Shopify Data Analysis: 15 Questions Every Store Owner Should Ask Their Data
Shopify's built-in reports are good at the standard view of a store. The questions that change decisions are usually the ones in between: which products drag down your margin, which customers are quietly leaving, which city returns the most orders. This guide lists fifteen of them, with the traps that make each hard to answer reliably.
Trinetro Labs · Published 2 October 2026 · 2 min read
Why the standard reports are not enough
- They answer standard questions. A question that combines two reports needs an export and a spreadsheet.
- They cannot see outside Shopify. Costs, supplier data and offline sales live somewhere else.
- Everyone slices them differently, so two people can quote two different numbers for the same week.
Fifteen questions
Sales
- What were net sales last month, after discounts and refunds?
- How do sales this month compare with the same month last year?
- Which day of the week and hour of the day sell the most?
Products
- Which products are my top 10 by revenue, and which by units?
- Which products had falling sales over the last three months?
- Which products are most often bought together?
Customers
- What share of revenue comes from repeat customers?
- Which customers bought once and have not returned in 90 days?
- Which cities bring the most orders, and the most revenue per order?
Orders and returns
- What is my return rate by product and by city?
- If cash-on-delivery orders are recorded, what share of them were refused or returned compared with prepaid orders?
- How long do orders take from placement to dispatch?
Payments
- What is the mix of payment methods, and how has it moved?
- What share of payment attempts fail, and when?
Definition traps
| Term | Variants you will meet | Decide once |
|---|---|---|
| Sales | Gross, net of discounts, net of refunds, before or after tax | Which one is "sales" for your reports |
| Customer | Per email, per phone, per account | What counts as the same customer |
| Repeat customer | Second order ever, or second in a period | The period, if any |
| Return | Refund, return-to-origin, exchange | Which events count |
Asking them in plain English
Trinetro connects to Shopify, and to MySQL, Razorpay and other sources, and answers questions like these in plain English with a reasoning trace. When a term is ambiguous, you confirm its meaning once and it is remembered for your team, so "sales" means the same thing every time.
Frequently asked questions
How do I analyse Shopify data beyond the built-in reports?
Connect the store to a tool that lets you ask your own questions, or export orders and customers to a spreadsheet. A connected tool avoids stale exports and lets several people use the same definitions.
Can I combine Shopify data with my own database?
Yes, in tools that support more than one source. Trinetro connects to Shopify and to databases such as MySQL and can answer questions that span sources.
How should I define repeat customers?
Pick one rule and write it down, for example a second order within twelve months. The exact rule matters less than using the same one in every report.
Does Trinetro work with Razorpay as well?
Yes. Razorpay is one of the supported data sources alongside Shopify, Zoho, Stripe and WooCommerce.