyone informed.
Shopify Analytics vs. Google Analytics
When evaluating tools to analyze your ecommerce data, both Shopify Analytics and Google Analytics offer robust features, but they serve different purposes.
Platform integration: Shopify Analytics is natively integrated into the Shopify platform, providing access to store-related data without additional setup. In contrast, Google Analytics requires integration via tracking codes but offers a more extensive and customizable set of analytics features.
Data granularity: Shopify Analytics focuses on ecommerce-specific metrics like sales, conversion rates, and order values. Google Analytics dives deeper, allowing you to analyze user behavior across different traffic sources, demographics, and even customer journeys.
Ease of use: Shopify Analytics is user-friendly and designed specifically for store owners, making it easier to access and understand essential business metrics without any technical knowledge. Google Analytics, while powerful, has a steeper learning curve and may require some familiarity with analytics terminology and setup.
Which one should you choose? Here are a few scenarios to consider before making your choice:
For a comprehensive view of user behavior: Google Analytics shines with its detailed insights into how visitors interact with your site, from traffic sources to individual page sessions and user flow.
For straightforward ecommerce metrics: Shopify Analytics is ideal if you're looking for a quick, accessible overview of sales performance, customer data, and other ecommerce-specific insights without delving into complex configurations.
For advanced marketing analysis: Google Analytics provides superior tracking of various marketing efforts, helping you measure the impact of campaigns, paid advertisements, and social media strategies in one place.
Integrating Google Analytics with Shopify
Integrating Google Analytics with your Shopify store is a straightforward process that can enhance your ability to track and analyze ecommerce data. Here’s how you can do it in five simple steps:
Create a Google Analytics account: If you don't already have one, sign up for a free one at analytics.google.com.
Set up a property: Create a new property for your Shopify store in your Google Analytics account. Follow the prompts to set up your property details.
Get your tracking ID: After setting up your property, Google Analytics will provide you with a unique tracking ID (e.g., UA-XXXXXXXXX-X). Keep this ID handy.
Add the tracking ID to Shopify: Go to your Shopify admin, navigate to Online Store > Preferences, and paste the tracking ID into the Google Analytics section. Make sure to save your changes.
Enable enhanced ecommerce tracking: In your Google Analytics account, navigate to Admin > Ecommerce Settings, and turn on both Enable Ecommerce and Enable Enhanced Ecommerce Reporting.
Integrating your Shopify store with Google Analytics unlocks several benefits, such as:
Improved user behavior tracking: Understand how visitors interact with your store, from landing pages to checkout, helping you optimize the customer's journey.
Enhanced conversion tracking: Track important metrics like cart abandonment rates, conversion rates, and average order value to make data-driven decisions.
Better marketing insights: Assess the performance of your marketing campaigns, including referral traffic, social media promotions, and paid advertising, to fine-tune your strategies.
Customizable reports: Create tailored reports that align with your business goals, ensuring you focus on metrics that matter the most to your success.
How to use ecommerce data to improve your store's performance
Understanding ecommerce data can reveal hidden trends and customer behaviors that can significantly boost your store’s performance when analyzed and acted upon. Let’s explore how you can transform raw data into actionable strategies for continuous improvement:
Set clear benchmarks: Determine your key performance indicators (KPIs), such as conversion rate, average order value, and customer lifetime value. Use these metrics to measure your store's performance over time.
Analyze customer behavior: Look at how customers navigate through your store, what products they are most interested in, and where they drop off. Use behavior reports to refine the customer journey and enhance user experience.
Monitor sales trends: Analyze your sales reports to identify best-selling products and peak sales periods. This can help you plan inventory and marketing strategies more effectively.
Evaluate financial health: Use finance reports to monitor profit margins and overall store expenses. This will help you make informed decisions about pricing and budgeting.
Enhance your online store with Gelato
Understanding and utilizing comprehensive analytics is crucial to your success as you navigate the dynamic world of ecommerce. From dissecting sales reports to leveraging behavior insights, the tools and strategies covered in this post give you the knowledge to make smarter decisions.
With integrations like Gelato, boosting your store's performance and customer satisfaction is within reach!
Utilizing Gelato's smart analytics solutions can revolutionize your Shopify store effortlessly by integrating powerful data insights to enhance your product offerings, improve customer satisfaction, and optimize overall performance.
Joining Gelato Platinum takes it a step further with exclusive benefits such as advanced reporting, priority support, and access to a broader range of print and logistics options. This exclusive membership ensures your ecommerce store operates at peak efficiency with invaluable insights and tools tailored to your unique needs.
Ready to take your online store to the next level? Talk to sales today!