The Top Ecommerce Reports For Your Store (2025)

Finding the correct ecommerce reports and uncovering customer insights could mean the difference between slow and steady growth or skyrocketing sales.

Finding the correct ecommerce reports and uncovering customer insights could mean the difference between slow and steady growth or skyrocketing sales. 

Yet an endless amount of valuable data to mine can be a problem. In the words of Avinash Kaushik, Google’s Digital Marketing Evangelist, “Most businesses are data rich and information poor.” 

To guide you, we asked our in-house ecommerce experts to give you the inside scoop on how to get the most out of your ecommerce website analytics.

What is an ecommerce report?

An ecommerce report shows you information about your sales and how customers make purchases. Reporting tools help you make better decisions about how to help your ecommerce business grow by learning more about your customers, products, sales goals, marketing campaigns, and inventory management.

Each ecommerce platform has its own analytics, which monitors various data like your shopping cart, SEO performance, social media following, or total revenue. The reports discussed below will be specific to Shopify Analytics.

The most valuable ecommerce reports

• Live View
• Finance
• Fraud
• Order
• Acquisition
• Inventory
• Behavior
• Marketing
• Sales
• Profit
• Customer

Live View

Live View in Shopify is a real-time analytics tool that gives you immediate insights into your store's activity and performance. It offers a visual representation of visitor activity and sales on a world map or globe, along with key metrics. 

Live View is useful during high-traffic periods or when monitoring the immediate impact of marketing campaigns and promotions.

Each metric displayed in Live View include:

• Visitors right now: Shows the number of active visitors on your online store in the past 5 minutes.
• Total sales: Displays the total value of sales from all channels since midnight.
• Total sessions: Indicates the total number of sessions on your online store since midnight.
• Total orders: Shows the total number of orders placed across all channels since midnight.
• Top locations: Lists the geographic regions where most visitors are located.
• Top products: Highlights the products generating the highest total sales.
• First-time customers: Displays the number of customers making their first purchase.
• Returning customers: Shows the number of customers who have previously placed an order.
• Customer behavior: Provides a breakdown of recent customer actions (active carts, checking out, completed purchases).

Finance

Finance reports are essential tools that provide detailed insights into your store's financial performance. They help you track revenue, analyze sales patterns, monitor tax liabilities, and understand payment flows. 

Some common reports include:

• Sales finance report: Provides a comprehensive overview of your store's sales activities, including gross sales, discounts, returns, taxes, and shipping charges.
• Discounts finance report: Shows all discounts applied to orders, helping you evaluate the effectiveness of your promotional strategies.
• Taxes finance report: Displays all sales taxes applied to your transactions, crucial for understanding tax liabilities and ensuring compliance.
• Payments finance report: Offers a detailed view of all payment transactions, grouped by payment method, credit card type, and sales channel.
• Liabilities finance report: Focuses on gift card sales and tips, which are considered liabilities until redeemed or paid out.
• Gift card sales report: Shows the sales of gift card products, including their value, discounts applied, and total sales.
• Gift cards balance report: Displays the daily balance of all gift card transactions, helping you monitor outstanding gift card liabilities.
• United States sales tax report: Provides a detailed summary of sales and taxes for orders shipped to the United States, crucial for tax compliance and reporting.

👉 Learn more about Finance reports in Shopify Analytics. 

Fraud

Fraud reports help you monitor and manage fraudulent activities in your store. They provide insight into high-risk orders and chargebacks, allowing you to identify fraudulent behavior and minimize losses.

Common reports include:

• Acceptance rate report: Shows the percentage of total orders not flagged as high-risk.
• High risk orders rate report: Displays the percentage of total orders flagged as high-risk.
• Orders canceled due to fraud report: Presents the value of total orders canceled due to suspected fraud.
• Overall chargeback rate report: Shows the percentage of total payments that have received a chargeback of any kind.
• Fraudulent chargeback rate report: Displays the percentage of total payments that received a chargeback specifically for fraudulent reasons.
• Fraudulent chargeback value report: Shows the total value of orders that received chargebacks due to fraud.
• Shopify Protect dispute total report: Presents the value of total orders covered by Shopify Protect in case of disputes.
• Shopify Protect order total report: Displays the value of total orders protected by Shopify Protect.

👉 Learn more about Fraud reports in Shopify Analytics. 

Order

Order reports can help you understand the efficiency of your fulfillment processes and shipping performance. They also let you understand product performance and track sales trends to improve inventory management and overall customer satisfaction.

These reports include:

• Product orders and returns report: Shows the number of products ordered and returned, helping identify best sellers and frequently returned items.
• Orders over time report: Displays the total number of orders received during a selected time period.
• Fulfillment, shipping, and delivery times report: Tracks the time taken for orders to move through the entire fulfillment process.
• Fulfillment over time report: Shows the number of orders fulfilled, shipped, or delivered over a selected time period.
• Shipping labels over time report: Provides insights into purchase trends and costs for Shopify Shipping labels.
• Shipping labels report: Offers a detailed breakdown of Shopify Shipping labels purchased over a selected time period.
• Items bought together report: Displays the most common product combinations purchased together, useful for identifying bundle opportunities.

