Using the Analytics overview dashboard

The Analytics overview dashboard provides a summary of your store's performance metrics, including sales, sessions, and fulfillment data, updated within about 1 minute. Customizable metric cards display visualizations for all metrics on the dashboard, and you can click the title of a card to go directly to the corresponding report.

You can customize date ranges, compare performance across time periods, and review automatically generated insights to identify trends and make informed decisions about your business.

Quick filters on the Analytics overview dashboard

The quick filters are a collection of menus across the top of the Analytics overview dashboard that let you filter and format your metric data in the way that makes the most sense to your business.

The Analytics overview dashboard includes the following quick filter menus:

• Date range menu: Filter your metric data by date and time ranges. Select from preset date ranges, such as Last 7 days, Month to date, or Black Friday Cyber Monday, or set your own custom date range. Learn more about setting date ranges for Analytics overview dashboard data.
• Comparison menu: Compare your metric data across 2 different time periods. For example, comparing Net sales over the last 30 days to the previous 30-day period, or to the same period last year.
• Currency menu: Display your metric data in a currency other than your store currency. The currency conversion rate used is based on the historical rate on the day of the transaction.

Configure your metrics' display settings on the Analytics overview dashboard

The dashboard displays the most valuable metrics that give you insight into the performance of your store and the behavior of your customers. The metrics are displayed as cards in numeric format and also as graphs where appropriate.

For all metrics, the percentage change from the previous date range can be displayed. You can also change the currency that's used in all metric cards on the dashboard.

Steps:

Adjust the date range of your Analytics overview dashboard

When you open the Analytics overview dashboard, data is displayed for the default date range of the last 90 days.

You can select a date range from a predefined list, which is organized into sections including popular options, period-to-date ranges, quarterly periods, and Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM). To select a date and time range manually using the calendar, select Custom range, and then adjust the start and end dates using the calendar. The predefined list's most recent time range is Last 30 minutes, but you can manually set the time range to be as narrow as 1 minute when you want to precisely monitor in-progress events.

When selecting a date and time range manually, you can choose between the following types of date range:

• Fixed: Represents a set date range that doesn't change over time, such as January 20, 2025 to January 31, 2025 or Q4 2024.
• Rolling: Represent a date range with days that change over time depending on the parameters of the range that you set, such as Last 7 days or Last week. When you select a rolling date range, you can choose to make the date or time range inclusive of the current period, meaning that if you select Last 7 days, for example, then you can choose to include today as part of the "last 7 days". If you set the rolling date range to be inclusive, then the metric cards in the Analytics overview dashboard display an indication for the in-progress period based on the current data trend. For example, if you select to include today as part of the "last 7 days", then the time period for today in the metric card visualizations are considered to be in-progress because today hasn't finished yet.

Steps:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Analytics.

2. Click the date range menu.

3. Select your custom date or time range using any of the following methods:

   • Select a predefined date or time range in the sidebar, such as Today or Yesterday. You can expand the sections to access additional options, such as period-to-date ranges, quarterly periods, and BFCM periods.
   • To select a fixed date or time range, click Custom range. You can set the fixed range by taking any of the following actions:
     • To manually enter start and end dates, click the start and end date fields.
     • To select the date range visually, click the dates on the calendar.
     • Optional: To open the start and end time fields to set specific start and end times on your selected days, click the icon.
   • To select a rolling date or time range that's displayed in the calendar, click the Last section. Define the rolling range by setting the range unit, such as Minutes or Days, and then add the rolling value to the Last # field.
     • Optional: To make the date or time range inclusive of the current time unit, select Include current period.

4. Click Apply.

Adjust the comparison date range

You can compare your selected date range with a previous time period using the comparison menu.

Steps:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Analytics.

2. Click the menu to open the comparison menu.

3. Select a comparison date range using any of the following methods:

   • Select a predefined comparison range from the sidebar, such as Previous period or Previous year.
   • Set a custom comparison date range by doing the following actions:
     1. Click Custom.
     2. Click dates on the calendar or edit the date fields. You can also click the icon to select a timeframe.
     3. Click Apply.
   • Select No comparison to remove the comparison from the dashboard.

