Shopify Analytics: What to Track and What to Ignore
Shopify Analytics has 50+ reports. You need 8. The dashboard I check daily, weekly, and monthly to keep stores growing — and the vanity metrics I tell clients to ignore.
Shopify gives you more reports than any operator can use. Most founders either drown in dashboards or ignore data entirely. Both are wrong.
Here's the exact analytics stack I use to keep stores growing — what to check daily, weekly, and monthly, plus the metrics I tell clients to stop looking at.
TL;DR
Daily (5 min):
Weekly (20 min):
Monthly (1 hour):
Daily metrics (the morning glance)
Sessions
How many visitors came to your store yesterday. Trend matters more than absolute number.
Where to find: Shopify Admin → Analytics → Online store sessions.
Action threshold: if sessions drop 30%+ vs same day last week, investigate (paused ad? site issue? holiday?).
Conversion rate
Sessions that converted to a paid order.
Benchmarks:
Action threshold: drops below your trailing 30-day average by 0.5+ percentage points = investigate.
AOV (Average Order Value)
Total sales / total orders.
Action threshold: drops 10%+ vs trailing 30-day = investigate (often a discount offer is too aggressive).
Total sales
The number. Watch it daily but make decisions on weekly trends.
Top traffic sources
Where visitors came from. Tells you if Meta is delivering, Google is delivering, or organic is shifting.
Quick wins: notice a referral source delivering traffic? Investigate, lean in.
Weekly metrics (the strategic check)
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) by channel
Total ad spend per channel / new customers from that channel.
Calculate weekly. Track the trend. CAC creep is the silent killer of growth.
Repeat customer rate
% of customers who've ordered 2+ times.
Benchmark:
Top products by revenue
Which 5 SKUs drive 50%+ of revenue. Always know this.
Action: double down on best sellers in ads, photography, and homepage placement.
Cart abandonment rate
(Carts created - carts purchased) / carts created.
Benchmark:
Top traffic sources by ROAS
Look beyond raw revenue. Channel A may bring 30% of revenue at 1.8 ROAS. Channel B may bring 15% at 4.2 ROAS. Shift budget toward B.
Monthly metrics (the strategic deep dive)
LTV by acquisition channel
90-day or 180-day customer LTV, segmented by where they came from.
Why it matters: Meta-acquired customers and Google-acquired customers usually have different LTVs. Knowing this lets you bid differently per channel.
How to calculate: total revenue from customers acquired in month X / number of customers acquired in month X. Re-measure at days 30, 60, 90, 180.
LTV/CAC ratio
The single most important number in your business.
Calculation: 180-day LTV / CAC.
Benchmarks:
Cohort retention
Group customers by month they first ordered. Track what % bought again at days 30, 60, 90.
A retention curve that flattens (some % keep buying long-term) = you have a brand. A curve that goes to zero = you have a transactional business.
Margin by product
Track gross margin per SKU monthly. Watch for COGS creep.
If margin shrinks 3+ percentage points and you didn't change price, dig: ad costs up, shipping costs up, or COGS shifted.
Channel mix shifts
Are you over-dependent on one channel? Healthy stores have:
If any single channel is over 60%, you're fragile.
Metrics to ignore
Page views
Unhelpful. Sessions matter, page views are noise.
Bounce rate (alone)
A 70% bounce rate on a single-product page is fine if conversion is 3%. Don't optimize bounce rate in isolation.
Average session duration
Vanity metric. Long sessions don't mean better conversion.
Pages per session
Same problem. Some buying journeys are 1 page. Some are 8. Both can convert.
Email open rates (post-Apple MPP)
Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates open rates. Click rate and revenue per email are the only metrics that matter.
Total email subscribers
Vanity. "Engaged in last 30 days" is what counts. A list of 10K stale subscribers is worse than 3K engaged.
Where to track these
Built-in Shopify Analytics
Sessions, conversion rate, AOV, top products, cart abandonment — all native. Free.
GA4
Connect via Shopify's Google channel. Better for traffic source attribution and funnels.
Triple Whale (or similar)
If you're doing $50K+/month, a centralized analytics tool that pulls Meta, Google, Klaviyo, and Shopify into one dashboard saves hours. Cost: $200–$500/mo.
Klaviyo
For email and SMS performance. Native flow attribution.
Custom dashboard (Looker Studio)
Free. Pull in data from GA4 + Shopify + Klaviyo. Build your own dashboard.
How to actually use the data
Don't optimize on noise
A bad day doesn't mean a broken funnel. Wait for 7-day trends before acting.
Compare like-to-like
Compare this Tuesday to last Tuesday. Not Tuesday to Sunday.
Test one thing at a time
Changed your pricing AND your hero image AND your ad creative this week? You learned nothing. Test one variable at a time.
Build the dashboard once
Set up your daily/weekly/monthly views once. Don't rebuild each time.
My personal dashboard
I check the same 8 metrics every Monday at 9 AM:
1. 7-day revenue (total + change vs prev 7)
2. 7-day sessions
3. 7-day conversion rate
4. 7-day AOV
5. CAC by channel (Meta, Google)
6. ROAS by channel
7. Email % of revenue
8. New vs returning split
That's it. Anything else gets surfaced only if one of those metrics is moving wrong.
Want a custom analytics setup?
Most founders don't need fancier dashboards — they need a clear view of the right metrics. My Shopify Expert service includes analytics setup and reporting. Or learn the framework in the Shopify Course Philippines.
Related reading:
Written by Vince Servidad
I've spent over $26M on ads and built my own 7-figure brand from scratch. I don't just 'manage ads'—I build the growth systems that actually scale businesses profitably.
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