Analytics: Your Shop's Visitors, Sales and Inventory Reports

Every IndieMade shop includes Analytics. It answers the questions you actually ask about your shop: how many people came by, where they came from, what they looked at, what sold, and what is running low. There is nothing to install and nothing to paste in. It is switched on from the first day of your trial.

Open it at Dashboard → Analytics.

The overview

The Analytics page opens on a summary of the last 30 days, with each number compared to the 30 days before it.

• Visits, Pageviews, Time on site, and On your shop now (visitors in the last 30 minutes).
• Total sales, Orders, Average order value, and Customers.

Below the numbers are quick charts: visits over the last 90 days, where visitors came from, your most viewed pages, sales and orders over time, your top products, and new versus returning customers. Click any chart to open the full report.

How every report works

Each report is one page with the same parts:

• A date range. Pick Last 7 days, Last 30 days, Last 90 days or Last 12 months. Most reports default to 30 days.
• A chart. A line for trends, bars for rankings, a doughnut for splits.
• A table with the exact numbers behind the chart.
• Export CSV. Downloads the table so you can open it in a spreadsheet or hand it to your bookkeeper.

The reports

Reports are grouped by the question they answer.

Traffic: who came, and from where

• Visitors over time — how many people are visiting your shop.
• Most viewed pages — which pages visitors look at.
• Landing pages — the first page a visitor sees. A product page here means people found it from outside your shop.
• Exit pages — the last page before they leave. A lot of exits on one page is worth a look.
• Product views — which products get looked at, and whether they sell.
• Visits by traffic source — search engines, social, direct visits, other websites, or campaigns.
• Visits by country — where your audience is.
• Visits by device — phone, tablet or desktop.
• Referring websites — which sites link to you and send visitors.
• Social networks — which networks send visitors.
• Search engines — which search engines send visitors. See SEO on IndieMade for how to get more of them.
• Campaigns — visits from links you tagged yourself, like a newsletter or a flyer QR code. Add ?utm_campaign=spring-sale to the end of a link and visits from it show up here under that name.

Sales: how am I doing

• Total sales over time — the trend.
• Orders over time — order volume.
• Average order value over time — is the basket getting bigger.
• Total sales by product — which products drive revenue.
• Sales by discount code — are your promotions used, and what do they cost you. See Promotions.
• Sales by billing location — where your paying customers are.

Inventory: what is running low

• Inventory remaining — stock on hand per product and variation, so you know when to reorder or make more. See How to set product inventory.

Advanced Analytics (Plus)

Plus plans add Advanced Analytics: the reports that answer who your customers are and why they buy. On other plans these reports show in the list but are locked, with a note about upgrading.

What visitors did

• Searches by term — what shoppers typed into your shop's search box. These are the words your customers use. Put them in your product titles and descriptions.
• Searches with no results — what shoppers wanted and could not find. Sometimes it is a product you should make. Often it is a word you should add to a listing.
• Abandoned carts — carts that were started and not checked out, and what they are worth.
• Items bought together — what to bundle or suggest alongside.

Who the customers are

• New vs returning customers — are you growing or retaining.
• Customer cohorts — do customers who bought in a given month come back later.
• Customer segments (RFM) — customers grouped by how recently, how often and how much they buy. It tells you who to thank, who to nudge, and who to win back. This one looks at your whole history, so the date range does not apply.
• Customers by total spend — your biggest spenders.

Profit and finance

• Gross profit by product — which products actually make money once you subtract what they cost you. Needs product costs, below.
• Stock movements — why a stock number changed: a sale, a restock, a manual edit.
• Fulfillment speed — how long orders take to go from placed to completed.
• Finance summary — the one report to hand your bookkeeper.
• Net payments by gateway — what PayPal, Stripe, Square and the rest each processed.

Entering product costs

Profit reports need to know what each item costs you to make or buy. Go to Dashboard → Analytics → Product costs. Search by product, variation or SKU, enter the Cost per item, and click Save costs. If every variation of a product costs the same, enter it once and choose same for all.

Costs are copied onto each order at the moment it is placed. Change a cost later and your past profit history stays accurate.

Good habits

• Look monthly, not daily. Small shops have noisy days. Trends show up over 30 and 90 days.
• Pair Product views with Total sales by product. A product many people look at but few buy usually has a photo, price or description problem.
• Check Exit pages after a design change. If exits jump on a page you changed, undo the change.
• Tag your own links. Every newsletter, flyer or social post link gets a campaign tag, so Campaigns tells you which effort paid off.

Analytics and Google

You do not need Google Analytics to use these reports. If you already use Google Analytics, you can run both. See How to add Google Analytics. To see how your shop appears in Google search results, use Google Search Console. The setup is on SEO on IndieMade.

Questions? Email support@indiemade.com.