Read your analytics and reports

Before you start

Shopify Analytics has three parts. The Analytics page is a dashboard of metric cards. Reports give deeper data on one metric or set of metrics, as a chart and a table. Live View shows your online store traffic as it happens¹.

• Plan. Shopify says the main features of Shopify Analytics are available on any subscription plan¹. The Advanced plan adds custom reports and predicted values for some reports⁵.
• Staff access. Staff members need Analytics permissions to see reports and dashboards¹.
• How fresh the data is. Dashboard data is updated within about 1 minute⁶.
• How sessions are counted. Sessions and visitors are based on cookies, and a session ends after 30 minutes of inactivity².

Worked example: a candle shop selling 40 products in the US and Canada wants to know whether last month beat the month before, and which candles sold best.

Steps

1. Open the dashboard. From your Shopify admin, go to Analytics². On desktop, the dashboard shows the last 90 days by default. In the Shopify app, it shows today compared with yesterday².
2. Set the date range. Click the date range menu (calendar icon). Choose a preset in the sidebar, select Custom range for fixed dates, or use the Last section for a rolling range. Click Apply². For the candle shop, pick last month.
3. Compare with an earlier period. Open the comparison menu, select Previous period or Previous year, or click Custom to set your own dates, then click Apply². Select No comparison to remove it².
4. Open the report behind a card. On desktop, click the title of a metric card to go to its report². Each report shows its data as a chart and a table³.
5. Browse all reports. Go to Analytics > Reports. Reports are grouped by subject, and you can filter the list by category³. Shopify's default categories are Acquisition, Behavior, Customers, Finance, Fraud, Inventory, Marketing, Order, Profit, Retail sales and Sales⁷. To see only Shopify's own reports, filter by Created by and select Shopify⁷.
6. Change a report's dates. In a report, click the calendar icon, or click the Date range value in the Filters menu of the configuration panel. Choose a range and click Apply⁸.
7. Compare a report with the past. Click the Compare to or No comparison indicator in the upper-left corner, then click Comparison to past. Select Previous period, Previous year or Custom range, then click Apply⁸.
8. Make the dashboard yours. On a desktop computer, go to Analytics and click the horizontal menu icon > Customize⁹. Drag cards to move them, drag the lower-right corner to resize, drag a card in from the metric library sidebar to add it, and click X on a card to remove it. Click Save when you're done⁹. Changes show on desktop and mobile⁹.
9. Group cards into sections. In the dashboard editor, click Add section, type a name and press Enter, then add cards to it and click Save⁹. The candle shop could keep one section for sales and one for traffic.
10. Watch Live View on a busy day. Go to Analytics > Live View⁴. Live View needs the Online Store sales channel⁴. It shows visitors right now (active in the past 5 minutes), total sales, sessions and orders since midnight, and customer behavior in the last 10 minutes⁴.
11. Export a report. Go to Analytics > Reports, click the report, then click the horizontal menu icon > Export. If the Export report dialog offers a choice, pick a file format, then click Export¹⁰. Formats include CSV, XML, JSONL and Parquet¹⁰.

Check your work

• Your dashboard shows the cards you chose, in the order you set, after you reload the Analytics page⁹.
• A report with a comparison shows both periods for the same dates you picked on the dashboard^2,8.
• An exported file opens in a spreadsheet program and has more rows than the report shows on screen when the report is large^3,10.

Common problems

• "My report stops at 1,000 rows." Reports show at most 1,000 rows on screen, though totals cover all rows. Export the report to get every row³.
• "Sessions and conversion rate changed but my traffic didn't." Shopify rolled out a session measurement update from September 21 to 23, 2026. Session-based metrics such as sessions and conversion rate might change after it reaches your store, even if traffic and orders didn't⁶.
• "My visitor count doesn't match another analytics tool." Counts differ because of counting windows, bot filtering, JavaScript or cookie settings and time zones⁴.
• "Live View shows lots of visitors in Kansas." Visitors whose location can't be resolved within the US may appear at a default point in Kansas. This usually reflects bots, crawlers or VPN traffic⁴.
• "I can't customize the dashboard in the app." Customizing is only possible in the Shopify admin on a desktop computer⁹.
• "I don't see insights at the top." Insights are generated daily only for stores that average at least 10 orders a week over the last 6 months².
• "A staff member can't see reports." Give them Analytics permissions¹.

Further reading

• Using the Analytics overview dashboard²
• Default Shopify reports⁷