How to Use Shopify’s Built-In Analytics to Make Better Decisions

Running a Shopify store without consistently reviewing your analytics is like driving with your eyes closed. You might stay on the road for a while, but sooner or later you will miss something important that costs you real money.

Shopify’s built-in analytics dashboard gives every store owner access to a substantial amount of data about how their store is performing. The problem is that most store owners glance at total revenue and stop there. They miss the deeper insights that reveal why revenue is what it is, which products are driving it, where customers are dropping off, and what is actually working in their marketing.

This guide covers every major section of Shopify analytics in meaningful depth: what each report shows, which metrics matter most, what those metrics tell you about your store, and what actions to take based on what you find. By the end, you will know how to use your Shopify analytics to make decisions that consistently improve your store’s performance.

Where to Find Shopify Analytics

Log in to your Shopify admin and click Analytics in the left-hand navigation. This opens the main Analytics overview, which is a dashboard showing your most important metrics at a glance for a selected date range.

The full report library sits under Analytics and then Reports. Here you will find Shopify’s complete reporting suite organized into categories: Sales, Customers, Marketing, Acquisition, Behavior, Inventory, Finances, and the custom Reports builder. The depth of reports available depends on your Shopify plan. Basic plan users get a subset of reports, while Shopify and Advanced plans unlock the full reporting suite including cohort analysis and customer segmentation reports.

The Shopify Analytics Overview Dashboard

The overview dashboard is where most store owners spend all of their analytics time. It shows your total sales, orders, sessions, conversion rate, and average order value for the selected period, with a comparison to the previous period.

This dashboard is useful for monitoring trends and catching significant changes. A sharp drop in sessions tells you something changed with your traffic sources. A sudden increase in orders without a corresponding increase in sessions tells you your conversion rate improved. A rising average order value over time tells you your upsell and cross-sell strategies are working.

Use the date range selector to compare periods meaningfully. Comparing this week to last week shows short-term fluctuation. Comparing this month to the same month last year shows genuine year-over-year growth. Always use the right comparison period for the question you are trying to answer.

Sales Reports: Understanding Your Revenue in Detail

Sales reports are the foundation of your analytics review. They break down where your revenue comes from and how it changes over time.

Total Sales vs. Net Sales

Total sales is your gross revenue before any deductions. Net sales is what remains after discounting returns, refunds, and discount codes applied at checkout. The gap between total and net sales reveals how much of your headline revenue is being given back. If your net sales consistently run 15% or more below total sales, your return rate or discount strategy deserves attention.

Sales by Product

The Sales by Product report shows you exactly which products are driving revenue, ordered by total sales or number of units sold. This report answers the most fundamental product questions: which products sell most, which generate the highest revenue, and which have the best margins.

Use this report to inform your inventory decisions. Your top-selling products should always have healthy stock levels and should receive the most prominent placement in your collections and navigation. Products at the bottom of the list after several months of operation either need repositioning, better descriptions and images, or consideration for removal from the catalog.

Sales by Traffic Source

This report shows which marketing channels are generating sales, not just visitors. Knowing that Google organic traffic brings 40% of your sessions means little if that traffic only generates 15% of your sales. Sales by traffic source reveals which channels bring buyers rather than browsers.

Use this data to allocate your marketing budget intelligently. Double down on channels that convert at high rates. Investigate and improve channels that bring traffic but few sales. And be suspicious of channels that show high traffic but near-zero sales, as these often represent bot traffic or very low-intent visitors.

Customer Reports: Understanding Who Buys from You

Customer reports reveal the health of your customer relationships over time. This is where you find the data that connects directly to customer lifetime value.

Returning Customer Rate

Your returning customer rate is the percentage of orders placed by customers who have bought from you before. A rising returning customer rate means your retention strategies are working. A flat or falling rate means you are entirely dependent on acquiring new customers to maintain revenue, which is expensive and fragile.

Industry benchmarks vary by category, but a returning customer rate of 25% to 30% or higher is generally considered healthy for most product-based Shopify stores. Stores with subscription products or highly consumable goods typically run higher.

