How to Easily Customize and Build Your Shopify Report Dashboard

Shopify Reports Dashboard – how we love it!

Ok, maybe you’re not that enthusiastic about them, but Shopify Reports Dashboard does give us important business high-level details that you need to know.

However, quite a few times Shopify merchants are left confused when trying to access or customize it. This is especially true when you are new to the platform and trying to get a hang of the entire system.

During these trying times, these dashboards may have left a bad impression in your mind, wishing for somebody to help. And that’s why we made this quick little guide to get you going. So let’s look at how you can use this dashboard for better business decisions.

Why Do We Need Shopify Report Dashboards?

It’s always possible to stumble upon helpful information for your business.  However, report dashboards ensure you have critical business insights every time. 

Unlike individual Shopify reports which are more detailed, the Dashboard gives you a high-level view of Specific data. And it’s quite essential because as a Shopify merchant, you get multiple questions on a daily basis from multiple directions. To prevent your head from spinning, you need to have dashboards to make quick business decisions.

Here are some things that Shopify report dashboards can help with:

• Gauge business growth and decline based on multiple customer data points

• View trends for precise data like returning customers or first orders

• Real-time monitoring of all your data on a day-to-day basis

• Easily review visual trends and insights from historical data

Organize reports by using multiple built-in widgets

How Different are Reports and Dashboards?

While dashboards give you high-level visualization of your Store data, reports give you an in-depth picture of all the business details.

To help you understand better, let’s look at a quick example.

Imagine you’re an owner of an online food store, and you maintain various types of food recipes in your menu catalog.

To analyze the growth of your business, it is crucial to understand how many customers are returning to your store for reorders.

Now, if you had to find this information manually then we can assure you it’s going to be a  laborious process but with Shopify dashboards, it becomes quite easy. All you’ve to do is go to the “returning customer rate” section in analytics and you’ll find this insight.

As you can see above, the dashboard displays the percentage of returning customers in the last  30 days. It also displays the trend (such as increase or decrease) in returning customers when compared to the previous 30-day lifecycle.

However, this is just high-level data. Suppose you need to analyze specific details of your returning customers, such as the sales generated, then you’d definitely need reports over a dashboard.

In the above report, you can see details of each metric, starting with the number of orders between first-time and returning customers, the average order value, gross sales, discounts, shipping, tax, returns and the total sales.

You can also export this information in CSV files to analyze further.

And that’s the major difference between a dashboard and a report.

How to Access Your Shopify Dashboard

Now let’s look at how to navigate to your Dashboard, and customize it with the help of various metrics.

The below screenshot represents a typical Shopify report dashboard.

Here are steps you need to follow:

1. Log in to your Shopify

1. Click on Your Store -> Login with your registered email ID. It will take you to your store admin page.

1. On your admin page, click on Analytics options which will take you to your store dashboard, and by default, it will show your data compared based on yesterday.

1. Click on Calendar Icon -> select a date range to see the data for that particular period. For example, you can choose the Last 30 days.

1. You can also select a custom date range by choosing dates from the calendar.

1. If you want to compare your current data with the previous year’s data, you can choose the comparison value as shown below.

1. Click Apply.

1. A few of your metrics will have a “view Report Link” clicking on it will take you to a detailed report of that particular metric. Note that not all the metrics will have a report link, and reports are varied based on your Shopify plan.

1. To View all your Shopify Reports, click on the Report option below Analytics. It will show an overview of all your default reports and custom reports that you have created.

1. Note: Overview of Shopify reports and Analytic Dashboard will look different to everyone based on your store metrics. Reports will differ based on the type of Shopify plan you select.

3 Important Factors to Consider Before Creating Your Dashboard

OK, so we’ve established why dashboards are important and how to find them in Shopify. Obviously, the next step should be how to customize them to display the right results.

But, before we get there, let’s quickly look at the 3 important factors that you’d need to consider to generate the most insightful and productive dashboards.

