Your Shopify Reports Are Lying About Your Best Seller: Sessions vs Orders
Your best seller by sessions is often not your best seller by orders. Sessions count visits, orders count money, and the product page that draws the most traffic is frequently the one people browse and buy something else from. Reading the wrong column is how a store restocks the wrong product.
The confusion is built into the reports. Shopify shows sessions and orders side by side, and the eye goes to the biggest number. The biggest number is usually sessions, and sessions are the least useful thing on the page for deciding what to stock.
Sessions vs orders, in one example
Take a product that went viral on social media. It draws ten thousand sessions in a week and sells forty units. Next to it sits a quiet staple that draws a thousand sessions and sells two hundred units. By sessions, the viral product is the best seller by ten to one. By orders, the staple outsells it five to one. The store that restocks by sessions orders more of the product people browse and less of the product people buy.
The sessions report flatters the browser. The sales report names the earner. Both are true, and they answer different questions: which product gets attention, and which product gets money. The restock decision needs the second answer.
The three reports that answer it
Sales by product shows orders and gross sales per product, which is the restock list. Online store sessions by product shows which products draw visits, which is the merchandising list. The conversion funnel shows where shoppers drop off between the two, which is the fix list. Read them together, not one at a time, and the story appears: attention here, money there, a gap between them that is either a product problem or a page problem.
Run the comparison over a month, not a day. A single viral day will distort the sessions column for a week, and a sale week will distort the orders column. A month smooths both, and the products that stay at the top of the orders column for a month are the real best sellers.
The attribution trap
Last-click attribution credits the last thing the shopper touched, which is usually the product page they bought from. First-click credits the first thing, which is usually the blog post or ad that brought them in. A product that looks like a best seller under one model looks ordinary under the other, and neither model is wrong. The fix is to stop asking which product deserves the credit and start asking which product earns the orders, which is the sales report, read monthly.
Related reading
Related reading: Shopify Draft Orders: When to Use Them and When Not To, Shopify draft orders: when to use them and how they work, and Shopify draft orders: when to use them and how they work.
Frequently asked questions
Which Shopify report shows my best selling product?
Sales by product, in Analytics, then Reports. It lists orders and gross sales per product, which is the restock list. The sessions report shows attention, not sales, and the two lists disagree more often than merchants expect.
Why do sessions and orders disagree?
Because most sessions do not end in an order. A product can draw ten thousand visits and sell forty units, while a quiet staple draws a thousand visits and sells two hundred. Sessions measure attention. Orders measure money.
How often should I check Shopify reports?
Monthly for restock decisions, weekly for spotting problems. Daily checks mostly measure noise, and a single viral day can distort the sessions column for a week. A month of data is the smallest window that tells the truth about a best seller.
Can I trust Shopify analytics over Google Analytics?
They measure different things, so the numbers will disagree and both can be right. Shopify counts orders and sessions on your store. Google Analytics counts sessions across the web with its own rules. Use Shopify for what sold, and Google Analytics for where the traffic came from.