Using the Merchant Admin analytics dashboard

Your Shopgate admin includes an analytics dashboard to help you gain deeper insights into the performance of your apps and the effectiveness of your app marketing strategies. In this article, we will walk through the functionality of the dashboard and the data available to you.

Using the date and platform selector

When you log into your Shopgate admin, the dashboard is the first page you will see. At the top of the page is the date selector bar, which you can use to customize what data is displayed. Any selections made on this bar will adjust the data for all tiles and charts on the page.

The default date range displayed upon login is the previous 30 days. You can select your own custom date range by choosing the dates on the calendar and clicking the Apply button in the bottom right corner. You can also choose one of the preset options on the right side of the date selector box, such as Last Quarter.

You can select your preferred time interval for the data by clicking on the Time Interval dropdown:

The preset timeframes default to preset intervals, but this can be changed. For example, when selecting Last Quarter, the charts on the page default to a weekly interval, but you can choose a daily interval instead for a more granular look at your performance over that timeframe.

To view data for only iOS, Android or mobile site (if applicable), you can also filter the data on the page by platform:

By default, all platforms are selected.

Viewing and using your data

The graphs in your dashboard are designed to be interactive and give you an easy way to interpret and extract important data.

First, you'll see four tiles above the charts, which allow you to view key metrics at a glance - total revenue, total number of orders, total new installs, and average conversion rate for the selected time period.

On these tiles, you'll also see trend comparisons displayed as percentages. These are visual indicators of positive, negative, and/or neutral changes for each of your key metrics versus the previous period. The previous period has the same amount of days and immediately precedes your chosen date range. For example, if you choose January 14-20 on the date range selector, your dashboard data will be compared to January 7-13.

Comparisons to historical performance provide context for your data and help you make more informed marketing decisions.

If comparative data is not available for the previous period (for example, if your apps were not yet live in the app stores), the message "Trend data unavailable" will be shown.

You’ll also see three buttons in the top right corner of each chart:

• Click the Info icon to understand how the data on the chart is defined and calculated.
• Click the Download icon for two different options.
  • You can save the raw chart data as a CSV file which can be then used in spreadsheets or accounting software.
  • Alternatively, you can save the chart images as a PNG file. It may take a few seconds for the image download to begin.
  • Both options will save the files directly to your browser’s default download location (e.g. desktop or the Downloads folder).
• Click the Open icon to expand the chart in a larger view. For example, if you have Last Quarter selected with a Daily time interval, the individual data points will be easier to see when the chart is expanded.

You can hover over any point on the chart to further drill into more specific detail about the data:

You may also see a note that historical data may not be available before a specific date. This may be due to the date your apps went live, or when the Shopgate tracking configuration was enabled.

Your charts in detail

In this section, we’ll go through each chart for a better understanding of how the data is calculated and displayed.

Revenue

The revenue chart illustrates your total revenue by selected platform from purchases. Revenue includes taxes, shipping, and any additional fees minus any coupons or discounts. Items that have been returned are not included in this calculation. The orange line on this chart illustrates your revenue trend based on a 30-day rolling average to assist you with revenue and growth forecasting.

Orders

This chart illustrates your total number of orders by device, with the orange line indicating average order value (AOV) for the selected reporting period. AOV is the total value of all orders (including shipping costs, taxes and additional fees), divided by the total number of orders. Returns are not subtracted from this number.

Test orders placed by Customer Success during implementation or for troubleshooting purposes are not counted in your revenue or orders totals.

Shopper Engagement

This section includes two charts. The top chart illustrates the total number of user sessions by device for the selected reporting period. A session is a period of continuous activity from a user. The duration of a session is unlimited as long as the user stays active; after 30 minutes of inactivity, a session is considered terminated.

The bottom chart gives you the average number of product detail pages your users visited in a session as well as the average session duration for the selected reporting period. The numbers on the left axis represent the number of products, while the right axis represents number of minutes spent. Product detail pages viewed repeatedly by using the "Back" button are not included in the number of pages visited.