1 - Know the type of Dashboards you require

Dashboards are classified into 3 types.

• Operational Dashboards

• Strategic Dashboards

• Analytics Dashboards

Let’s quickly take a look at these dashboards.

Operational Dashboards

Operational Dashboards help you monitor KPIs in real-time. These dashboards are used in marketing, logistics, manufacturing, customer service, etc.

Analytics Dashboards

Shopify analytics is the best example of an analytics dashboard.

You can use these analytics when your business needs to identify past trends and discover vital insights into where the business needs to be improved.

Widely used by Retail, Finance, Ecommerce, Etc.

Strategic Dashboards

Strategic dashboards concentrate primarily on critical performance indicators to understand the business strategy. Used for Management, SaaS, Sales KPI, etc.

So now question yourself to find out the purpose and type of Dashboard you need.

Here’s a quick example – Suppose you have started an online store for an apparel business. If you want to know your site’s online session and total sales based on trends then an analytics dashboard for Sales and online sessions will best suit your needs.

2 - Know your Audience

Assume that you have started a Music store and are selling all types of music instruments, so who do you think the target audience would be? Your target audience will be musicians, Singers, Etc.

A significant way of growing your business is understanding your customer’s interests.

3 - Know your Key Metrics

Once you decide which type of Dashboard you need and target audience, the next step would be selecting your key metrics.

Let us take our previous example of an Apparel Store; it is categorized into men and women, so let us analyze and list a few key metrics that could be helpful for your store.

• Online store sessions, 

• Conversion rate, 

• Total orders

• Sales by POS location

• returning customers

The Dashboard is mainly used for monitoring data in real-time so choosing your metrics is critical for the best Dashboard.

Default Metrics to Customize Your Shopify Report Dashboard

Below are the metrics available in Shopify used for your offline or online store. Based on the following metrics, you can customize your dashboard.

1. Total Sales

Total Sales is also known as total income generated by the store.

This metric helps you find the total sales amounts on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis.

 It is calculated based on the “gross sales − discounts − returns + shipping + taxes” formula.

Sales metrics are categorized as follows:

Keep in mind that you won’t be able to use all the metrics in your dashboard; you need to choose metrics based on your store’s requirements.

• Sales by POS location

It displays the number of sales based on your physical point of sale locations.

• Sales by social source

If your store is integrated with multiple social networks like Facebook, YouTube, Etc. It shows the number of sales generated from all your social platforms.

• Sales by staff

If you have a sales team that’s spread across multiple POS locations then you can find out the sales by staff using this metric. It helps you track all sales related to a specific individual.

• Sales by traffic source

It helps you track the number of sales that come from search engines, social, email, and direct.

• Top products by units sold.

Shows the Top-Selling product in your store. This metric helps you to manage your inventory based on customer requirements and also helps in marketing the best-selling product to the customers.

2. Average Order Value

Average order value, or AOV, displays the average value of total orders made over time or from a single customer.

In general, you can calculate AOV with the below formula.

Total Sales/number of orders = AOV or Average order value

For example, if your store has total sales of $1,000 with 100 orders, then the average order value will be $10. It means that on average the customers spend $10 on each order from your store.

Now, this is a very critical metric, especially when you’re determining the lifetime value of your customers or the lifetime value of your business.

3. Online Store Session

This metric is only for online stores. Sessions are vital to analyzing the customers visiting their stores based on location, social platform, device type, Etc.

Below are the Shopify sessions based on your store requirement.

• Online store conversion rate

Shows the percentage of sessions that customers lead to an order. When a customer visits the store and adds a product to the cart and then purchases a product, then it’s called a conversion funnel.

• Added to Cart

This metric helps with the percentage of sessions when customers add one or two products to the cart and leave the cart without purchasing.

