Everything You Need To Know About Shopify Reports 

Key Takeaways

• Shopify Reports Are Your Store’s Storytellers: Shopify reports are like folders of information about your online store. They come in graphs and tables, making understanding your business’s performance easier.
• Customization and Insights: You can customize these reports to show the specific data you need, helping you focus on what matters most to your business. Shopify reports collect data, process and analyze it, and present it in visual formats like charts and graphs.
• Optimizing Your Store: Regularly reviewing Shopify reports enhances marketing, user experience, and loyalty. 

In this article, we will dive into this comprehensive guide to discover how Shopify reports work, what they can reveal, and how they can help you make informed decisions to boost your online store’s success.

Shopify Reports – How Do They Work?

What are Shopify reports?

A Shopify report is like a collection of information about your online store. It’s presented in two ways: with pictures like graphs and in a list like a table. Reports are grouped into categories, like different folders for different topics.

Shopify provides ready-made Shopify annual reports, but you can change them to show exactly what you want to see. It’s like customizing a report to fit your needs so you can see the information that matters most to you. Some common types of  Shopify reports include Shopify financial reports, Shopify payout reports, or Shopify tax reports.

Reports availability by Shopify subscription plan

Shopify reports are sorted into groups depending on the kind of information they have. You can see various report types based on your store’s Shopify subscription plan. Here’s the list of Shopify reports that match with your Shopify subscription plan:

How do they work?

Shopify reports work by collecting and organizing data from your online store to provide valuable insights into your business’s performance. Here’s how they work:

• Data Collection: Shopify continuously gathers data from various aspects of your online store, including sales, customer interactions, inventory, and website traffic. This data is collected in real-time or at regular intervals.
• Processing and Analysis: After Shopify collects all data, it’s like combining the puzzle pieces to make a complete picture. It does some calculations and sorts the data into different groups. For example, it might gather all the information about the things people bought or how many people visited your store in a day.
• Customization: Shopify reports can be changed to show just your desired information. It’s like being able to choose which pieces of the puzzle you want to look at. You can say, “Show me data for the last week,” or “Only show me information about the products on sale.”
• Data Visualization: Shopify makes the data easily understood using pictures like charts and graphs. It’s like turning all those numbers into photos showing what’s happening in your store. For instance, a chart might indicate that more people buy things on Fridays than on Mondays, helping you see patterns and make decisions.

A Better Comprehension Towards Your Shopify Reports

Average Order Value

In Shopify, the Average Order Value (AOV) report tells you how much money, on average, each customer spends in your store during a specific time. It helps you understand how well your store is doing and can help you guess what your customers might buy in the future. People who run Shopify stores and look at AOV find it helpful in deciding how to advertise, keep track of their products, and set prices.

• How does Shopify calculate AOV?

To find the average order value, you can divide the total money earned from sales by the total number of orders during a particular period.

→ Here’s the formula to calculate AOV: Average Order Value = Total Revenue ÷ Total Number of Orders.

For example, if your store made $9,000 in total revenue from 450 orders, your average order value would be $20. This means that, on average, each customer spends $20 per order without considering any marketing expenses.

Returning Customer Rate 

The “Returning Customer Rate” in Shopify analytics shows how many customers return to your store and repurchase things. It tells you how loyal your customers are and how often they shop with you more than once.

Here’s how you calculate it: You take the number of customers who have bought from you more than once and divide it by the total number of customers. Then, you multiply that by 100 to get the percentage.

Prioritizing your returning customer rate holds significant benefits. A store’s long-term success often hinges on the percentage of customers who come back for more. From a marketing standpoint, it’s also more costly to constantly attract new customers compared to ensuring repeat business.

Conversion Rate

Conversion Rate is a way to see how many people visit your store to buy something. It’s like finding out how many out of 100 people actually make a purchase.

To figure it out, you divide the number of customers who bought something by the total number of people who visited your store. Then, you multiply that by 100 to get the percentage.

With Shopify, you can track the conversion rate at various points in the “Conversion Funnel.” This means you’re looking at sales and how many folks add items to their cart or start the checkout process. These numbers come in handy when you want to figure out how many people left your store without making a purchase, known as the cart abandonment rate.

