An Ultimate Guide To BigCommerce Analytics

In this comprehensive guide, we will introduce you to the basics of BigCommerce analytics and how to leverage these powerful tools to drive your ecommerce success.

BigCommerce Analytics Overview

BigCommerce’s Ecommerce Analytics feature is a built-in robust toolkit that provides e-commerce businesses with valuable insights and data-driven intelligence to enhance their online performance. 

These tools offer a complete overview of customer interactions and revenue generation across all your marketing channels, all conveniently gathered on a single, unified platform.

The integrated analytics suite comprises 11 tailored reports:

• Store overview report: Obtain a comprehensive snapshot of business metrics, purchase funnel, abandoned carts, top products, and marketing channel sales.
• Real-time report: Monitor revenue, orders, and on-site visitors in real time, assessing the immediate impact of email campaigns and social media launches.
• Merchandising report: Track SKU-level sales for precise inventory management and optimization.
• Marketing report: Access all marketing activities in one place, gaining detailed insights into the impact of each email campaign.
• Orders report: Easily view detailed order information and assess various transaction aspects with a single click.
• Customers report: Analyze customer segments to identify top spenders and optimize marketing campaigns for increased revenue.
• Purchase funnel report: Understand visitor shopping behavior, pinpointing potential hurdles in the shopping experience.
• Carts report: Analyze products commonly left in shopping carts, facilitating A/B testing for improved conversions.
• In-store search report: Tailor the shopping experience by discovering what shoppers are searching for in your store.
• Sales tax report: Track orders with applied taxes, providing details on jurisdiction and tax rates.
• Ecommerce Insights (Premium): Receive data-driven suggestions to enhance overall business performance, focusing on improving conversion rates and customer loyalty.

The BigCommerce feature of Ecommerce Analytics is available to all stores, regardless of their plan.

How To Access BigCommerce Analytics Dashboard

Users can easily access the analytics dashboard within the BigCommerce platform by following the steps below. Also, through this, you can catch the most fundamental function of the dashboard.

1. Login to the BigCommerce account: Navigate to the BigCommerce login page and enter your credentials to access your account.
2. Access the dashboard: Once logged in, you will land on the BigCommerce dashboard. Navigate to the “Analytics” tab located in the main control panel. It is available in all stores by default.

3. Choose specific analytics report: From the dropdown menu, select the specific analytics report you want to explore.
4. Customize date ranges (optional): Depending on the report, you have a specific timestamp and the option to customize date ranges on the top right of each dashboard. Use this feature to analyze data over specific periods.

5. Review and analyze data: Each analytics report will display relevant data and insights related to the chosen category. Review the information presented, including graphs, charts, and detailed metrics.
6. Export data (optional): Many analytics dashboards offer the option to export data. If needed, look for an export subsection under each report section to download reports for advanced export.

BigCommerce lets users export these reports as a CSV file: 

• Customers Report
• Sales Tax Report
• Orders Report
• Merchandising Report
• Marketing Report
• Carts Report

The BigCommerce analytics dashboard is designed for intuitive navigation, providing a user-friendly interface to monitor key metrics.

BigCommerce Analytics: Core Reports

Let’s go through what you can achieve with BigCommerce analytics.

Store Overview Report

The Store Overview Report summarizes your store’s essential metrics, offering a comprehensive snapshot of key aspects that effortlessly allow you to stay informed about the health and performance of your business.

The components incorporating specific metrics included are:

• Top line statistic: display all the online store’s key metrics.
  • Orders: Number of orders
  • Revenue: Total monetary value generated from orders
  • Customers: Number of individuals who made an order
  • Visits: Total number of visits
  • Conversion rate: Percentage of visitors who make a purchase.
  • AOV: Average monetary value of each eligible order (returns and refunds are not included)
• Revenue graph: tracks the total revenue throughout the chosen timeframe, drawing a comparison with the previous period
  • Revenue over Time: revenue over a given time (daily/hourly)
• Purchase funnel: summarize the visitors’ actions on the site before purchasing.
  • Visited: Total number of visits (each new visit after 30 minutes of inactivity)
  • Shopped: Visits that viewed at least one product page 
  • Added to Cart: Visits where at least one item was added to the cart
  • Purchased: Visits with a completed order
  • % Overall Conversion rate: Percentage of visits that completed an order
  • % Looked at a product: Shopped / Visits
  • % Put an item in the cart: Added to cart / Shopped
  • % Completed a sale: Purchased / Added to cart
• Abandoned carts: display the number relevant to the activities in which customers showed interest by adding items to their carts but did not finalize the purchase.
  • Abandoned revenue:  Total revenue from all abandoned carts in a given time.
  • Abandoned carts: Total of all abandoned carts in a given time
  • Abandonment rate: Percentage of all carts that were abandoned in a given time
• Top products: display the top five highest-grossing items in your store.
  • Product ranking: Products ordered based on revenue during a specific time frame
  • Product revenue: The total sale price of a specific product, minus any discounts, within a designated time.
  • Product change in ranking: The variation in a product’s ranking between the observed period and the compared period.
• Top visits by origin: monitors top-performing marketing channels for visits, revenue, and conversion rates.
  • Visit origin ranking: Visit origins ranked by the number of visits
  • Visit origin visits: Visits originating from a specific source
  • Visit origin conv. rate: Percentage of visits resulting in an order for a specific visit origin
  • Visit origin revenue: Total revenue from visits originating from a specific source

Store owners can utilize the Store Overview Report to make strategic decisions by identifying trends and patterns, tracking revenue growth, assessing the impact of marketing efforts, and pinpointing areas for improvement. 

Real Time Report

The Real Time report provides immediate visibility into your store’s revenue, product sales, and live activity feed.

The report incorporates the following components:

• Statistics: a summary of the store’s purchases and visitors within a day, all metrics are updated up to the minute
  • Revenue
  • Visits
  • Orders
  • Items sold
• Latest products sold: There will be a list of the five most recently sold. Each of them will be redirected to their merchandising report.
• Latest activity: Latest Activity Feed, a dynamic stream showcasing live visits to your store. It provides details on visit origins, keywords used, and the elapsed time since their visit.

This real-time information is valuable for merchants, as it allows them to respond promptly to situations, monitor the success of ongoing promotions, and make quick adjustments to their marketing strategies.

Merchandising Report

The Merchandising Report is the heart of your product catalog, unlocking insights to optimize performance and enhance profitability. It covers everything from overall revenue to specific product variations.

The elements of a merchandising report include:

• Top-line statistics: These metrics focus exclusively on product-level data and may vary from the overarching statistics visible on other pages.
  • Product sold: Number of unique products sold
  • Orders: Number of orders placed 
  • Merch revenue: Total revenue from your merchandise
  • AVG Price: Average price of ordered products
  • Price range: The lowest and highest prices of ordered products
• Merchandise revenue graph: illustrates how the merchandise revenue has changed throughout the timeframe selected.
• Product table: provide vital insights on best and worst sellers, fastest and slowest growing items, and most and least visited products for quick understanding.
  • Product: The product’s name
  • SKU: SKU of each product
  • Brand: The product’s brand
  • Merch revenue: Revenue from products sold
  • Orders: Total number of orders 
  • QTY sold: Quantity of product sold
  • Visits: Number of the product’s page views 
• SKU merchandising report: display a table featuring all your store’s SKUs, organized according to the highest revenue-generating products.
  • SKU code: SKU of each product variant
  • Product
  • Attribute: the product variant
  • Merch revenue
  • QTY sold
  • Orders
• Product statistics: tracking the overall sales of products
  • Revenue
  • Average price
  • QTY sold
  • Orders
  • Visits
  • Abandon rate
• Product revenue graph: shows how the product’s revenue has changed throughout the selected time range.
• SKU statistics: provide detailed information on every variant linked to a base product identified by a SKU.
  • Revenue: Revenue from units of the SKU
  • Average price: Average price of the purchased units
  • QTY sold: Number of units of the SKU sold
  • Orders: Total number of orders that include the SKU unit
  • Visits: Number of visits to the base product page
  • Abandon rate: Percentage of abandoned carts that include the SKU
• SKUS table: provide data about the best and worse selling variants.
  • SKU code
  • Variants
  • Merch revenue
  • QTY sold
  • Orders: all eligible orders that included this variant

Generally, this report empowers merchants to identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement, guiding strategic adjustments that save and generate revenue for the business.