If your returning customer rate is low, prioritize post-purchase email automation, loyalty programs, and personalized replenishment reminders. Our Shopify Email Marketing service builds the automated flows that convert one-time buyers into repeat customers.

Customers Over Time

This report shows new versus returning customers across your selected date range. A healthy store shows growth in both. A store adding lots of new customers but not retaining them has a leaky bucket problem where revenue requires constant new acquisition spend to maintain.

Customer Cohort Analysis

Available on Shopify and Advanced plans, cohort analysis groups customers by the month they first purchased and tracks their spending behavior in subsequent months. This is one of the most powerful reports in the entire analytics suite.

Cohort analysis answers questions like: of the customers who first bought in January, how many bought again in February, March, and April? Are newer cohorts retaining better or worse than older ones? Did a specific campaign or promotion produce a cohort with unusually high retention?

If you find that most cohorts flatline after month one, your post-purchase retention strategy needs work. If you find that one particular cohort retained much better than others, investigate what was different about that period, whether it was a product launch, a promotion, or a new email sequence, and replicate it.

Behavior Reports: Understanding How Visitors Interact with Your Store

Behavior reports tell you what visitors do inside your store before they buy or leave.

Sessions by Device Type

This report shows the split between desktop, mobile, and tablet sessions. For most Shopify stores, mobile now accounts for 60% to 75% of all sessions. If your mobile conversion rate is significantly lower than your desktop conversion rate, which it almost always is, your mobile experience is likely creating friction that costs you sales.

The gap between mobile and desktop conversion rates is one of the highest-leverage opportunities for most Shopify stores. Closing even half the gap typically produces a meaningful increase in overall revenue without any change to your marketing spend or traffic volume.

Our Shopify Performance Optimization and Shopify Conversion Rate Optimization services specifically address mobile experience improvements that reduce this gap.

Online Store Conversion Rate

Your store’s overall conversion rate is the percentage of sessions that result in a completed purchase. The industry average for eCommerce sits between 1% and 3%. High-performing stores achieve 3% to 5% or more.

Shopify’s conversion rate report breaks the funnel into three stages: sessions to added-to-cart, added-to-cart to reached checkout, and reached checkout to completed purchase. Each stage has its own abandonment rate, and each reveals a different type of problem.

Low add-to-cart rates indicate issues with your product pages, pricing, or product-market fit. High cart abandonment between add-to-cart and checkout suggests friction in the cart experience. High checkout abandonment indicates friction in the payment flow, unexpected shipping costs, or lack of trust signals at checkout.

Understanding which stage is losing the most customers tells you exactly where to focus your improvement efforts rather than guessing.

Top Landing Pages

This report shows which pages visitors arrive on first when they come to your store. It reveals how customers enter your store experience. High-traffic landing pages that have low conversion rates are high-priority optimization targets because improving them impacts a large volume of visitors.

If your homepage is your primary landing page but converts poorly, focus on improving it. If specific product pages receive significant direct traffic from ads or organic search but convert below average, those product pages need attention first.

Marketing and Acquisition Reports: Understanding Where Your Traffic Comes From

Sessions by Traffic Source

This report breaks your traffic into direct, organic search, paid search, email, social, and referral sources. Each channel has different characteristics and different conversion behavior.

Direct traffic represents visitors who typed your URL or came through a bookmark. This is usually a mix of returning customers, brand-aware prospects, and people following offline mentions of your store.

Organic search traffic comes from Google and other search engines through non-paid rankings. This traffic tends to have high purchase intent when it arrives on relevant product or collection pages. It compounds over time as your SEO improves.

Paid search traffic from Google Ads arrives with high intent but requires ongoing spend. It stops immediately when you stop paying.

Social traffic from Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Pinterest varies widely by platform and campaign. It tends to convert at lower rates than organic search but reaches audiences who may not be actively searching.

Email traffic from your list tends to be among the highest-converting channels because it reaches people who already know and trust your brand.

