❔Analytics Discrepancies

Potential discrepancies between Shoplift and Shopify reports

A frequently asked question is: why don't the numbers represented in Shoplift match what is reported in Shopify? There are various reasons depending on the type of report you are looking at. Let's get into it.

Shopify shows different session or visitor counts in the landing page report - why?

When comparing Shoplift's reported visitor counts on templates to Shopify's reported session or visitor counts on landing pages, it is important to understand the differences in how these metrics are tracked and reported on.

In Shoplift, a visitor counts as any unique website visitor that encounters a tested template at any point in their session. We track visitors this way to correctly evaluate and track when a tested experience has an impact on a visitors shopping journey.

In Shopify, the definition of a visitor is the same (any unique website visitor) but the way they are tracked and reported on differs. Shopify reports visitors on a landing page basis, which means that they will only count the visitor in the landing page report if the page was the first page encountered in a visitor's session.

In other words, Shoplift will often have slightly higher visitor counts on tests than are reported in Shopify in the landing page report.

Shopify shows different order counts than Shoplift for a particular product or set of products, when running a product page test - why?

When running a product template test and comparing orders between Shoplift reports and Shopify's product or orders reports, there are a few differences in tracking to be aware of.

When Shoplift tracks orders for a template test, all orders made by visitors that encountered that tested template in their journey are included in the test report. This includes orders wherein products on untested templates are present, so long as the visitor making that purchase encountered the tested product page during their shopping session.

In Shopify, when looking at product or orders reports, this means that the order counts represented in Shopify will likely be lower than the order counts represented in Shoplift.

Read more about analytics discrepancies between platforms

For more information on analytics discrepancies, see Shopify's help article on Analytics discrepancies.