4. Optional: If today is included in your date range, then click … > Turn on auto-refresh to activate the automatic data refresh on the dashboard. This setting refreshes the data on the dashboard every 60 seconds.

Data on the Analytics overview dashboard

When you open the Analytics overview dashboard, the data is up to date, within about 1 minute.

The metrics displayed on the Analytics overview dashboard reflect the sales channels that you use. If you don't use the Online Store channel, then the metrics related to online store sessions aren't displayed. Similarly, if you don't use the Point of Sale channel, then those metrics aren't displayed.

The data in the dashboard might vary slightly from the data that's gathered by analytics and reporting tools and services from other companies. For information on why the data can vary, review Report discrepancies.

Data freshness on the dashboard

When you open the Analytics overview dashboard, the data is up to date, within about 1 minute. To display newer data, you can do any of the following actions:

• Reopen the dashboard by navigating to a different page in your Shopify admin and then navigating back to the Analytics overview dashboard.
• Refresh the browser page.
• Activate the automatic data refresh setting to refresh the data on the dashboard every 60 seconds when your selected date range includes today. Click … > Turn on auto-refresh to activate the automatic refresh. You can turn it off again at any time.

Session and visitor data on the dashboard

The number of sessions and the number of visitors are based on cookies. Cookies are small files that are stored on a visitor's device, such as a desktop or smartphone, when they visit your online store. One cookie identifies the device (the visitor). Another cookie keeps track of the length of the session.

A session ends after 30 minutes of no activity, and at midnight UTC. Because the same visitor can have multiple sessions, the number of sessions is usually higher than the number of visitors.

Example: A user views products on your store for 20 minutes, then returns to your store 2 hours later for another 10 minutes. Two sessions and one visitor are reported. If the user instead views your store for 5 minutes, leaves, and returns 10 minutes later, then one session and one visitor are reported.

If you want to view your online store and not have it count as a session in your acquisition reports, then on your desktop Shopify admin, click View store to open your store in a new browser tab. Any other method of viewing your online store on desktop counts as a session in your reports.

If you view your online store from the Shopify app on iPhone or Android, then it counts as a session in your acquisition reports.

Insights on the Analytics overview dashboard

Insights are data-driven observations about your store's performance that you can leverage to inform your business decisions. Insights display at the top of the Analytics overview dashboard and highlight meaningful trends across the following areas:

• Sales: Tracks trends in gross sales, net sales, orders, average order value, and returning customer rate.
• Sessions: Monitors changes in sessions, visitors, conversion rate, customers adding to cart, and customers reaching checkout.
• Fulfillments: Identifies changes in shipping and delivery efficiency, including orders fulfilled, orders delivered, orders shipped, delivery speed, and shipping speed.

Insights are generated daily for stores that average at least 10 orders per week over the last 6 months. You can receive up to 5 insights per day, depending on the trends identified for your store, and they expire after 24 hours.

Using insights

You can receive the following types of insights:

• Trending up or Trending down: These insights highlight changes in performance based on previous timeframes. These types of insights can detect metrics that are consistently rising or falling over multiple consecutive weeks, or metrics that are pacing unusually compared to the same period last year. For example: "Sales from one-time orders are on track to beat last month. If this pace continues, this month's revenue will exceed $13K."
• Top performers: These insights highlight changes to top-performing metric segments, such as when new products, shipping regions, or sales channels become a top performer. For example: "Your top regions for fastest delivery. Florida moved to 1st place, with a median delivery time of 3 days over the last 30 days."

You can access the associated reports for each insight by clicking See why on the insight. From the report, you can take the following actions:

• Manually review the detailed trends and changes that triggered the insight.
• Continue exploring your data using filters and different time periods to reveal additional information about your business' performance.
• Review Sidekick's pre-loaded context about the insight.

Troubleshooting insights

Insights are generated daily and are available for 24 hours. You might receive anywhere from 0 to 5 insights per day, depending on the trends identified for your store. If there are no new insights being generated, then it might be due to any of the following reasons:

• You're not eligible: To be eligible for insights, you must have an average of 10 orders per week over the last 6 months to have enough information for insights to generate. If you fall below that threshold, then insights aren't generated.
• There are no relevant insights to surface: Insights are displayed only when the underlying data finds valuable information to share, such as top performers or trends.