A Look Into Shopify Analytics - How to Measure Your Black Friday Success

Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) have come and gone, and for many Shopify merchants, it’s been the busiest time of the year. The dust has settled, the orders have been shipped, and now it’s time to reflect. But how do you measure whether your BFCM spree was a success? The answer lies in data analytics.

In this blog, we’ll guide you through the process of using your store’s data to evaluate performance, identify opportunities for growth, and plan for future sales events. Let’s get started.

Traffic Surge - Say hi to your new data

BFCM is a unique period for e-commerce. It brings in higher traffic, larger order volumes, and often, entirely new customers. While this sounds great, it also means your store is operating at its peak capacity. With the sheer volume of activity, data analytics becomes an invaluable tool.

During BFCM, your store likely experienced:

• Higher Visitor Traffic: Customers flooding in to browse and shop.
• Increased Conversions: Eager shoppers took advantage of your deals.
• More Marketing Campaigns: From email blasts to ads, there’s a lot happening simultaneously.
• Complex Customer Journeys: Visitors interacting with multiple touchpoints before making a purchase.

This intense activity creates a goldmine of data. Or a headache, if you are unsure how to view and analyze all of it. Thankfully, you can use this blog as a guide on what you need to be focusing on. So, open your Admin panel in Shopify in a new tab and let's get started!

Post-BFCM Data: A Treasure Trove of Insights

After BFCM, you’re left with a wealth of data which provides important insights into your shoppers’ behavior, your website’s user experience, your marketing efforts, and even your store’s overall capabilities. But where do you start? We’ve broken it all down into three main categories to help you make sense of your Shopify store’s performance.

1. Customer Behavior

Explore shopper data such as:

• Who shopped? Location, and purchasing habits of your customers.
• How much did they buy? Review your sales, margin, order metrics.
• What did they buy? Insights into your orders and best seller products.

Let's talk more about this. As a Shopify store owner, you’re in luck. You can access and use all your customer data straight from the Analytics tab from your Admin panel. 

First, get to know your customers, especially if you’ve experienced a surge in new buyers. Look into Sessions by location, Sales by billing location, Customers over time (first time vs returning), Sessions by device, Online store conversion rate. Is there something new or surprising you are seeing? Review your Bounce rate, Online store search conversion, Top online store searches - this is data gold in terms of how well visitors interacted with your website - did they navigate and find what they need easily, or were they confused and left your site altogether. Also - were their searches relevant? Maybe you miscommunicated something along the way and new visitors didn't find what they thought they came for.

Next, take a closer look at some key sales metrics, such as Total Sales, Sales Breakdown, and Gross Sales. Are the numbers working in your favor, or did you go a little too heavy on the discounts? After all, BFCM isn’t just about making your customers happy - as a merchant you need to see results and profitability.

Then, explore your orders - Order count, Average order value, Time to fulfill. Don’t forget to keep track of your returns the next few weeks as well - what is your Return rate from BF orders, what are your Top returned products, as well Total return value. Try to gather customer feedback on this as well - figure out if your shoppers were disappointed with something relating to your product, or if they were just in BF fever and impulsively bought from your store. 

Either way, take this as a learning opportunity. Engage with your customers rather than ignore their concerns. Even if they go through with the return, wow them with exceptional customer service. Who knows, maybe next time they need what you sell, your store could be their first choice!

One key step: analyze your best-selling products. Are they your usual top performers, or has something unexpected stolen the spotlight? Dive into data like Product Variants by Gross Sales, Top Product Variants by Units Sold, and Product Sell-Through Rates and look for upcoming product potential. This will help you better understand your product catalog. You should be focusing efforts towards your new best sellers and Black Friday shopper favorites!

2. Operational Performance

This is data relating to:

• Inventory preparation
• Shipping and fulfillment efficiency
• Customer service

In simple terms, ask yourself: Were you prepared enough, and how did you perform? Once again, Shopify Analytics to the rescue. The metrics you’ll be needing are Delivered orders over time, Fulfilled orders over time, Time to fulfill, Products by days of inventory remaining. This will give you a solid understanding of how efficient your order process was and whether your inventory planning is efficient. 

As for customer service - check your support email (if you dare). Grab your favorite drink, sit back, and go through what customers didn’t like, the issues they ran into, and their reasons behind it. If you offer phone support, check in with your reps to hear about their experiences too. What were the most common questions? Were users able to navigate your store smoothly? Did they ask about product specs you might’ve missed in the product descriptions?

Listen closely and make adjustments based on this feedback. As for the angry callers, consider offering a personalized apology, a free gift, or a discount code to smooth things over. And don’t forget to check your social channels, Google My Business, Reddit, and anywhere else customers might have shared reviews, feedback or let’s be real, some hate mail (sorry, had to mention it!).

3. Marketing Performance

Take a look at metrics relating to:

• Which campaigns drove the most traffic and sales
• The ROI of different ad channels
• Audience feedback

First, dive into which ad channels engaged the most users, brought them to your store, and hopefully converted them into buyers. No surprise here - Shopify Analytics has all the marketing data you need. Head to your Analytics tab and check out cards related to your marketing efforts like Sales Attributed to Marketing, Sessions by Social Source, Sales by Social Source, and Sales by Traffic Source. These will show you how many sessions and orders came from your campaigns.