Marketing Report

With features akin to leading marketing analytics tools, BigCommerce Analytics’ Marketing Report, focusing on revealing how visitors discover the store, is a valuable tool for evaluating the impact of marketing initiatives.

The key elements included in the report are:

• Visit origin by revenue graph: depicts revenue trends over time associated with a specific visit origin.
  • Direct: visits came by typing the web address directly
  • Search: visits came through search engine traffic
  • Social: visits sourced from social media channels
  • Campaign: Revenue from visits resulting from UTM-tagged ads
  • Adwords: Revenue from visits resulting from Google Ads
  • Referrer: Revenue from visitors referred by another website
• Supplemental information on attributions: Request and referrer URLs are used to calculate attributions
  • Campaign
  • Adwords
  • Subdomain
• Visit origin report: show aggregate metrics by the visit origin type
  • Revenue: Revenue from orders originating from a specific referrer
  • Visits: Visits from a specific referrer
  • Orders: Orders originating from a specific referrer 
  • Conversion rate: Percentage of visits resulting in orders from a specific referrer
  • AOV: Average order value for all storefront orders from a referrer
  • RPV: Revenue per visit for a specific referrer over a given period

The report aids in assessing campaign effectiveness and identifying new advertising opportunities.

Orders Report

The Orders Report, a comprehensive overview of every transaction on the site, offers insights into product breakdowns, discounts, and the crucial average order value (AOV).

The components of the order report are:

• Top line statistics: show the overall statistic relevant to orders
  • Total orders: Total number of eligible orders
  • Units sold
  • Revenue: Sales price minus discounts
  • % orders discounted: Percentage of orders with order-level discounts.
  • AOV: The average amount of revenue from each eligible order
• Orders over time graph: A graph charts eligible orders over the selected time frame
• Order table: list all orders from the store
  • Order ID: Unique ID of each order in the system
  • Date: The day the order was created
  • Source: Channel through which the order originated
  • Subtotal: The order value before taxes and discounts
  • Line item discount
  • Order discount
  • Shipping: shipping fee
  • Tax: total tax for the order
• Order details report: provide a concise overview of a specific order, detailing the product summary, customer information, quantity of items ordered, and order and line-item level discounts.

Regularly monitoring these key metrics and tracking fluctuations over time empowers merchants to discern the impact of total orders on sales growth, facilitating informed decisions for optimizing the e-commerce strategy.

Customers Report

Customers are at the core of every business. Thus, the Customers Report is designed to offer valuable insights into customer behavior, revealing every metric that is relevant to customers’ interactions.

The report encompasses the following elements:

• Top line statistics: summary of the statistics about customers
  • Customers: Unique customers
  • New customers: Unique customers that purchase for the first time
  • % New: Percentage of customers who purchase for the first time
  • % Returning: Percentage of repeat customers
• Customers table: list all customers from the store
  • Email
  • Name
  • Type (new / returning)
  • Cohort: Group based on their store’s lifetime
  • 1st order channel attribution: The initial channel through which the customer made their first purchase
  • Last order information (number, date, and amount)
  • Total spent: Lifetime expenditure of the customer
• Customer details report: provide a specific customer’s detailed information about their purchasing
  • Total spent
  • Orders
  • Last purchased
  • AOV
  • Item price range (excluding tax and shipping)

With individual customer profiles encompassing every order and purchased product, this report equips businesses to create targeted marketing campaigns and effective loyalty programs, emphasizing the cultivation of existing customer relationships over constant acquisition efforts.

Purchase Funnel Report

The Purchase Funnel Report is a powerful tool that reveals the steps visitors take on your site before making a purchase. It can give store owners hints on identifying potential hurdles in the purchase flow.

The elements encompassed in the report include:

• Purchase funnel bar graph: illustrates visitor actions in four distinct stages: visited, shopped, added to cart, and purchased.
  • Visited: Total number of visits
  • Shopped: Visits that access at least 1 product page
  • Added to cart: Visits have at least 1 item added to the cart
  • Purchased: Visits with an eligible storefront order
  • Conversion rate
  • % looked at a product: Total number of visits/number of visits that included looking at a product page
  • % put an item in cart: Added to cart/ hopped
  • % completed sale: Purchased/Added to cart
• Purchase funnel over time graph: show each step in the funnel over the selected time frame.