👉 Learn more about Order reports in Shopify Analytics. 

Acquisition 

Acquisition reports offer insights into visitor traffic to your Shopify store. They help you understand where your visitors come from, how traffic patterns change over time, and which regions your audience is based in. 

Here are the key acquisition reports:

• Sessions over time report: Tracks visitor and session counts across a selected timeframe, revealing traffic trends and patterns.
• Sessions by referrer report: Breaks down traffic sources, showing whether visitors arrive directly, via search engines, or through referrals.
• Sessions by location report: Maps out the geographical distribution of your visitors, highlighting which countries are driving traffic to your store.

These reports focus solely on visitor data and don't include sales information. They're specific to the Online Store sales channel and provide near real-time data that can be refreshed for the most current insights.

👉 Learn more about Acquisition reports in Shopify Analytics. 

Inventory

Inventory reports give you a view of your inventory performance, including product stock levels and valuation. They help you make more informed restocking, pricing, and overall inventory management decisions.

Common inventory reports include:

• Month-end inventory snapshot report: Displays the quantity of each product variant in stock at the end of each month.
• Month-end inventory value report: Shows the total value of available inventory with assigned cost per item.
• Average inventory sold per day report: Indicates the average number of items sold daily by product variant.
• Percent of inventory sold report: Presents the percentage of each variant's inventory sold from the total starting quantity.
• ABC analysis by product report: Grades products based on their contribution to revenue over the last 28 days.
• Product sell-through rate report: Displays the percentage of total inventory sold during a selected time period.
• Days of inventory remaining report: Estimates how long current inventory will last based on average sales rates.

👉 Learn more about Inventory reports in Shopify Analytics. 

Behavior

Behavior reports provide insights into online shopping patterns and interactions with your online store. They help you optimize store layout, improve product recommendations, and enhance the customer experience. 

Here's a brief overview of each behavior report:

• Online store conversion over time report: Shows the percentage of visitors making purchases over time.
• Web Performance report: Evaluates your store's performance against industry standards and similar Shopify stores.
• Product recommendation conversions over time report: Indicates the effectiveness of product recommendations.
• Top products with low recommendation click rate report: Highlights top-selling products with below-average recommendation click rates.
• Top online store searches report: Displays popular search terms used by customers.
• Top online store searches with no clicks report: Lists search terms that didn't result in product clicks.
• Top online store searches with no results report: Shows search terms that yielded no results.
• Search conversions over time report: Tracks how effectively storefront searches lead to sales.
• Sessions by landing page report: Reveals which pages visitors typically enter your store through.
• Sessions by device report: Breaks down the types of devices used to access your store.
• Online store cart analysis report: Identifies pairs of products frequently added to the same cart.

👉 Learn more about Behavior reports in Shopify Analytics. 

Marketing

Want to know which marketing channels are most successful in driving traffic and sales? That’s where marketing reports come in. They help you identify your most effective marketing channels and campaigns. You can learn more about the customer journey and make data-driven decisions about budget allocation for different marketing initiatives.

Common reports include:

• Sales attributed to marketing report: Shows sales directly linked to trackable marketing efforts, helping identify which campaigns generate the most revenue.
• Sessions attributed to marketing report: Displays the number of online store sessions resulting from various marketing initiatives, revealing which efforts drive the most traffic.
• Conversion by first interaction report: Reveals orders attributed to customers' first interactions with your store, helping understand which channels introduce new customers effectively.
• Conversion by last interaction report: Shows orders attributed to customers' last interactions before purchase, identifying which touchpoints are most effective at closing sales.
• Attribution model comparison report: Compares orders and average order value between first and last interactions, providing a comprehensive view of the customer journey.

👉 Learn more about Marketing reports in Shopify Analytics. 

Sales

Sales reports help you understand revenue patterns and product performance. You can identify your best-selling products, evaluate the effectiveness of discounts, and even recognize your most valuable customers. 

Collectively, sales reports help you improve your product offering and implement more effective sales strategies. Common reports include:

• Sales over time report: Displays the number of orders and total sales over time, helping track sales trends and performance.
• Sales by product report: Shows a breakdown of sales by individual products, useful for identifying top-selling items.
• Sales by product variant SKU report: Provides a granular view of sales by specific product variants.
• Sales by product vendor report: Displays sales data grouped by product vendors, helpful for managing supplier relationships.
• Sales by discount report: Shows sales grouped by discount names or codes, useful for evaluating promotion effectiveness.
• Sales by traffic referrer report: Indicates sales based on traffic sources, helping identify effective marketing channels.
• Sales by billing location report: Breaks down sales by customer billing locations, useful for geographic analysis.
• Sales by checkout currency report: Displays sales breakdown by customer currency used at checkout.
• Sales by channel report: Shows sales performance across different sales channels.
• Sales by customer name report: Provides a breakdown of orders by individual customers over time.
• Average order value over time report: Tracks changes in average order value, helping assess overall sales performance.

