Shopify reports for non-technical founders: What you need and what you don't
Practical guide identifying which 5 Shopify reports answer essential business questions versus which reports overwhelm without value. No analytics background required.
Shopify provides 23 pre-built reports across 5 categories, creating overwhelming choice for non-technical founders. But five specific reports answer 90% of essential business questions for small-to-medium stores: (1) Sales over time, (2) Sales by product, (3) Sales by traffic source, (4) Customer cohort analysis (Adobe Commerce only), and (5) Financial summary. The remaining 18 reports serve specialized needs most stores never require.
According to Shopify's merchant behavior research, non-technical founders using analytics successfully share common pattern: they ignore report complexity, focus exclusively on reports answering their specific questions, and review those reports weekly rather than daily. Merchants overwhelmed by analytics typically do the opposite—they explore multiple reports seeking undefined \\"insights