Sessions Attributed to Marketing

The “Shopify Sessions Attributed to Marketing Report” is a tool in Shopify that helps you see how different marketing efforts bring people to your online store. It tells you which marketing activities, like ads or social media posts, work best for customers to visit your store. This report displays the percentage of website visitors who visit your store through a link with a predetermined tracking code.

Shopify Sessions Attributed to Marketing Report counts the number of times people come to your store because of your marketing. It helps you understand which marketing strategies are successful in attracting visitors. Using this report, you can make smarter decisions about where to focus your marketing efforts and resources.

Filters

Shopify provides a range of filters that allow you to analyze your store’s data based on various customer types, customer behaviors, and the frequency of these occurrences. Here’s more information on these filters:

• Types of Customer: new vs. returning customers, customer tags, etc.
• Types of Behavior: Cart abandonment, customer engagement, purchase frequency, etc.
• The amount of each occurrence in your store: Frequency filters, revenue range, etc.

Filtering and Customizing Your Shopify Reports

Managing Your Filters

You can use filters to make Shopify reports show only the specific info you want. Filters are like special rules that tell the report what to include and what to leave out.

For example, you can use a filter if you only want to see sales from one particular place or sales channel.

But here’s a thing to remember: if your store uses the Shopify plan or lower, you can use filters to see the info and even print or save it for now. But you can’t save it in Shopify to look at later.

Now, these filters can be powerful. They work with 29 different things, like:

• Device (like the web browser, device type, or operating system)
• Landing Page (which is the web address or path)
• Location (where your customers are, like city or country)
• Marketing Campaign (this is where your ads and promotions are tracked)
• Referrer (like which website or search terms brought people to your store)

Editing Your Reports

You can decide what actions and things you see in your reports by picking what to put in the columns or sections. There are 38 different kinds of information you can choose from, and they fall into these groups:

• Sessions (like how many visitors, how long they stay, or if they added something to their cart)
• Device
• Landing Page
• Location
• Marketing Campaign
• Referrer

Note: Some Shopify reports can’t be changed or adjusted. These reports don’t have options for filters or editing. You’ll know a report is only customizable if you see filter or column icons. These reports come with specific data that can’t be altered. However, you can still pick the time range for all reports.

Specific reports you can’t filter or edit include:

• All the default reports are in the Finance category, except for the United States Shopify tax report (which you can adjust with filters and columns).
• All the default reports are in the Fraud category.
• Most default reports in the Orders category, except for the Shipping labels report (which can be edited with filters and columns) and Shipping labels over time report (which you can adjust with filters).
• The Online store speed report.
• The Online store cart analysis report.

How To Optimize Your Store Using Shopify Reports

You can improve your store gradually by making little adjustments and regularly checking your Shopify reports. Here are some of the reports that are really helpful for understanding how well your store is doing.

Reports To Optimize Your Marketing

 “Sessions Over Time” report

The “Sessions Over Time” report in Shopify is a valuable tool that shows you how many visitors and sessions your online store had during a specific period. You can make this report even more informative by customizing it simply through the instructions below:

• You can add extra sections, known as columns, to the report. These columns provide additional details about your visitors and their behavior on your website. For example, you can include columns for “Referrer Source,” which tells you where your visitors are coming from, such as search engines, social media, or other websites.
• Another valuable column to add is “Referrer Site,” which specifies the websites that refer visitors to your store. This helps you understand which external websites are driving traffic to your store.
• You can include a “Conversion Rate” column. This tells you the percentage of visitors from each referrer source or site who make a purchase on your store. It’s a crucial metric because it shows how effectively each marketing channel turns visitors into customers.

Suppose you’re seeking even more detailed insights into your marketing efforts. In that case, you can add columns for “UTM Campaign Source” and “Referrer Search Terms.” “UTM Campaign Source” helps you track the specific marketing campaigns or sources that bring visitors to your store, clarifying which efforts are the most successful. 

“Referrer Search Terms” reveals the keywords people use to find your store, which can be valuable for optimizing your content and SEO strategy.