• Reached Checkout

The user added the items to the cart, and then he proceeded to for checkout, and then the customer left the purchase

• Online store sessions by device type

Shows the number of sessions based on the type of devices with which customers tried to reach your online store.

For Example, if a customer opened the site from a mobile device, then that session will be shown under this metric.

• Online store sessions by location

Show the number of sessions for your online store based on the customer location, and this metric can help you with marketing based on the location.

• Online store sessions by traffic source

Shows the number of sessions for your online store based on how visitors reached our store. There are 4 main traffic sources: search, direct, social, and email.

The traffic source may also come from unknown sources.

• Online store sessions from social source

Shows the number of sessions based on your social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Etc. This metric can help you with your marketing efforts and gives you an insight into how visitors are reaching your store.

The following types of referrer sources are not included Direct, Search, email, and social.

• Top referrers by sessions

Shows the number of sessions that come directly from other websites and gives you the top 5 website details.

• Total online store sessions

Shows the number of sessions based on the Visitors who visited your store.

• Top landing pages

Gives you data on customers who visited your store with a particular landing page.

4. Returning Customer Rate

This metric gives you the percentage of customers who have ordered multiple times from your store. It shows you the first-time customer data and returning customer data on the analytic dashboard.

5. Top products by units sold

A total number of units sold based on Top Selling products from your online and POS store.

Helps you in finding out the best-selling products in your store and strategies you’re marketing and helps you maintain your store inventory.

6. Total Orders

When customers place multiple orders then this metric will give you the total orders placed based on an hourly basis.

Tools With Predefined Templates of Shopify Report Dashboard

The metrics in Shopify do help merchants in fulfilling their key reporting and dashboard needs, but they lack full customization.

They also do not provide predefined templates for dashboards, no widget options, no option to integrate other tools, etc.

If your business needs detailed insights into dynamic dashboards with widgets and key metrics then you may consider the following tools.

1. Klipfolio

Klipfolio is a dynamic platform that helps you to create a wide range of visualized dashboards.

They have multiple predefined dashboard templates which are suitable for your business and it integrates with Shopify.

You can also create them with multiple color options and get a custom store theme, in case your artistic vibes are quite high.

Pricing:

The base plan starts at $0/mo., which is a free plan with limited features such as 4hrs data refresh, and only up to 2 months of data can be displayed.

It also has 3 more plans, including Plus, Pro, and Custom. Plus starts from $99/mo. and Pro $229/mo., and the custom plan gives you no limitations and you should contact the Klipfolio team for pricing.

2. Agency Analytics

Agency Analytics is an automated reporting solution with a live dashboard. It has many integrations such as Ads, Analytics, eCommerce, Email, Phone, Social, Etc.

They have highly customizable widgets with drag-and-drop functionality, if you do not have time in creating your own customized dashboard.

Pricing

When you create an account, it will give you a 14days trial period, after 14 days you have 3 plans that you can upgrade to a Basic (Freelancer) plan starts at $10/mo., and the most popular (Agency) plan starts with $15/mo., and the enterprise plan.

Conclusion

Ok, so we’ve reached the end of the road. I hope you learned some really good basics about the Shopify reports dashboard.

Let’s quickly summarize what we’ve covered so far:

• Choosing the right dashboard for your store.

• Customizing your dashboard in Shopify based on your needs.

• Understanding critical metrics in Shopify.

• Understanding third-party dashboard tools that can help you create custom dashboards.

Whether you are new to Shopify dashboards or you’ve been using them for a while, we strongly recommend that you take the instructions given in this article seriously. They’ll definitely help you in getting the best insights.

With that said, Shopify reports can also have quite a few limitations when you are trying to get custom data out of them.

When you do face such problems, we at Report Pundit can help you generate custom reports very easily. In fact, Report Pundit is the leading reporting & Analytics app in the Shopify app store with over 950 plus 5-star reviews.

So do check us out when you need and we’ll be glad to help you.

Till then, have fun with your Shopify reports dashboard.