Marketing reports

You can use the Marketing reports to check how effective your marketing is and to learn about your conversions. A conversion occurs when an online store visitor becomes a paying customer.

The marketing reports can help you understand what leads shoppers to your online store and what converts them into paying customers. The reports can outline which of your marketing channels are resulting in the highest number of customers and the customers of the highest value, based on their interactions with your online store.

The reports summarize information from all Online Store channel orders. For visit or conversion information about a single order, see Conversion tracking.

If you want to view reports on the results of your marketing campaigns that use marketing apps, then see Marketing activity reports.

View your marketing reports

Steps:

  1. From your Shopify admin, go to Analytics > Reports.
  2. Click Categories.
  3. Click Marketing to filter the reports to display only marketing reports.

For more marketing insights into campaigns you create within Shopify, refer to Marketing performance in Shopify.

Referrers and interactions

The method that a customer uses to get to your store is called the referrer. A referrer can be a search, or can be a link from an ad, email, or website, for example. By knowing the referrer, you can attribute sales to the referrer that the customer used. This is a standard way of analyzing and attributing sales.

However, a customer can visit your store multiple times and as the result of different referrers, so the referrers are categorized as first interaction or last interaction:

  • The referrer that introduced a customer to your store is categorized under first interaction.
  • The referrer that the customer used just before placing an order is categorized under last interaction.

Example: Ryan clicks on a Facebook ad that takes him to your store for the first time, and he immediately buys one of your products. The referrer is Facebook for both the first interaction and the last interaction. Your ad is given credit for making the sale.

Example: Kiara searches Google and finds a link to your store for a product that she likes. She visits your store several times during the week to browse your other products, and signs up for a newsletter, but she doesn't buy anything. The following week, you send out an email marketing offer to her. She clicks the link in the email and places an order. This sale is a last interaction conversion. The first interaction referrer is Google, but the email service is the referrer that is given credit for the sale.

Interactions after an order or after 30 days

If a visitor doesn't buy anything within 30 days of a session, then the first interaction referrer is reset to be whatever the next referrer is.

Similarly, if a visitor places an order, then the next referrer is deemed to be a first interaction for their next order.

Example: Rashida visits your store on August 1 by directly entering the URL for your online store. She revisits the store several times, but doesn't make a purchase. Then, on September 15 (which is more than 30 days after her first session), she clicks on an ad for your store and places an order. The first and last interaction for this conversion is the ad, not the direct URL.

Common terms in the conversion reports

The marketing reports use the following terms:

Definition of terms in conversion reports
Referrer source

Indicates how the customer who placed an order reached your online store. Possible values are:

  • Direct: The customer entered your store's URL into their browser.
  • Search: The customer clicked your store from a search engine's results page.
  • Email: The customer clicked a link to your store in an email.
  • Social: The customer clicked a link on social media.
  • Unknown: The referrer source doesn't fit into one of the above cases.
Referrer name

The name of the referrer, such as Google, Facebook, or Pinterest.

For direct sources, if the referrer can't be determined, then the name is listed as N/A. This can occur for many reasons, such as the following situations:

  • The user’s web browser has Do Not Track enabled.
  • The referrer data is blocked by a proxy or firewall.
  • A shortened URL was used as the link.
Average order value (first or last interaction

Displays the average value of all orders (excluding gift cards), divided by the total number of orders that contained at least one product other than a gift card. Order value includes taxes, shipping, and discounts before returns.

This value helps you know how much customers tend to spend on your store and can help inform your pricing policies.

Orders (first or last interaction)Displays the number of orders that were placed depending on the type of interaction.

Canceled, pending, and unpaid orders are included in the reports. Test and deleted orders are not included.

Sales attributed to marketing

The Sales attributed to marketing report shows the sales that can be attributed to trackable marketing efforts.

The sales in your Sales attributed to marketing report are only those that came from traffic that can be directly attributed to your marketing efforts. These efforts could be campaigns and activities managed through the Marketing section in your Shopify admin or externally managed efforts that use Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) parameters. Because of this, the sales amount in this report can differ from sales figures in other reports.

When you open this report, the data is up to date, give or take about 1 minute. You can reopen or refresh the report to display newer data.

The sales reports use several common terms. This report uses the following additional terms:

Additional terms in the sales attributed to marketing report
UTM campaign nameThe name you gave the Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) campaign when you set it up, if applicable.
Values set by the marketing app used to make the campaign, if applicable:
Marketing event typeDisplays the format of the campaign. For example, if the campaign target is twitter, then the marketing event type will be either ad or post.

If you didn't use a marketing app from the Shopify App Store to set up the campaign, then this field reads N/A.
Marketing event targetDisplays the target of the campaign. Some example values are email, facebook_messenger, and twitter.

If you didn't use a marketing app from the Shopify App Store to set up the campaign, then this field reads N/A.

Sales versus payments

Sales reports don't track money moving between you and your customers. When a sale is made, the reports show the value of goods included in the sale, not the amount of money that you've received. Depending on how you've set up your payment methods, you might not receive the actual payment until a later date.

Similarly, when you process a return, the reports display the value of goods that you're receiving, not the amount of money that you're issuing to the customer.

Chargebacks aren't included in the sales reports.

Sessions attributed to marketing

The Sessions attributed to marketing report shows you the number of sessions on your online store that are the result of marketing, such as a UTM campaign, Facebook ads, or Google Shopping ads. To learn more about tracking your marketing campaigns, see here.

When you open this report, the data is up to date, give or take a few seconds. You can reopen or refresh the report to display newer data.

Sessions and visitors

The number of sessions and the number of visitors are based on cookies. Cookies are small files that are stored on a shopper's device, such as a desktop or smartphone, when they visit your online store. One cookie identifies the device (the visitor). Another cookie keeps track of the length of the session.

A session ends after 30 minutes of no activity, and at midnight UTC. Because the same visitor can trigger have multiple sessions, the number of sessions is usually higher than the number of visitors.

Example: A customer views products on your store for 20 minutes, then returns to your store 2 hours later for another 10 minutes. 2 sessions and 1 visitor are reported. If the shopper instead views your store for 5 minutes, leaves, and returns 10 minutes later, then 1 session and 1 visitor are reported.

If you want to view your online store and not have it count as a session in your acquisition reports, then on your desktop Shopify admin, click the eye icon. Any other method of viewing your online store on dekstop counts as a session in your reports.

If you view your online store from the Shopify app on iPhone or Android, then it counts as a session in your acquisition reports.

Conversion by first interaction

The Conversion by first interaction report shows the number of orders that are attributed to first interactions, and the source of the interactions.

The report also displays the average order value of the orders, which helps to indicate which referrals are the most effective.

Because of the way that this report is generated, it might not display all the conversions on your store from about the past 24 hours.

Conversion by last interaction

The Conversion by last interaction report shows the number of orders that are attributed to last interactions, and the source of the interactions.

The report also displays the average order value of the orders, which helps to indicate which referrals are the most effective.

Because of the way that this report is generated, it might not display all the conversions on your store from about the past 24 hours.

Attribution model comparison

The Attribution model comparison compares the number of orders and average order value between first and last interactions.

Because of the way that this report is generated, it might not display all the conversions on your store from about the past 24 hours.

Ready to start selling with Shopify?Try it free