The Beginner's Guide to Analyzing Shopify Reports and Analytics

With 4.4 million online stores globally and nearly $80 billion worth of orders processed in 2023, Shopify is among the leading ecommerce platforms in the world.

As a Shopify store owner, you have access to a wealth of data that can uncover valuable insights, inform your strategy, and drive success.

But when there’s an endless amount of data at your disposal, it can be overwhelming to navigate and extract actionable intel from it. Whether you're a seasoned ecommerce veteran or just starting out in the industry, understanding how to analyze your Shopify data is crucial to the success of your business. 

That's where Shopify's built-in reporting and analytics capabilities come in - allowing you to easily track key metrics about your sales, customers, and website traffic. 

In this guide, we'll dive into the various reports and analytics available in Shopify, and show you how to analyze your data and make data-driven decisions that will take your business to the next level.

Why Shopify reports are important

Whether you're looking to increase sales, improve customer retention, or launch a new product line, your Shopify data can be a valuable resource in helping you achieve your goals.

Shopify reports provide valuable insights into the performance of your business, allowing you to track key metrics, monitor performance over time, identify areas of improvement, optimize marketing efforts, and improve customer satisfaction. They're an essential tool for any ecommerce business to make data-driven decisions and grow sales.

With so many different types of Shopify reports and analytics available, it can be tough to know where to start. In this beginner's guide to Shopify reports, we'll walk you through some of the most important reports and analytics that you should be aware of, and give you the tools you need to start analyzing your data.

Understanding the Basics

1. Acquisition Report

Acquisition Report provides a wealth of information where your customers are coming from.

What does it show? This report will show you information about the visitors to your store, including how many people visited your store, how many of them were new visitors, and which pages on your website were most popular referral sources, and conversion rates. 

This data can be incredibly valuable in helping you understand which marketing channels are most effective at driving sales to your store. You can identify which pages on your website are driving the most traffic, so you can optimize them to convert more visitors into customers.

For example, imagine you're a merchant who sells beauty products and you notice that most of your customers are from the Philippines. You might decide to invest more in catering to the South-East Asian market to attract even more customers. 

2. Behavior Report

Behavior report is a great tool for understanding how customers interact with your store. 

What does it show? This report will give you data on things like which pages customers are visiting, how long they're spending on your site, and which pages are driving the most conversions. With this data, you can start to optimize your website for better performance.

For example, let's say you're a merchant who has noticed that customers are spending a lot of time on your product pages but not converting. By analyzing the behavior report, you might notice that the design of your product pages is confusing and not user-friendly. You can then take steps to optimize the design, making it more user-friendly, and in turn, increase conversion rates.

3. Inventory reports

Inventory report provides detailed information about your inventory, including stock levels, product variants, and sales data.

What does it show? This report can help you track the performance of your products and identify which items are selling well and which are not. You can also view information about your inventory such as stock levels, product variants, and sales data. It can also help you track the performance of your products by time period, such as day, week or month, as well as identify which products are running low in stock, so you can plan and make reordering decisions.

For example, let's say you're a merchant who sells various sneakers and you notice that your inventory report shows that one of your shoe styles is selling faster than the others. You might decide to reorder that style as soon as possible to ensure that you don't run out of stock. On the other hand, if you notice that another shoe style is not selling well, you might decide to discontinue that style or run a promotion to try and move the remaining stock.

4. Marketing Report

Marketing report provides detailed information on your marketing efforts, including traffic sources, referral links, and email campaigns.

What does it show? This report can help you track which marketing channels are driving the most sales and improve the performance of your marketing efforts. It will provide insights on how your marketing campaigns are performing and which marketing channels are the most effective for driving traffic and sales to your store. It will also provide information about referral links, email campaigns, and any other type of marketing campaigns that have been set up for your store.

For example, if you're running a marketing campaign for a new product launch, you can use the marketing report to track the performance of the campaign. If you notice that a particular channel, like social media affiliates, are driving a lot of sales, you can invest more in that approach.

5. Order reports

Order report provides detailed information about your orders, including order value, payment status, and shipping information.

