Shopify analytics: what the dashboard and reports show, and what to add

Where to find analytics in Shopify

In your Shopify admin, open Analytics for the dashboard. Open Analytics, then Reports, for the report library. Live View is its own page and needs an online store. Staff need the Analytics permission to see any of it.

Shopify says its main analytics features are available on any Shopify plan. Its help pages don't say which individual reports each plan includes, so the quickest check is your own admin: whatever shows up there is what your plan gives you.

What the Shopify analytics dashboard shows

The dashboard is built from cards. By Shopify's description it shows key sales, sessions and fulfilment metrics for your store, across all your sales channels, updated within about a minute. You can:

• Add, remove, rearrange and resize cards, and group them into labelled sections.
• Pick any date range and compare it with another period.
• Read automatically generated insights that point out trends.
• Set metric targets to track progress toward a goal.

Shopify's analytics page also describes pre-built reports, deeper data exploration, custom reports and a way to write custom queries. Our guide doesn't cover those in depth, so use Shopify's reports and analytics overview for the current list. Shopify changes the admin often.

One recent change to know about: Shopify's dashboard page notes a session measurement update rolling out from 21 to 23 September 2026, which can move reported sessions and conversion rates without any real change in traffic. If your numbers shifted in late September, check that before you chase a cause. To see where shoppers drop off between product page, cart and checkout, step by step, see the conversion funnel guide.

Shopify analytics reports: sessions, sources and sales

For "who visits my store and where from", the acquisition reports are the ones to open. Shopify lists four: sessions by referrer, sessions by location, sessions over time and visitors over time. A separate sales report, total sales by referrer, adds the orders and amounts that came from each source.

Shopify sorts a session's source in layers: the referring channel (Instagram, Google, Facebook), the referring platform (Meta, Google, Microsoft), the referring medium (social, search, email) and a traffic type of direct, organic or paid. If you tag your links with UTM parameters, the UTM parameters guide explains the five tags worth using. A big direct share usually means untagged links, as what direct traffic is explains, and the organic traffic guide covers the search slice.

Three details from Shopify's help center are worth knowing:

• A session ends after 30 minutes of inactivity.
• Sessions-based history goes back only to 1 October 2022.
• You can filter reports by human or bot traffic.

What Shopify analytics doesn't show

Shopify's analytics is very good at one thing: your Shopify store. The gaps show up when your question reaches past it.

• It covers Shopify, not the rest of your web presence. A blog, a landing page or a site on another platform isn't in Shopify's reports, so reading those together is on you. Shopify Plus merchants with several stores can use Shopify's organization analytics to see those stores together.
• Its sessions reports are summaries by day or period. Beyond the Live View page, they don't show who is on the store right now.
• It counts by Shopify's rules. Session length, bot filtering and the September 2026 measurement change all affect how your numbers compare with another tool's.

None of that makes Shopify's reports wrong. It means a second tool answers different questions, and the two will not agree to the digit.

How to add Google Analytics to Shopify

Google Analytics on Shopify means connecting a Google Analytics 4 (GA4) property to your store. Shopify's current route is its Google & YouTube sales channel. The steps, from Shopify's help center:

1. Install the Google & YouTube channel from the Shopify App Store and connect your Google account.
2. In your admin, go to Sales channels, then Google & YouTube.
3. On the banner that asks Looking only to set up Google Analytics 4?, select Get started.
4. Choose an existing GA4 property from the list, or click Create new, then click Connect.

Shopify says you don't need a Google Merchant Center account for this, and that only GA4 properties where you're an administrator appear in the list. You can disconnect at any time.

If your store still has an old Universal Analytics ID (one that starts with UA-) under Online Store, then Preferences, remove it. Google's help page on the migration says Shopify planned to convert leftover tags into custom pixels after 2 February 2025, which could change or lose some data. Running two tags on one store is also a classic cause of doubled numbers.

Google Analytics reports on a different set of things from Shopify's own reports. For which Google tool does what, see GTM vs Google Analytics, and for what it costs, Google Analytics pricing. If you'd rather not add Google's tag at all, Google Analytics alternatives compares the options, and Google Analytics and GDPR covers the consent side for stores selling into the EU.

Shopify analytics, Google Analytics and Stickybeak side by side

These do different jobs, and plenty of store owners run more than one. Compare how each tool is installed, what checkout activity it records and where you read the results.

Pick by the question. For orders and sales, Shopify's reports are the source of truth. For traffic beyond the store, such as a blog or a site on another platform, add a second tool.

Add Stickybeak to a Shopify store

Stickybeak is live analytics for every site you own, and it's in early access. On Shopify it goes in as one script in your theme. The short version:

1. In your admin, go to Online Store, then Themes, then the ⋯ menu, then Edit code, and open layout/theme.liquid.
2. Paste the Stickybeak script just before </head> and save.
3. Open your primary storefront domain in a private window and check it's picked up.

The full steps, with the script, are in the Shopify install guide. Re-add the script if you switch themes or a theme update replaces theme.liquid. Shopify themes change pages without a full reload, and Stickybeak records those changes on its own.

What you get is a live view of who is on the store, where they came from and what they did, with channels, campaigns and affiliate ?ref= codes. You can set page goals on /cart or /products/*, and mark the add-to-cart button with data-goal="add_to_cart". For why a live view matters, see real-time website analytics.

Where it stops: Shopify's checkout doesn't run theme code, and its customer-event pixels run in a sandboxed frame. So Stickybeak can't record completed orders or revenue on a Shopify store. It tracks checkout starts instead, as Shopify checkout tracking explains. Keep using Shopify's own reports for sales. If you run ads to the store, take the revenue from those reports and use the ROAS calculator to set it against your ad spend and your break-even ROAS.

If your numbers look wrong

1. Compare like with like. Pick the same dates and the same measure. Shopify sessions, GA4 sessions and Stickybeak visitors are counted by different rules.
2. Check for two tags. An old UA- ID under Preferences, plus a connected GA4 property, can double count.
3. Allow for the September 2026 change. Shopify says its session measurement update can shift sessions and conversion rates with no real change in traffic.
4. Check your traffic sources. A big direct share often means untagged links. See what direct traffic is.

Sources, checked 17 October 2026: Shopify Help Center, Organization analytics,Shopify reports and analytics, Analytics dashboard, acquisition reports and connecting Google Analytics in the Google & YouTube channel; Google Analytics Help, Update your Google Analytics integration on Shopify. Stickybeak facts: our Shopify install guide and Shopify checkout tracking.