Shopify

How to Leverage Shopify Analytics to Grow Your Business

How to Leverage Shopify Analytics to Grow Your Business

Shopify is a great platform to start, grow, and manage your online store, offering robust analytics & reporting tools to give sellers insights into how they’re doing and what they could do to build their business.

Data doesn’t lie, but you need to know how to understand and use the data if you want to get the most out of it.

Shopify Analytics tracks conversions:

  • Sessions converted
  • Add to cart clicks
  • Reached checkout

And collects all kinds of customer and order data:

  • Average order value
  • Online store conversion rate
  • Online store sessions by device type
  • Online store sessions by location
  • Online store sessions by traffic source
  • Online store sessions from social source
  • Repeat customer rate
  • Sales by social source
  • Sales by traffic source
  • Top landing pages
  • Top products by units sold
  • Top referrers by session
  • Total online store sessions
  • Total orders
  • Total sales
  • Sales attributed to marketing

Shopify also generates multiple reports:

  • Acquisition reports
  • Behavior reports
  • Customer reports
  • Finance reports
  • Inventory reports
  • Marketing reports
  • Order reports
  • Profit reports
  • Retail sales reports
  • Sales reports
  • Custom reports
  • Product analytics

It’s a lot, but it’s all intended to give you visibility into every aspect of your business, your customers, and your opportunities. Let’s take a deeper dive into some of these reports.

3 Game-Changing Shopify Reports 

All of the Shopify reports are valuable and intended for different purposes. We chose these three as a starting point.

Customer Reports

Depending on the Shopify plan you have, you see reports that not only show who your customers are but what kinds of customers they are, such as:

  • Customers over time
  • First-time vs returning customer sales
  • Customers by location
  • Returning customers
  • One-time customers
  • At-risk customers
  • Loyal customers

What You Can Do With Customer Reports

Understanding your customers is critical for your marketing efforts. Nearly 30% of budgets are wasted on targeting the wrong customers with the wrong strategies.

Use your Shopify Analytics to show your customer purchasing behavior, then target them with an email. Thank a loyal customer for their business and offer them a free gift or discount. Invite one-time customers back with a promotion. Ask at-risk customers what your company can do to make their experience better. You get the idea.

Marketing Reports

Want to see if your marketing efforts are working? Shopify Analytics will help you tie marketing strategies to conversions so you know if you’re moving the needle.

  • Referrers and interactions
  • Sales attributed to marketing
  • Sessions attributed to marketing
  • Conversion by first interaction
  • Conversion by last interaction
  • Attribution model comparison

What You Can Do With Marketing Reports

Marketing spend ranges from 6-20% of an eCommerce company’s gross revenue. Make sure your spending is resulting in sales.

The Marketing Report helps you see which marketing channels are worth continuing to invest in and which ones you can scrap. You can focus your energy and dollars on the channels bringing you the most return on your investment, even doubling-down on those high-velocity ones.

Inventory Reports

If you can’t maintain the right levels of inventory, then you either risk a stockout and lost customers or cash flow tied up in unsold inventory. Inventory Reports tell you:

  • Month-end snapshot of inventory
  • Quantity & percentage of inventory sold each day
  • ABC analysis by product
  • Product sell-through rate
  • Days of inventory remaining

What You Can Do With an Inventory Report

The power of an Inventory Report isn’t in a single report; it’s in a series of reports that show you inventory and customer trends. 

The Inventory Report will help you forecast inventory for the future (seasons and holidays included), plan for the unexpected (supply chain issues), identify customer preferences and purchase behavior (what inventory is selling and what isn’t and when), save money on warehouse fees (time it with actual sales), and ensure stockouts never happen (so customers stay loyal).

Don’t Stop There

While these featured Shopify analytics and reports are highly beneficial for any eCommerce seller wanting to grow their business, all of the Shopify data gives you a different perspective into the health of your business, the risks, and the opportunities that await you. Take time to know each report, building your own custom reports if you still have questions.

And when it comes time to get working capital to invest in inventory and marketing efforts, let the eCommerce experts at Onramp get you cash when you need it, without all the red tape. Our model is tailored to your business, so we don’t get paid until you do. Learn more at Onramp.com