Next, compare this data with reports from the ad platforms where you ran paid campaigns. Export reports from Meta, Google Ads, Google Search, and your email marketing platform. Keep in mind that data won’t always match up perfectly across platforms as each one has its own attribution methods and attribution timeframes. However, it will give you a clearer picture of which channel brought in the most target buyers.

It’s not just about traffic, though. Sure, people visited, but did they buy? Look into your ad spend and ROI (Return On Investment). How well did the money spent on ads drive sales across different channels? Compare your cost-per-click (CPC) and click-through rate (CTR) across platforms. Are you overspending on audiences that aren’t converting? 

This is valuable info for your store and marketing strategy overall.

Once you have the numbers, look into some engagement metrics. Even if a user didn’t buy, maybe they interacted with your ad in some other way, and that’s still a great marketing signal. Review likes, comments, reactions to your ads on social media. Look at your DMs - did someone reach out to buy directly after seeing an ad? This is the best feedback when it comes to understanding what’s working with your ad formats and ad creatives.

 Now, the big question - Did I succeed?

Let’s dive into the most important part—measuring your success. Here’s a practical approach:

1. Decide on what metrics are important for your Shopify business

First, identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) that matter most to your business. To strip away the fancy words - to figure out what metric is most relevant to you, state your most important business goal with a simple sentence:

• “I want to sell more.” Metrics: Total Revenue & Gross sales
• “I want to have more customers.” Metrics: Customer count, Visitors to Customer Rate
• “I want to sell more products.” Metrics: Average items per order, Average order value, Order count
• “I want more store exposure.” Metrics: Visitors, Sessions by traffic source

There are a ton of metrics out there, but don’t get overwhelmed. Start by focusing on the ones that directly align with your goal. You can always review other metrics later if you’re curious, like “What product sold the most?”. Soon, you’ll get the hang of it!

2. Compare Against Historical Data

Another approach to measuring success is by comparing your BFCM performance to previous years. Look at metrics like:

• Revenue growth year-over-year
• Increase in traffic and conversion rates
• Decreased churn rate

If this is your first BFCM, compare the data to a normal sales period to see how much of a lift you achieved. Keep in mind these metrics can be influenced by factors outside of your BFCM activities. So, when reporting your results, make sure to take those external factors into account and be clear about what really matters to you.

3. Assess Customer Retention Potential

BFCM often attracts first-time buyers. Apart from the business side, it is important to note that turning new customers into loyal ones can be a huge success, even if you didn’t sell out your entire inventory. Look at data not directly related to your sales:

• How many signed up for your newsletter or loyalty program?
• Are they interacting with post-purchase emails or returning to browse your store?
• Do you have new followers on your socials?
• What about positive feedback and reviews?

As a Shopify merchant, your finances matter. But don’t just see your customers as transactions - they’re real people who chose to interact with your brand during one of the busiest shopping seasons of the year. That’s something to be proud of! Celebrate the lasting impression you’ve made on them.

Turn Data into Action for Future Campaigns

Now that you’ve measured your BFCM success, it’s time to act on those insights. Here’s how:

• Double Down on What Worked: Identify your top-performing products, campaigns, and channels. Plan to allocate more budget and effort to these areas for future sales events, or right now!
• Update your Customer Segments. From your Admin panel, navigate to Customers -> Segments. Use your new audience base smartly and create useful segments like BF cart abandoners.
• Optimize for Retention: Use the customer data you collected to create targeted post-sale campaigns. Encourage one-time buyers to return by offering discounts, loyalty points, or personalized recommendations.
• Prepare Inventory Smartly: Adjust your inventory planning based on this year’s demand. Stock up on your new best-sellers while cutting back on slower-moving items. Look into new products which won customers and focus on their exposure.

Conclusion: Explore your data, learn, grow, and relax!

Now that you took the time to review your post-BFCM data you probably have way more insight into your shoppers, new comers, marketing strategy, logistics, and e-commerce as a whole. Great job! 

Remember, the work doesn’t stop when the sale ends. Use this post-sale period to analyze your performance, and reach out to customers until it is too late. Either to say a simple thank you, or sorry if something went down negatively. And also - relax! This year’s Black Friday on Shopify really was crazy - read here all Shopify data and insights from BFCM 2024. So, if you were a part of it as well - wow! 

By the way, here at Consentmo, we were also kept busy during BFCM. Our responsibility was to keep millions of shoppers safe during Black Friday with our compliance solution, preferred by thousands of Shopify stores, worldwide. And we did it with 0 downtime. That is our most important success metric.

p.s. This blog post is just the start of our series on Shopify data analytics -there’s so much more to talk about! We’ll be looking into tracking software, optimization strategies, and data metrics to help you better understand customer behavior. Stick around - we’ve got some exciting tips coming your way!