This insightful report not only reveals the customer’s journey but also empowers you to pinpoint bottlenecks in the purchase process.

Carts Report

The Carts Report, where every cart, whether flourishing, converted, or abandoned, tells a unique story, isn’t just about numbers; it’s a gateway to enhancing customer engagement and crafting a checkout experience that keeps them coming back for more.

The elements included in the report are:

• Top line statistics: display the store’s high-level health metrics of carts
  • Abandoned carts: Count of carts untouched for over 1 hour.
  • Converted carts: Total carts created within the selected range converted into orders.
  • Live carts: Count of carts created or updated in the last hour.
  • Total carts: Overall count of carts created or modified within the selected time range, including those converted into orders.
  • Abandoned carts value: Total value of carts left idle for over 1 hour (including discounts and taxes)
  • Converted cart value: Revenue from product line items and product-level discounts (excluding shipping, taxes, and order-level discounts)
  • Live carts value: Total value of carts created or updated in the last hour (including known discounts and taxes).
  • Total carts value: Overall value of carts created or modified within the selected time range (including known discounts and taxes)
• Graph:
  • Abandoned carts: Carts are not converted into an order and are idle for over 1 hour.
  • Converted non-abandoned carts: Carts are transformed into orders before reaching abandonment.
  • Recovered carts: Items added, cart abandoned, then converted into an order.
  • Live carts: Items added, not converted, updated within the last hour.
• Abandoned carts by-products: display the top abandoned products, ranked from most to least frequently abandoned.
• Carts table: offers in-depth details about individual carts, including
  • Current status
  • Total value
  • Contents (line items)
  • Associated customer information (if available)
  • The originating channel
  • The abandonment timestamp

Merchants can leverage this information to identify abandonment patterns, strategically recover carts through email campaigns, and optimize checkout for enhanced customer conversion.

In-Store Search Report

The In-Store Search Report is a comprehensive analysis of your shoppers’ interactions with and success rates using the in-store search function on your storefront. The efficacy of the in-store search function can significantly influence conversion rates.

Included in the report are the following elements:

• Search overview: An overview of all searches conducted within a specified date range.
• Keywords with results: Enumerate searches with one or more results displayed.
• Keywords without results: Highlight searches performed by customers within a chosen date range with no results.
• Best-performing keywords: Show the store’s best-performing keywords
• Worst performing keywords: Display keywords used by customers without selecting any search results.
• Search term corrections: Reveal searches where a shopper clicked on a search suggestion or related search.

If functioning optimally, it becomes a catalyst for increased conversion rates and a deeper understanding of shopper intent. On the flip side, any inaccuracies may result in potential customers leaving your store.

Sales Tax Report

Lastly, the Sales Tax Report is a vital resource for businesses navigating the often overlooked complexities of sales tax collection and reporting. 

The report comprises the following elements:

• Period: Timeframe listed as a date, month, or year based on the “List by” field.
• Tax type: Tax jurisdiction for remitting taxes.
• Tax rate: Percentage representation of the tax rate.
• Number of orders: Count orders where the tax rate was applied in the selected date range.
• Tax amount: Sum of the taxable amount.

Whether for ongoing accounting precision or simplifying tax season tasks, this report provides a comprehensive tool to streamline the management of sales tax responsibilities, ensuring meticulous and organized financial operations throughout the year.

Other Third-Party Analytics Tools You Can Integrate Into Your BigCommerce Store

In addition to BigCommerce’s built-in analysis feature, your store can seamlessly integrate with other third-party analytics tools.

Google Analytics

Follow these 6 streamlined steps to seamlessly integrate Google Analytics with your BigCommerce store. 

1. Review requirements: Ensure your store uses optimized one-page checkout and that Google Analytics checkout aligns with your store’s checkout.
2. Create a Google Analytics account: Register for a Google Analytics account, entering your store’s name as the account name.
3. Collect tracking ID: Access your tracking ID from Google Analytics after setting up your account.
4. Enable e-commerce setup: Adjust settings in Google Analytics Admin, enabling eCommerce settings to align with your store’s checkout process.
5. Add Google Analytics to BigCommerce: Log into your BigCommerce account, navigate to Advanced Settings, choose Web Analytics, and insert your Google Analytics Tracking ID.
6. Configure e-commerce in Google Analytics: Adjust Google Analytics settings to track transactions by copying and adding a specific code to your BigCommerce store.

