How often should you look at your Shopify store’s stats?

Being data-driven means you take your stats into account when making decisions. To do so, you keep on the pulse of what happens with your website.

When to review the stats for your store?

Once a year, once a quarter, once a month, once a week and once a day. These are your best times. Since the events are spread apart, your stats-review sessions will have different goals, too.

Here is how the different check-up periods help you:

At the end of every day

Your goal with daily check-ups is to see if anything critical has happened since you last looked. Daily is where you catch potential problems and nip them in the bud. That’s also when you could spot potential time-sensitive opportunities. You want to know about them sooner, rather than a week or two from now. Imagine the following: “Oh, last week on Monday we had a peak in referral traffic. I wish I caught that in time so I could trace it back to the Reddit discussion that started it and participate in the discussion. Uh, now it is too late”. You don’t want to be unaware of things like that.

At the end of every week

Once a week you should take more time (than you spend daily) to go through your Google Analytics data. Look for trends, check and compare the performance of key metrics. Look around the edges, too—metrics that aren’t critical, but are important should come into focus now.

At the end of every month

Now you can get strategic. Put your actions and the results you got side by side. Can you prove there is a correlation? Learn from that insight. Now is the time to look forward, too. Based on your findings you can plan to change your tactics for the next 30 days. Do you have stats for the upcoming 30 day period, but from a year or two back? If so, compare them with your past 30 days. Are you in a better position now? Based on the historical data, what could you expect from the next month? Could you prepare for it somehow?

At the end of every quarter

How did you do? Did you match or exceed your expectations? If you have data last year’s data for the next quarter, go through it now. Are there any holidays that you should prepare for? Is there a seasonal uptick or downshift in traffic and sales? Could you prepare for it if you change your actions now? What could you do to benefit from the situation more than you did last year when you haven’t anticipated it?

At the end of every year

Check your overall stats. How did your store perform this year, compared with the previous one? What is your yearly revenue? Can you calculate your profit? Where do you need to improve the most? Make that your theme for the following year.

With regular stats-review intervals, you’ll be on the pulse of your business. That’s the biggest advantage a data-driven Shopify store owner has over one who shies away from data.

And now you can see the forest for the trees.

If you’ve read this far, you’ll like my guide to discovering missed revenue opportunities on your Shopify store!