Shopify is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms in the world, providing businesses with a wide range of features and tools to manage their online stores. However, as much as Shopify has helped businesses grow and succeed, there are limitations to its sales reporting capabilities. In this blog post, we will discuss why you should not rely solely on Shopify’s sales report and introduce an alternative solution: Ellis data platform.
Shopify data can be inaccurate
When we integrate Shopify data into our customer's analytics dashboards, we often get questions about why their Shopify report is showing different results. While we've previously explained that the discrepancies are due to the way we calculate KPIs, it's worth noting that Shopify's own reporting isn't always accurate either and we are enhancing it.
Even if we were able to access aggregated sales metrics through the Shopify API, there could still be differences between the two reports. Shopify provides a good baseline for sales reporting, but it is known to be having some misalignment, inaccuracies, and limitations, especially when analysing multiple stores together or going deep down to entity (customer/products/categories) level analysis.
Therefore, our approach of extracting raw data through API and processing it to generate our analysis allows us to provide a more accurate and reliable view of our clients' ecommerce business performance, which enables them to perform better in Shopify ecosystem.
Limitations of Shopify's Sales Reporting
Shopify’s sales report provides businesses with a snapshot of their sales performance, revenue, and profits. While this report may seem helpful at first glance, it has several limitations that can hinder businesses from making data-driven decisions. For instance, Shopify’s sales reports do not provide detailed insights into customer behaviour, sales trends, or product performance. This lack of granularity can make it challenging for businesses to optimise their sales strategy or identify areas for improvement.
Another issue with Shopify’s sales report is its accuracy. Shopify’s sales report may not always provide an accurate picture of a business’s sales performance. There are existing several factors that can affect the accuracy of Shopify’s sales report, such as return date mismatch, time-zone mismatch, and filters mismatch.
Moreover, in Shopify’s sales report, there are difficulties and shortcomings when combining sales from multiple stores and markets, especially when their business is operating in different timezones or/and currencies. In addition, in Shopify accounting, sales that take place outside of the Shopify platform, such as in-person transactions, point-of-sales figures, or sales through third-party channels such as Recharge subscriptions (even when they are playing a crucial role in your business case), cannot be filtered or separated easily. Shopify Markets improved multi-market and cross-border sales capabilities in the platform when enabled correctly, but reporting is still having difficulties in it, and market functions won’t solve problems if merchants are running market specific Shopify domains.
Main issues are lying in addition to previously mentioned topics with currency exchanges ratios, timezone management, and with combining/separating data in on/between the market domains, especially when you are having PoS locations in various countries.
The Benefits of Ellis Data Platform for E-commerce Analytics
To overcome these limitations, businesses need a more comprehensive and accurate sales analytics platform. This is where Ellis data platform comes in. Ellis data platform is an advanced analytics platform that provides businesses with real-time insights into their sales performance, customer behaviour, and product performance. All of this information can be filtered and analysed through different dimensions such as sales channels but also to be grouped between markets to analyse the whole picture of your ecommerce business.
The platform integrates with Shopify and other e-commerce platforms, as well as social media, and marketing channels, to provide businesses with a holistic view of their sales performance. With corrected and aligned sales values, merchants can analyse true performance of their business and spot anomalies in the data which are impossible to notice through Shopify’s own reporting tools.
Making Informed Decisions with Ellis Data Platform
In conclusion, while Shopify’s sales report can provide businesses with a basic overview of their sales performance, it is not sufficient for making data-driven decisions. To get a more accurate and comprehensive view of their sales performance, businesses need an advanced ecommerce analytics platform like Ellis. By leveraging Ellis data platform’s capabilities, businesses can gain valuable insights enabling them to make informed decisions and drive for growth.
Written by Product Owner & Data Expert Jakke Tuomisto