By integrating Google Analytics with BigCommerce, you can delve into additional features such as users’ advanced segmentation, cross-device tracking, event monitoring, and goal tracking to gain nuanced insights into customer interactions. 

The ability to define custom dimensions and metrics and integrate them with other Google services enhances your analytical capabilities.

Other Analytics Tools

Various analytics tools and software can seamlessly integrate with BigCommerce to augment your data analysis capabilities and drive business growth. Some notable options include:

• Hotjar offers heatmaps and session recordings to analyze user behavior, enhancing website optimization and user experience.
• SEMrush provides SEO and digital marketing tools for improving online visibility and optimizing marketing strategies.
• Hootsuite streamlines social media management, making it a valuable tool for scheduling and monitoring content across platforms.

What BigCommerce KPI You Should Focus On?

Below are 15 indispensable metrics within the BigCommerce framework that offer nuanced insights into diverse facets of eCommerce performance.

• E-commerce traffic: The number of visitors signifies brand awareness and interest, laying the foundation for further analysis.
• New vs. returning visitors: Tracking this helps gauge the success of customer acquisition and retention efforts.
• Traffic by channel: Identifying the channels driving traffic helps optimize marketing efforts, directing focus on the most effective customer acquisition sources.
• Total sales: Total sales directly measure commercial success, offering a comprehensive view of an online store’s financial performance.
• Pre-tax total sales: Excluding taxes, this metric allows a clearer performance comparison across regions or time periods.
• Shipping & handling charges: Monitoring revenue from shipping ensures accurate cost coverage and identifies potential revenue streams.
• Average order value (AOV): AOV provides insights into customer spending patterns and the effectiveness of upselling and cross-selling strategies.
• Coupon amounts: Monitoring coupon effectiveness helps assess the impact of promotional strategies on sales and revenue.
• Total discounts: Encompassing various discount types, this metric provides insights into the overall impact of discounting on revenue.
• Refunds: Tracking refunds measures product quality and customer satisfaction, highlighting areas for improvement.
• Conversion rate: A key measure of store effectiveness, the conversion rate indicates how well it turns visitors into customers.
• Cost per acquisition (CPA): CPA measures the average cost to acquire a new customer, informing the efficiency of marketing efforts.
• Return on Ad spend: Measuring revenue generated per advertising dollar spent evaluates the effectiveness of advertising campaigns.
• Revenue by channel: Identifying profitable channels guides investment decisions and optimization strategies for marketing efforts.
• Customer lifetime value: Predicting total revenue from a customer account informs retention strategies and sets profitable customer acquisition targets.

Tips To Maximize the Value of BigCommerce Analytics

Merchants can significantly harness the power of BigCommerce Analytics by applying these tips:

• Strategic customization: Create custom reports that provide insights into specific aspects crucial for your success by focusing on KPIs.
• Consistent review: Regularly analyze data to stay ahead of evolving trends and behaviors. Set a consistent schedule for analysis, allowing you to identify patterns or spot anomalies.
• Actionable insights translation: Turn raw data into actionable strategies by identifying patterns, trends, and areas for improvement. 
• Cross-functional collaboration: Share analytics insights across teams to ensure a holistic understanding of business performance, enabling well-informed decisions that consider various perspectives.
• Experimentation and iteration: Test different strategies, campaigns, or product placements based on your data insights. 
• Training and skill enhancement: Invest in training your team or yourself to enhance analytics skills. A deeper understanding of the analytics tools at your disposal ensures effective use and interpretation of data.
• Customer feedback integration: Combine analytics with direct customer feedback. Use analytics to identify areas of concern or improvement and supplement this with insights gathered from customer reviews, surveys, etc.
• Benchmarking against industry standards: Compare your analytics metrics against industry benchmarks to gain a broader perspective on your performance. 
• Storytelling with data: Transform data into a story that is easy to understand, emphasizing the impact on business outcomes and facilitating better communication of insights throughout your organization.

Bottom Line

BigCommerce Analytics is a powerful and potential tool for businesses to track and control the whole store’s activities.

By delving into the deep understanding of the metrics and their operation, businesses gain valuable insights that not only save time and resources but also empower informed decision-making, driving overall efficiency and profitability. 

FAQs