Sales analytics
A shop's numbers are in four places, each for a different question. This page says which is which, so you open the right one: how much did we sell, what is about to run out, where did the money go, and did anyone come at all.
Insights: what the shop earned
Insights > Overview is the site's analytics, and it carries a Business card for the shop: revenue, paid orders and average order for the period you pick (today, 24 hours, this week, this month, 90 days, this year), beside the site's visits, page views and the conversions in the period. CSV exports the period.
The same screen carries the site health score and its top fixes, and for a shop several of them are about the shop: a store that cannot take payments yet, demo products still on sale, product pages missing a description. They are the checks the dashboard checklist runs, with a link to the page that fixes each.
The dashboard: at a glance
The project Overview shows visitors, page views, messages, subscribers, revenue and orders for the period you choose, with a trend line, plus Needs attention today: new orders to respond to, a store that cannot take payments, messages waiting.
Transactions: where the money went
Payments > Transactions is the ledger: every payment in, every refund out, every deposit kept, across the shop, bookings and rent, with what was paid by card and what came in by cash, transfer or check. When the question is "does the bank statement match", this is the page.
Products: what is about to run out
Best sellers are on Insights; low stock is urgent. A product that sells out stays listed and stops converting, and unless something tells you, nothing does. Three things do:
- the Low stock switch on Shop > Products, which shows only what has fallen to its warning level,
- the email you get when a product crosses Warn me when stock falls to,
- the Availability column on Wishlists: a saved product that is out of stock or unpublished is demand you already have and are turning away.
Pending against paid
A pending order is either a checkout that was started and never paid for (a card order the customer abandoned) or an offline order waiting for its money. A few is normal. A lot of abandoned card checkouts, consistently, is a signal: something at the payment step is failing or putting people off. Those are the orders abandoned-checkout recovery chases, and the two numbers are worth reading together. Filter the orders list by status to see them.
What the numbers will not do
- Count the demo. Sample orders are marked as samples and sit outside the revenue figures.
- Tell you why. Insights says how many came and how many bought; what they thought is in the reviews and in the messages.
- Add up across sites. Each site has its own Insights. The projects page gives the totals.
Frequently asked questions
Where is "best sellers"? At the bottom of Insights, for a period in which the shop sold something: a Best sellers table of products by units and revenue. It hides when the period has no sales, so widen the period.
Why do revenue on Insights and the total on Transactions differ? Insights counts paid orders in the period you chose; Transactions is money in and out, including refunds and deposits, for every module. The same sale appears in both; refunds appear in one.
Why is average order zero? No paid orders in the period. Pending orders are not counted until they are paid.
Can I export the orders? Yes, Export on the orders list downloads what the filters show as a spreadsheet, and CSV on Insights exports the period's figures.
How do I know a product is about to run out? Set Warn me when stock falls to on the product; you are emailed when it crosses that level, and the Low stock switch on the products list shows every product that has.
Next steps
- Orders
- Wishlists
- Analytics dashboard - the rest of Insights.
Related reading
- What to measure on a small business website - which numbers deserve a weekly look.
- Where website visitors drop off - when the visits are there and the orders are not.