Understanding the contribution of each channel to both traffic and revenue helps you allocate your marketing investment more strategically. Our Shopify SEO Agency builds the organic foundation that reduces your dependence on paid channels over time.

Marketing Campaign Performance

If you run campaigns through Shopify’s marketing tools, this section shows which campaigns drove sessions and sales. Use it to identify which promotions and marketing activities generate the strongest return and repeat what works.

Inventory Reports: Staying Ahead of Demand

Inventory Levels

The inventory report shows current stock levels across all products and variants. Review it regularly to ensure your bestselling products maintain healthy stock levels, especially before high-demand periods like peak shopping seasons.

Running out of stock on high-demand products is one of the most direct and avoidable ways to lose revenue. A customer who finds a product out of stock does not always wait. They often buy from a competitor and may not return.

ABC Analysis

ABC analysis categorizes your products into three groups based on their contribution to revenue. A-grade products are your top sellers that generate the majority of revenue. B-grade products are mid-performers. C-grade products are low sellers.

This framework helps you prioritize which products deserve marketing attention, which should be promoted more aggressively, and which may need to be retired from your catalog. A healthy product mix has enough A-grade products generating consistent revenue with a pipeline of B-grade products that could be elevated with the right attention.

Sell-Through Rate

Sell-through rate measures how quickly you are selling through your available inventory. A high sell-through rate signals strong demand and effective inventory management. A low sell-through rate may indicate overstocking, a product that is not resonating, or pricing that is too high.

Finance Reports: The Bottom Line

Profit Reports

Profit reports are available on Shopify Advanced and above. They calculate gross profit by subtracting the cost of goods sold from net sales. This is where you see your actual profitability rather than just revenue.

A store that generates $100,000 per month in revenue with a 10% gross margin is far less financially healthy than one generating $60,000 with a 40% gross margin. Revenue without margin context can create a misleading picture of business health.

If your profit reports show thin margins, the solutions typically involve raising prices, reducing the cost of goods through supplier negotiations or order volume, increasing average order value to spread fixed costs across larger transactions, or reducing product return rates that erode net revenue.

Taxes Report

The taxes report shows tax collected across different jurisdictions. For stores selling across multiple states or countries, this report is essential for compliance. Reconcile it with your accounting system regularly to ensure accuracy.

Shopify Analytics vs. Google Analytics 4: What Each Covers

Shopify’s native analytics and GA4 serve complementary but different purposes. Understanding what each covers helps you build a complete picture of your store’s performance.

Use Shopify analytics as your primary commerce reporting tool where revenue, orders, and customer behavior are concerned. Use GA4 for deeper behavioral analysis, cross-channel attribution, and advertising performance measurement.

Our Shopify Google Analytics GA4 Integration service sets up accurate eCommerce tracking through Google Tag Manager so your GA4 data reflects your actual store performance reliably.

Building a Weekly Analytics Review Habit

Data is only valuable when you act on it. A consistent review routine turns your analytics from passive information into active business intelligence.

A weekly review should take no more than 20 to 30 minutes and cover the following: total sessions and conversion rate compared to the previous week, top-selling products and any significant shifts in the ranking, traffic source breakdown and any unusual changes, returning customer rate, and cart abandonment rate at each funnel stage.

A monthly review should go deeper: cohort retention analysis, profit margin review, inventory health check, campaign performance assessment, and comparison against the same period in the previous year.

A quarterly review should inform strategic decisions: which product lines to expand or retire, which marketing channels to increase investment in, which customer segments represent the greatest growth opportunity, and what your LTV trend looks like across different acquisition cohorts.

The specific numbers you target will depend on your store’s category and stage of growth. But the habit of reviewing, interpreting, and acting on your data consistently is what separates stores that grow intentionally from stores that grow randomly.

You can read our related blog on customer lifetime value to understand how to use your Shopify customer data to calculate and improve LTV, and our blog on how much the average Shopify store makes per month to benchmark your revenue performance against realistic industry numbers.

How KolachiTech Uses Data to Grow Shopify Stores

At KolachiTech, every recommendation we make to clients is grounded in their store data. We audit analytics setups, identify tracking gaps, build dashboards that surface the most actionable insights, and translate data findings into specific improvements across store design, marketing, and operations.

