Thank you for letting us share more of our Happy Tees® journey with you. In our first blog, Our Journey to Rebuild This Shopify Store, we explained a little bit about our origin story, the starting point of how we took over the brand, and began to rebuild a Shopify store.

Fast forward to this blog post, we take you through our store analytics, test purchases, and monitoring for adjustments. A data-driven approach is like using analytics as a compass on our journey to grow our store. Join us as we unveil a portion of the behind-the-scenes process of what seems like nonstop reviewing and monitoring.

Deciphering the Data

Every click, every scroll, every interaction with our storefront is a little bit more customer insight that is guiding us towards a better understanding of the user experience. First up, let's take a look at what type of data is provided without adding any extras from the Shopify App Store.

The following screenshot is from the analytics dashboard on July 24th, called Live View. After logging into your Shopify admin console, just click on the side menu that says Analytics.

Pretty. We like the globe with the drop shadow and view of North America. It allows you to zoom in closer, but it does not show map resolution to satellite view or anything. The counts are mostly zero for now but we can check back again to see this dashboard populate with more details when there is an increase in visitors to the store. In fact, there should be at least one order (from our test purchase) but it might take a few days to show up in the tracking system, even though this page says Live View.

As a direction from our metaphorical compass, the key takeaway here with Live View is to see where in the world current visitors are from, and what the counts look like for visitors, sales, sessions, orders, carts, and other details.

Next, let's see the Shopify home dashboard summary. To get there from your admin console, just click on the side menu that says Home.

The chart is showing the session counts for visitors to the store. On this dashboard there is at least one order showing up properly. This is more of a snapshot and is customizable for other metrics as the storefront becomes more active.

Our compass says the key takeaway here with the home dashboard is to see quick numbers such as sessions and orders. It shows up right after you login to the console, so it’s a nice reminder of store performance.

Next, let’s use the side menu to jump back to the Analytics menu and see what data has been captured for us to review.

The chart is set for the last 7 days. This is a good summary which actually has some data because of the test purchase. Looks like everything is working properly with the free shipping. We will keep monitoring this to see combined summaries for all sales, dates of activity, and what percentage of purchases are from repeat customers.

To continue, we are staying on the same dashboard. Let's scroll down for page two.

These panels are showing the sales data from the test purchase (mine).

• Total sales by channel is basically the online store. We have not setup other channels such as a Shopify Popup Store.
• The average order value over time might actually remain at the same level since most products (but not all) are listed for $19.99.
• Total sales by product is just showing the SWIM Happy Tee (not to toot our own horn but you can also buy the same product). In the future, this panel will probably show additional bar graphs for other products as they are sold.
• Sessions over time is a summary of the visitor activity on the store. It's interesting to see the counts, and may help in the future to observe trends or spikes.
• Conversion rate over time is an estimate of how many visitors "converted" into paying customers. So far at 0.11% that seems low, but there was only one purchase (mine) so we will see how this metric changes with new orders.
• This last panel illustrating the conversion rate breakdown is the best one I've seen. No more guesswork on the calculations. Start with the session count 912. Then out of that number, how many added a product to their cart? Only 3 which was 0.33% of the session count. How many reached the checkout? Only 2 which was 0.22%. Then finally how many completed their purchase? Only 1 which was 0.11%. We want the conversion rate to improve, because that indicates efficiency, and likely having the right target market as visitors.

Our compass says the key takeaway here from the Analytics dashboard is to track several different metrics, and see exactly how customers are progressing through the funnel from visiting the store for the first time to finally making a purchase.

In addition to all of these data points, the Shopify theme itself provides a mini-dashboard of a few measurements. Each of the sections allows you to click and drill down deeper to show more, by taking you back into the Analytics menu for that specific report. The charts are interactive where you can click and scroll around.

See the following screenshot. To get there, use the side menu to select Online Store, then Themes.

The view is set for the last 30 days.

• LCP P75. Think of this as how fast the page loads. A helpful explanation is provided by Shopify. The Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) score measures loading speed, based on how fast the largest element or main content becomes visible to visitors. A good LCP score is achieved when the main content is loaded within 2,500 milliseconds from the start of the page load for the 75th percentile of users.Now let’s refer to our analytics compass, our LCP score 924 milliseconds which is below 2,500 so that's why the dashboard shows "Good" status.
  
• INP P75. Think of this as how snappy your site feels. More helpful explanations are provided by Shopify. The Interaction to Next Paint (INP) score measures interactivity based on how long it takes the page to become responsive to most user actions, such as clicking a link or a button. An INP score of less than 200 milliseconds for the 75th percentile of users is considered a good performance as the page becomes interactive quickly. The handy compass says our INP score is 48 milliseconds which is below 200 so that's why the dashboard shows "Good" status.
  
• Cumulative Layout Shift. Think of this as how much content shifts around. Let's go to Shopify to find out what this means. The Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) score measures visual stability, based on how much the content shifts around unexpectedly when navigating around the page. A CLS score of less than 0.1 for the 75th percentile of users is considered good. Quick glance at our compass, our CLS score is zero.

To continue, we are staying on the same dashboard. See the next screenshot that is scrolled to the right to reveal the final section.

This section that was partially hidden is called Sessions by Device Type. The counts shown here are supposed to indicate what device a visitor was using to run their web browser. We have 1,281 sessions from desktop machines, and 457 sessions from mobile devices such as smartphones, and another 16 sessions from other types of devices. Not sure what "other" means, aside from the fact that a visitor's device cannot be easily categorized (maybe a bot).

Our compass says the key takeaway from the Themes dashboard is to measure how well the installed Theme is performing. Kind of a heads up for troubleshooting any issues slow responsiveness on the website.

Test Purchases

Another notch on our analytics compass, and as an important early step to analyze and measure what was working, we conducted test purchases to ensure that every future transaction would be seamless and effortless. With the store fully stocked with products, we wanted to see from the customer's perspective, from the very beginning of pointing the web browser to the domain name, viewing products in the store, making a selection, and following through with items in the cart to pay for the order. We made notes at each step to figure out what should be adjusted. 

And we did, updating some of the email notifications with more details, and updating some of our store policies with more language and context for different situations. Not to spoil anything but we have a great write up in another blog post, Behind the Scenes Look at Test Purchases.

Monitoring for Adjustments

It's not like we're using the Agile project management methodology, but we've embraced the process of continuous improvements, and monitoring for adjustments to refine every detail of our digital storefront. A portion of those session counts reported in the analytics are definitely from our many edits and page refreshing. We are obsessed now with seeing everything in its place.

One of the key takeaways here is to set aside time on a regular basis to review the various metrics generated from your store. Use that data to help you decide on what, if anything, needs to change to help the store become more profitable. More to come . . .

View this blog as a video on our YouTube channel.