What does it show? This report can give you insight into the performance of your store by providing data on your orders, such as total revenue, average order value, and order fulfilment rate. You can also segment the data by product, payment method and other order-related criteria, to track which products are selling well, which payment methods are most popular, and see overall order performance by time-period.

For example, if you're a merchant who sells clothing and you notice a large number of returns, by analyzing the order report, you can track which sizes and colors are being returned the most and take steps to improve the fitting and sizes offered in your store.

6. Profit reports

Profit report provides detailed information about the profitability of your business, including revenue, expenses, and profit margins.

What does it show? The profit report is a key tool for understanding the financial health of your business – this report will provide an overview of your business's financial performance, including revenue, expenses, and profit margins. It can show you how much you are earning and spending, and provide a clear picture of the profitability of your business. By analyzing this report, you can understand the key drivers of profitability and identify areas where you can improve.

For example, let's say you sell handmade jewelry and you notice that your profit margins are low. By analyzing the profit report, you may find that a significant portion of your expenses is going towards materials. With this knowledge, you can take steps to source materials more cost-effectively, negotiate better prices with suppliers, or find ways to reduce the costs of production.

7. Retail sales reports

Retail retail sales report is essential for businesses that have brick and mortar stores.

What does it show? This report will give you a detailed breakdown of your in-store sales, including the number of transactions, total revenue, and customer demographics.

For example, if you're a merchant who operates both a physical store and an online store, you can use the retail sales report to compare the sales performance between the two, and identify which one is driving the most sales or which demographics are driving the most sales, you and tailor your in-store and online marketing and sales efforts to target those specific customer segments.

8. Sales reports

Sales reports provide detailed information about the performance of your sales, including revenue, number of sales, and average order value.

What does it show? Finally, the sales report is a great tool for understanding overall performance. This report will give you a detailed breakdown on metrics like total revenue, sales by product, and average order value. 

With this data, you can start to identify patterns and trends that can inform your strategy. You can also view this information by different time periods, such as by day, week, or month, to track the performance of your store over time.

For example, let's say run an online departmental and you notice that sales are consistently higher in the first week of every month – you could run a promotion on these days to boost sales even further.

Now, for each report, Shopify gives you:

1. Filters and Columns

Filters allow you to focus on specific information that is relevant to your analysis by limiting the data displayed in a report to a specific subset of information, based on criteria such as date range, product, or customer. 

Columns allow you to customize the report to show only the data fields that are most important to you.

For example, in the Sales report, you can use filters to view sales data only for a specific time period, such as the past month or past quarter. You can also use filters to view sales data only for a specific product or customer. In the same report, you can use columns to display specific fields of data like the total revenue, the number of orders, and the average order value.

2. Wrap Ups

Wrap ups are like report summaries that show key metrics at the top of the report.

For example, in the acquisition report, the Wrap up might show the total number of visitors, the number of new visitors, and the number of returning visitors for the selected date range. This can give you a quick understanding of the visitors' behavior on your website and help you identify patterns and trends in your website's traffic, such as which days of the week are busiest.

Other than the built-in reports featured above, there’s other ways to make the most of your store’s data.

Other ways to analyze Shopify store

1. Use third-party apps

You can also take advantage of Shopify reporting and analytics apps like Google Analytics, Klaviyo, and Openbridge. These apps can provide additional data and insights that can help you understand your customers and business better.

2. Build Shopify Power BI Integration

Another option is building your Shopify Power BI Integration which will allow you to connect your Shopify data with other data sources, create interactive visualizations, and share your insights with others. With Power BI, you can easily slice and dice your data, identify patterns and trends, and even create predictive models.

Conclusion 

By understanding the different types of data available to you, familiarizing yourself with the various Shopify reports and using the intel to inform your decision-making and track your progress towards meeting your goals, you can uncover valuable insights that can drive the growth and success of your business. 

Want to take your Shopify store to another level? Zevi – an AI powered search engine – makes it easier for your customers to find the products they're looking for. Zevi is a powerful tool that can complement the built-in reporting and analytics capabilities of Shopify, and help you gain a competitive edge in the ecommerce market.

The best part? The Shopify app is free – give it a try today.