Key Metrics to Track for Identifying Growth Challenges on Shopify

Here are the key metrics Shopify merchants should monitor to identify growth challenges.

As the saying goes, "Wins may be mysterious, but losses never are" — there is always a reason why sales aren't growing. Without understanding that reason, renovating your store or investing in ads and social media won't move the needle.

To grow sales and scale your business, you first need to identify what is acting as a bottleneck.

After reading this article, you'll know which metrics to look at first when tackling growth on Shopify and how to pinpoint your challenges.

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Identify the Problem Before Deciding on Action

In this article, we'll show you how to identify challenges in your e-commerce business across the following four dimensions:

• Customer dimension: Trends in new vs. repeat revenue
• Channel dimension: Revenue trends by channel
• Product dimension: Revenue trends by product and category
• Profitability dimension: Average order value and CVR trends

Growing sales without a clear direction is difficult. But by identifying challenges across these four dimensions, you can translate vague goals into specific actions — for example, "Sell products popular with new customers through paid ads to new customers while maintaining a ROAS of 500%." This makes it much easier to determine concrete next steps.

Trends in New vs. Repeat Revenue

Revenue trends broken down by new vs. returning customers are a critical metric for understanding whether you're acquiring new customers and turning them into loyal ones — and this data is easy to access in Shopify.

In Shopify's "Sales over time" report, you can filter by "Customer type" and select "First-time" and "Returning" to view revenue trends for new and repeat customers separately.

Check which is larger — new customer revenue or repeat customer revenue — and which is growing or declining.

If repeat customer revenue is significant, also review revenue trends by purchase frequency (2nd purchase, 3rd purchase, etc.). Since purchase-frequency revenue isn't available in Shopify's standard reports, you'll need to aggregate your order data. Below is a chart showing Shopify revenue by number of purchases, aggregated and displayed in Looker Studio.

For example, if repeat revenue isn't growing — say, 2nd-purchase revenue is up but 3rd-purchase-and-beyond revenue is flat — it becomes clear that improving the F3 conversion rate (converting 2nd-time buyers into 3rd-time buyers) should be a priority.

Revenue Trends by Channel

Understanding which channel is underperforming lets you take targeted action. Revenue and traffic trends by channel can be tracked in Google Analytics. Check which channels are driving the most revenue and whether they're growing or declining.

For channels with a large revenue share, drill down further by campaign and product. To aggregate campaign-level data in Google Analytics, you need to add UTM Campaign parameters to the links for each channel.

For example, if you want to compare the performance of emails sent to past purchasers vs. non-purchasers in Google Analytics, set up UTM Campaign presets like utm_campaign=purchased_◯◯◯ and utm_campaign=not_purchased_◯◯◯ as shown below.

Even if overall email revenue is increasing, if you find that revenue from emails to existing purchasers is growing but revenue from emails to non-purchasers is not, you can conclude that improving non-purchaser emails could drive further sales growth.

Revenue Trends by Product and Category

Revenue trends by product and category can be tracked in Shopify's "Sales over time" report by filtering by product ID, product title, product type, and more to review revenue trends for each product or category.

If you have a large number of products or categories, we recommend importing Shopify data into Google Sheets or BigQuery and visualizing it with Google Looker Studio.

After confirming which products or categories have the highest revenue and which are growing or declining, cross-reference with purchase frequency and channel data to dig deeper. For example, if T-shirt sales are growing and you find the growth is coming from first-time buyers, you can infer that running ads to new customers featuring T-shirts could be an effective way to grow sales.

Average Order Value and CVR Trends

Since average order value (AOV) and conversion rate (CVR) trends are often reviewed by channel, Google Analytics data is the go-to source. You can review them directly in Google Analytics, or aggregate and monitor them in a tool like Looker Studio for convenience.

In general, a lower AOV tends to correlate with a higher CVR. Therefore, calculating Revenue per Visit (expected revenue per single visit) — AOV × CVR — and tracking its trend gives you a clear picture of your store's visit-level profitability. For example, if Revenue per Visit from paid ads is ¥100 and your CPC (cost per click) exceeds ¥100, it's difficult to generate profit.

The implication is that it's hard to spend more on customer acquisition (including labor costs) than the Revenue per Visit for each channel — but conversely, increasing Revenue per Visit opens the door to a wider range of acquisition strategies. Revenue per Visit is a critical metric that determines the range of actions available to you, depending on whether it is high or low.

Building a Monitoring and Measurement Environment with StoreHero

StoreHero supports merchants on Shopify who are looking to grow their sales by executing growth initiatives thoroughly and at scale.

For monitoring and measurement, we leverage the StoreHero growth platform to aggregate data from Shopify, various apps, GA, and advertising platforms into unified dashboards, and to implement the event tracking required for analysis — providing a robust monitoring and measurement environment that is difficult to build on your own.

We are currently offering free store diagnostics. If you're facing challenges with your measurement setup or growth strategy in general, please don't hesitate to reach out. Learn more about our free store diagnosis

Summary

We've introduced four essential metrics that Shopify merchants must track to identify growth challenges. By regularly monitoring these metrics, you'll gain a clear and unbiased understanding of your current situation, making it much easier to determine the actions that will directly drive growth.

At StoreHero, we always start our growth support engagements by reviewing these metrics to pinpoint the key challenges. If you'd like to work through the challenge-identification process together with StoreHero, please reach out — let's tackle your growth initiatives together.

StoreHero can support you from the very foundation of building a high-converting store. Feel free to reach out. =>View StoreHero's service introduction materials