Whether you need help setting up accurate tracking through our Shopify GA4 Integration service, improving the conversion rates your analytics reveal as underperforming through our Shopify Conversion Rate Optimization work, or building the organic traffic that your acquisition reports show you are missing through our Shopify SEO Agency, our work always starts with the data your store is telling you.

If you want help making sense of what your Shopify analytics are showing you and building a plan to act on it, book a free consultation with our team.

Conclusion

Shopify analytics gives every store owner access to a powerful set of tools for understanding how their business is performing. The data is there. The question is whether you are using it.

A store owner who reviews their analytics weekly, understands what each report shows, and consistently acts on what they find will always outperform one who checks revenue occasionally and makes decisions based on instinct. The advantage of data-driven decision making compounds over time as each improvement builds on the last.

Start with the overview dashboard and the conversion funnel. Then build your review habit around the reports that are most relevant to your current growth priorities. As your store scales, expand into cohort analysis, profit reporting, and GA4 integration for a complete picture.

Your store is generating data every day. Make sure you are listening to it.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. What analytics does Shopify provide out of the box? All Shopify plans include access to the Analytics overview dashboard showing total sales, sessions, conversion rate, and average order value. Basic plan users also get a subset of reports including sales by product, sessions by traffic source, and sessions by device. Full access to Shopify’s reporting suite including cohort analysis, profit reports, and advanced customer reports requires the Shopify or Advanced plan.

2. What is a good conversion rate for a Shopify store? The industry average eCommerce conversion rate sits between 1% and 3%. Achieving above 3% is considered strong performance. Top-performing Shopify stores in competitive niches achieve 4% to 6% or higher. Your conversion rate varies significantly by traffic source, device type, and how targeted your traffic is. Focus on improving mobile conversion rate specifically, as mobile sessions typically convert at roughly half the rate of desktop sessions for most stores.

3. How do I find out which products are making me the most money in Shopify? Go to Analytics and then Reports and open the Sales by Product report. This shows total revenue, units sold, and gross sales for each product over your selected date range. Sort by Total Sales to see your highest revenue products. To see actual profitability rather than just revenue, you need to use the Profit by Product report, which requires the Advanced plan and accurate cost of goods entered for each product.

4. Is Shopify Analytics enough or do I need Google Analytics too? Both serve important but different purposes. Shopify Analytics provides highly accurate commerce data including revenue, orders, and customer behavior tied directly to purchases. Google Analytics 4 provides deeper behavioral data, cross-channel attribution, advertising cost analysis, and custom event tracking. For a complete picture of your store’s performance, you need both working together. Our GA4 integration service sets up accurate cross-platform tracking.

5. Why does my Shopify analytics data sometimes differ from Google Analytics? Small differences between Shopify and GA4 data are normal and expected. Common causes include session counting methodology differences, how each platform handles returns and refunds, bot traffic being filtered differently, and attribution model differences for multi-touch conversion paths. Significant differences of 10% or more usually indicate a tracking configuration issue in GA4 that should be investigated and corrected.

6. How do I use Shopify analytics to reduce cart abandonment? Navigate to Analytics and then Reports and look for the Online Store Conversion Rate report. This shows your funnel from sessions through to completed purchase with abandonment rates at each stage. Identify which stage is losing the most potential customers: add-to-cart rate, cart to checkout rate, or checkout completion rate. Each stage has different causes and solutions. High checkout abandonment, for example, is often caused by unexpected shipping costs, too many required form fields, or insufficient payment options.

7. Can I track the performance of my email campaigns in Shopify analytics? Yes. Shopify’s Marketing reports show sessions and sales attributed to email campaigns when UTM parameters are correctly appended to your email links. Sessions from email appear in the Traffic Source breakdown as email traffic. For more detailed email campaign analytics including open rates, click rates, and revenue per email, use your email marketing platform’s native reporting, such as Klaviyo’s revenue attribution dashboard.