How to read the Analytics page

Selling › Analytics is the trading dashboard for your connected Shopify store, part of What is Store analytics?. Every card on it measures the period you pick in the header, and compares it with the same length of time just before.

Before you start

You need three things:

• The Store module switched on. See How to switch parts of Tideswell on and off.
• A connected Shopify store. See How to connect your Shopify store.
• See sales, inventory, reports and the daily brief, a row in Settings › Permissions that starts at lead. See How to set who can do what.

If Analytics is missing from the Selling menu, the module is off. If it opens to a lock and a request to ask an admin for access, the permission is the gap.

What is on the page?

From the top, the page holds these cards:

• Overview: four tiles, Revenue, Orders, Avg order value and Waiting to ship.
• Revenue: a chart of revenue across the period.
• Sales by channel and Sales by category: two rings.
• Best sellers: your top eight products. See How to find your best sellers and where your sales come from.
• Average order value: a chart of how much each order was worth across the period.
• Recent orders: your latest orders, covered in How to look up orders and check your fulfilment backlog.

The page opens on Last 30 days. The date button in the header changes the period for every card except Waiting to ship and Recent orders. See How to change the date range.

What do the Overview tiles show?

Revenue, Orders and Avg order value count the paid orders in your period. Under each is a green or red arrow with a percentage: the change against the same length of time just before.

Pick Last 30 days and the comparison is the 30 days before that. Pick Last month and it is the same number of days just before that month. Choosing a period is also choosing what you compare against.

Waiting to ship counts paid orders that are unfulfilled or only partly fulfilled. It is today's backlog, so it ignores the date picker. It is as of the last rebuild, shown by the Updated line above the tiles.

What do the two rings show?

Sales by channel splits revenue by where each order was placed: Point of sale, Online store, Draft orders, Shop app, Mobile app and Other. Every order sits in one channel, so the ring adds up to the Revenue tile.

Sales by category splits sales by the product type you set in Shopify. Products with no type sit under Uncategorized.

Each ring names its five biggest slices and folds the rest into Other. Beside each slice you see its value, its share and its change on the previous period. Sales by channel also shows how many orders each channel took.

What do the two charts show?

The Revenue chart shows revenue across your period, by day for a period up to a month, by week up to six months, and by month beyond that.

The Revenue chart also labels its highest point, for example "Biggest day in 30 days", and says "Biggest week" or "Biggest month" when the chart is by week or month.

The Average order value chart uses the same steps. The chip in its corner compares the last day, week or month on the chart with the one before it.

Read the two together. Revenue rising while average order value falls means you are taking more orders for less each, which calls for a different fix than a quiet week.

What does "Updated 4m ago" mean?

It tells you how old the figures are. Tideswell rebuilds Analytics every hour, so it opens straight away, and the line above the Overview tiles shows when that copy was built.

The header carries a second stamp beside Refresh, showing when your screen last received the figures. If the line above the tiles adds "some data may be delayed", part of the last rebuild did not complete.

Press Refresh after you change something in Shopify and want to see it now. It rebuilds Analytics and Inventory for everyone in a few seconds.

Why does a card say it is based on the most recent orders?

Because on a busy store, a long period holds more orders than one card reads. When that happens the card says so in a line under it, and shows its figures for the most recent orders it reached.

On the Overview tiles and the two rings, the change arrows disappear while that line shows, because the previous period was only partly read. Pick a shorter period and the line usually goes.

Why is a margin missing?

Because Shopify holds no cost for something that sold. Margin is revenue less cost, so Tideswell leaves it out rather than guess.

The Gross margin line on Best sellers counts only sales that have a cost. Add the cost per item to the product in Shopify to fill the gaps. See How to find your best sellers and where your sales come from.

Can you get the answer in words?

Yes. Open the Agent with the sparkle on the right edge of the page (see What is the Agent?). On an empty chat, Yesterday's numbers under Sales asks how yesterday went against the same day last week.

Each answer lists the steps it took above the reply and the figures it used below it. See How to check where the figures came from.