👉 Learn more about Sales reports in Shopify Analytics. 

Profit

If you want to understand costs, margins, and profitability across your online store, Profit reports can help. You’ll be able to identify your most and least profitable products or variants, evaluate sales channel performance, and optimize your pricing strategy.

The three reports Shopify offers are:

• Profit by product report: Shows gross profit by product, helping identify which items contribute most to your bottom line.
• Profit by product variant SKU report: Provides a granular view of profitability by specific product variants, useful for optimizing your product mix.
• Profit by Point of Sale location report: Displays gross profit by POS location, helping assess the performance of different retail outlets.

👉Learn more about Profit reports in Shopify Analytics. 

Customer 

Customer reports help you better understand your customer base. You can analyze purchasing patterns, customer lifetime value, and segmentation. With these insights, you can create more personalized marketing campaigns or loyalty programs to increase repurchase rates, and so much more.

Common reports include: 

• Customers over time report: Shows how many customers placed orders, distinguishing between first-time and returning customers.
• First-time vs returning customer sales report: Displays the value of orders placed by new and repeat customers.
• Customers by location report: Presents data on new customers organized by geographical location.
• Returning customers report: Provides details about customers who have placed two or more orders.
• One-time customers report: Displays information about customers who have only placed one order.
• Customer cohort analysis report: Offers insights into your customer acquisition model and retention based on when customers made their first purchase.
• Predicted spend tier report: Shows the predicted value of each customer in a selected cohort.

👉 Learn more about Customer reports in Shopify Analytics. 

Tips for analyzing ecommerce data

1. Remain consistent in your evaluations

Whether you already have one setup or are just getting started, it’s important to remain consistent in what you are evaluating. 

For example, whenever you look at sales trends, always use gross sales, net sales, or total sales to benchmark and monitor the changes over time. Measuring your store’s performance against a well-defined set of KPIs will also help you glean more business intelligence, without drowning in data.

2. Keep an eye on your checkout funnel

Jessica Kohl, Merchant Success Manager at Shopify, recommends that you also keep an eye on your online store conversion rate and conversion funnel.

“Checkout funnel analysis helps to identify the percentage of customer drop-offs at different stages of the checkout. Doing so indicates different barriers and areas that need improvement to increase their trust, reduce fear, or investigate strange occurrences like shipping costs being higher than the product cost when you have a sale,” says Kohl. 

“If you discover specific barriers to conversion, you can use Shopify Scripts to customize and solve for different issues, like offering free standard shipping for VIP customers or first-time customer discounts.”

3. Check search results with zero results

You should also use a “top online store searches with no results” report to identify potential sales that are falling through the gaps. If you are seeing many searches left unmatched, then you should implement a smart search tool on your site, like Fast Simon. 

“Insights into how customers are searching for your product also lead to more intel on ways you can name products or keywords to use in your search PPC campaigns,” says Kohl.

4. Segment customer lifestyles by purchase

“As a data-driven organization,” says McGregor Button, VP Marketing at Linksoul, “we love having the ability to drill down into an individual customer profile, see all of their touch points across devices, and understand which touch point led to a sale. We love seeing a customer’s entire lifecycle and segment it out by different purchases.”

Best ecommerce reporting tools

In addition to Shopify's own reporting tools, it integrates with many third-party apps for merchants needing more specialized functionalities and templates. 

Shopify's App Store has reporting apps for everything from inventory management to customer lifetime value and marketing analytics. Here are some popular apps to try:

• Report Pundit
• Data Export IO
• BeProfit
• Report Toaster

Making the most of your ecommerce reporting

The performance reports suggested in this post will help you develop an information-rich ecommerce analytics system.You’ll be able to understand everything about your store, from each customer’s journey to how well your marketing strategy is performing. 

Log into your Shopify store and go to Analytics > Reports on the left-side menu to generate reports. Here, you can choose a report from the list, or click “Create custom report” in the top left corner.

Ecommerce reports FAQ

What is the purpose of an ecommerce report?

You can spot problems in your store faster with ecommerce reports. They’re designed to help you make smart decisions about your inventory, pricing, product variants, and other important parts of your store.

What should be included in an ecommerce report?

Ecommerce analytics reports will include data about sales trends, marketing campaign success, product performance, ecommerce site conversion rates, inventory status, and similar stats.

Is Google Analytics good for ecommerce?

Yes, Google Analytics does have a range of features to aid ecommerce store owners. It helps them understand which marketing channels their online customers are being sent from, how they behave, and which parts of their site contribute the most to their sales.

What’s the difference between an ecommerce report and an ecommerce dashboard?

An ecommerce dashboard usually shows you a collection of important metrics at a glance. It's great for seeing key metrics like overall sales within a time period, or the amount of orders that were returned recently. But an ecommerce report gives you a specific data point that you can dive into. It's a more comprehensive tool to uncover valuable insights about how things are going.