Moreover, you can also find helpful info about the words folks use to find your Shopify store using the “Sessions Over Time” report. But this time, you’ll set it up a bit differently. You’ll make new sections for Referrer Site, Conversion Rate, and Referrer Search Terms. To eliminate stuff that doesn’t matter, you’ll make a filter for Referrer Site and pick the search engines you care about.

There’s another way to get handy details for SEO and ads on search engines. It’s by checking out your “Visitors By Landing Page” report. Instead of seeing the path to the landing page, you can change it to show Conversion Rate, Bounce Rate, and Referrer Search Term. This helps you know which landing pages work best and what words bring people to them.

Reports to Optimize Your Customer Experience

Let’s explore which reports can help you understand more about your customers.

Online Store Sessions Report

This report provides insights into how visitors interact with your online store. It shows the number of sessions, bounce rate, and session duration. Analyzing these metrics lets you understand how engaging and user-friendly your website is. 

A high bounce rate may indicate visitors leaving quickly, suggesting potential issues with the user experience. You can use this report to identify areas for improvement and make changes to enhance the overall user experience.

Abandoned Cart Report

Cart abandonment is a common challenge in e-commerce and can significantly impact user experience. The Abandoned Cart Report in Shopify helps you identify when and why customers are leaving items in their carts without completing the purchase. 

By understanding the reasons behind cart abandonment, such as unexpected shipping costs or a complicated checkout process, you can take steps to optimize the user experience. This might include simplifying the checkout process, offering incentives, or providing more precise shipping information to reduce abandoned carts and improve conversions.

Top Online Store Searches Report

This report in Shopify can also effectively optimize user experience. Top Online Store Searches report reveals visitors’ most frequently searched terms on your online store. By analyzing this data, you can gain insights into what products or information your customers seek.

Difference Between Reports and Dashboards

Shopify reports and dashboards differ in how they show your store’s information.

Reports give you a detailed view of your business, like specific numbers and facts. For example, reports can provide this data if you run a food store and want to know how many customers return to buy again.

Dashboards, on the other hand, offer a quick, summarized view of essential data. They’re like the highlights. For instance, in a Shopify dashboard, you can see the percentage of returning customers in the last month. It also shows if this number is going up or down compared to the previous month.

So, reports give you the nitty-gritty details, while dashboards quickly give you the big picture. Reports are the way to go if you must dive deep into specific customer details or sales.

Viewing Individual Product Reports

The Product Analytics Dashboard in Shopify provides valuable information about how your products have performed in the last 90 days. It helps you learn more about your customers buying specific products, how they discovered your store, and how well a particular product has sold over time.

Here’s how you can access and view these product insights:

• Step 1: Go to Products: Log into your Shopify admin and navigate to the “Products” section.
• Step 2: Select a Product: Click on the product name you want to learn more about. This will take you to the product’s details page.
• Step 3: Access Insights: On the product details page, you’ll find a section called “Insights.” Click “View details” in this section to dive deeper into the product’s performance data.

Note: Product Insights is unavailable on the Shopify mobile app, so you’ll need to use the desktop version for this feature.

Within the Product Insights section for each product, you can discover several vital details:

• Net Sales: This shows how much money you’ve earned from selling that product in the last 90 days. It calculates the product’s unit price multiplied by the total number of units sold. Then, it subtracts any discounts or returns. You can also compare these net sales with the previous 90-day period to see if things are going up or down.
• Net Sales Over Time: This is a detailed breakdown of everything contributing to the net sales figure. It helps you understand how net sales are calculated by subtracting discounts and returns from the total sales amount.
• Net Sales by Channel: This part tells you which sales channels brought in the most money for this product. It shows you where your customers are finding and buying this product.
• Net Units Sold by Traffic Source: This helps you see which sources send customers to your online store to buy this product. Sometimes, you see negative values here if more items were returned than sold.
• Customers: You can also find out how many people bought this product for the first time and how many are returning customers. This comparison helps you understand the loyalty of your customers for that specific product.

Bottom line

In conclusion, understanding Shopify reports is crucial for managing your online store effectively. These reports provide valuable insights into various aspects of your business, helping you make informed decisions and optimize your store’s performance.