Conversion

This chart illustrates the rate of user sessions that led to a purchase in the selected reporting period (a session is defined as a period of continuous activity from a user). The percentage value is calculated as "total number of purchases" divided by "total number of sessions".

App Installs

This chart illustrates your total new app installs by device, as well as your total active installs for the selected reporting period.

Here, an install is defined as the following sequence of events: The app is downloaded from the iOS App Store or the Google Play Store, installed on a device, and started by the user. These three actions all must be completed to be counted as a install. If, for example, the app is only downloaded from an app store and installed on a device but never started, it is not reflected on this chart.

Active installs are calculated from a rolling average of all unique users who have interacted with the app at least once in the past 180 days (6 months). This number is based on the last time the app was started, so app uninstalls are not immediately reflected until the user has been inactive for 180 days. If you select a time interval of "days" you will see the total current active installs, while all other intervals will display an average value for that period. The left axis on the graph represents number of new downloads, while the right axis represents active installs.

Push Notification Engagement

These two pie charts illustrate how your push recipients have engaged with automated and one-time push campaigns sent during the selected reporting period. Automated campaigns include the inactive user notifications and abandoned cart reminders that are set up to run continuously (If you don’t see these options in your account, please reach out to our Support Team). One-time campaigns include any notifications you create manually regardless if you send them immediately or schedule for a later time/date.

On the charts, “Unresponsive” indicates the number of unopened notifications. “Click-throughs” are push notifications which were opened by users. “Conversions” represents the total click-throughs that resulted in a purchase. If there were no conversions during the selected timeframe, the conversions slice will not be visible. You can also view the revenue generated from your push campaigns by navigating to Marketing → Push Notifications.

Subscribing to email reports

You can get a summary of the dashboard directly in your email inbox! To subscribe, click your name in the top right corner of the Merchant Admin, then click My Account.

Scroll to the bottom of this page and you’ll see the option Dashboard Analytics Report. Click ON to enable subscriptions and check the box marked “I Agree”. Then select your preferred frequency (daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly) and language (currently available in English or German). Click the blue Save button to begin receiving emails.

See screenshot below:

Understanding data discrepancies

When reviewing your different analytics sources (such as Shopgate, Firebase, or Google Analytics), you may notice data does not always match up. Data discrepancies are a common scenario and not a cause for alarm. You should expect data to deviate by a few percentage points on average between your various analytics providers.

It is recommended to focus on the wider trends and patterns that your data reveals, rather than on the comparison of X sessions on your Shopgate dashboard to Y sessions in Google Analytics.

There are many possible reasons that data differs across your analytics accounts:

• The definition of a session may vary between providers. Even minor differences in how a session is counted can cause discrepancies when comparing large data sets.
• Definitions of users (sometimes referred to as visitors) may also differ. For example, some analytics providers count bots as users - others may not.
• Session-counting algorithms are proprietary, and we do not have access to the precise algorithms used by other tracking providers.
• GA uses cookies to correlate events with a shopper, while Shopgate uses the device's UUID (Universal Unique Identifier).
• In some cases, Google Analytics uses sampling to analyze a random subset of data instead of analyzing the entire data set. Read more about how Google Analytics uses sampling.
• Shoppers may exit the app too quickly for external tracking scripts to fire (for example, closing the app before the order confirmation page loads all scripts). This can lead to missing session or eCommerce purchase data in your Google Analytics account.
• eCommerce purchase data may be missing from Google Analytics if a shopper checks out with certain alternative payment gateways, such as PayPal. Because the shopper is redirected to complete the purchase, the Google Analytics script may not track the transaction.
• Double-check to ensure your Google Analytics views and filters are configured correctly for the data you are trying to analyze.
• If your analytics accounts are set up in different time zones, it can cause discrepancies in reporting. Make sure you are using the same time zone in all accounts.
• To verify or change your Shopgate time zone, log in to your admin, click on your name in the top right corner, then click My Account. Your current time zone is listed under your basic profile data. To change, click on the current time zone and select the correct time zone from the dropdown. Then click the blue checkbox button to the right of the dropdown to save the change. 

If you have any further questions about the analytics dashboard, reach out to our support team.