WooCommerce ships with a built-in analytics and reporting system that most store owners never fully use. Understanding your sales data, customer behavior, and product performance is the difference between guessing what works and knowing what to double down on. This guide walks through every WooCommerce report, how to read them, and how to connect WooCommerce Analytics with Google Analytics 4 and Looker Studio for deeper insights.
WooCommerce Analytics (introduced in WooCommerce 4.0 and rebuilt for WooCommerce 8.x) replaced the older WooCommerce Reports section with a modern, filterable analytics dashboard. Access it from WooCommerce > Analytics in your WordPress admin.
The Analytics Overview Screen
The Analytics Overview shows high-level performance at a glance. Key metrics displayed:
- Total Sales: Gross revenue for the selected period. Does not subtract refunds automatically – check the Net Revenue figure for the true number.
- Net Revenue: Total Sales minus refunds, taxes, and shipping. This is your actual income figure.
- Orders: Total number of completed orders. Use alongside Average Order Value to understand purchase behavior.
- Average Order Value (AOV): Net Revenue divided by number of orders. Increasing AOV is often more efficient than increasing order volume.
- Products Sold: Line items sold, not orders. A single order can contain multiple products.
- Refund Rate: Percentage of revenue refunded. Higher than 5% for most product categories warrants investigation.
- Coupons Used: How many orders included a coupon code and the total discount amount.
- Taxes: Total tax collected, useful for VAT/GST reporting.
- Shipping: Total shipping revenue collected, separate from product revenue.
You can customize which cards appear on the Overview and their order. Click the three-dot menu on any card to show/hide it. Different store owners will prioritize different metrics.
The Revenue report shows your earnings over time with detailed breakdowns. Navigate to WooCommerce > Analytics > Revenue.
Reading the Revenue Report
- Gross Sales: Total value of all orders before deductions.
- Returns: Value of all refunded orders in the period.
- Coupons: Total coupon discount applied across all orders.
- Net Revenue: Gross Sales minus Returns minus Coupons minus Taxes (depending on your tax display settings).
Use the date comparison feature to compare this period to the previous equivalent period. A month-over-month revenue comparison immediately shows whether your store is growing or declining.
Revenue Report Filters
- Filter by specific products, product categories, coupons, or order status
- Segment by date range: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly
- Export to CSV for spreadsheet analysis
The Orders report shows individual order data. Navigate to WooCommerce > Analytics > Orders.
| Column | What It Shows | How to Use It |
|---|---|---|
| Date | Order creation timestamp | Filter for peak order periods, identify slow days |
| Order | Order number and customer name | Click through to order details |
| Status | Current order status | Filter for pending, processing, completed, or refunded |
| Customer | Customer type (new or returning) | Segment first-time vs repeat customer orders |
| Product(s) | Items in the order | Identify popular product combinations |
| Net Sales | Order value after discounts | See actual revenue per order |
The Products report shows performance by individual product. Navigate to WooCommerce > Analytics > Products.
Key insights to extract:
- Best sellers: Sort by “Items Sold” to see your highest-volume products. These deserve priority in marketing spend and inventory management.
- Highest revenue: Sort by “Net Revenue” to see which products generate the most money. These may differ from best sellers if high-priced items have lower volume.
- Products with high returns: Sort by “Items Refunded” to identify quality or expectation problems. High return rates signal a product description, quality, or customer expectation issue.
- Zero-sale products: Filter for products with zero items sold in the last 90 days. Candidates for repricing, rewriting, or removal.
The Products report reveals your store’s actual Pareto distribution. For most WooCommerce stores, 20% of products drive 80% of revenue. Know which 20%.
The Categories report shows revenue and units sold by product category. Navigate to WooCommerce > Analytics > Categories.
Use the Categories report to:
- Identify which product categories generate the most revenue (helps prioritize SEO and advertising spend)
- Spot underperforming categories that may need a merchandising refresh
- Compare category revenue over time to track the impact of category-level promotions
- Guide inventory decisions when purchasing or planning new products
The Customers report is one of the most valuable and least-used WooCommerce reports. Navigate to WooCommerce > Analytics > Customers.
Customer Data Available
- Customer lifetime value (CLV): Total spending across all orders. Your highest CLV customers are your most valuable – understand them deeply.
- Orders count: How many times each customer has purchased. Filter for single-order customers vs repeat buyers.
- Average order value per customer: Some customers buy frequently but in small amounts; others buy rarely but in large amounts. Different retention strategies apply to each.
- Last order date: Filter for customers who have not purchased in 90+ days. These are candidates for win-back campaigns.
- Location data: Country and city-level data for understanding your geographic customer distribution.
New vs Returning Customer Analysis
The Customers report segments orders by new customers (first purchase) and returning customers. This ratio tells you about your retention performance. A store where 95% of orders come from new customers has a retention problem. A healthy ratio depends on your product type, but generally 30-40% of orders from returning customers indicates reasonable retention for a product-based store.
For WooCommerce stores focused on customer retention, see our guide on customer loyalty programs for WooCommerce which covers points systems, membership programs, and automated win-back campaigns.
Navigate to WooCommerce > Analytics > Coupons. This report shows which coupon codes were used, by how many orders, and the total discount value.
- Measure the ROI of promotional campaigns by comparing coupon discount totals to revenue generated from those orders
- Identify if any coupon codes are being used more than expected (potential abuse or leakage from deal sites)
- Track influencer or affiliate codes to measure referral performance
- Analyze whether customers who used coupons return at the same rate as full-price buyers
Navigate to WooCommerce > Analytics > Stock. This report shows inventory levels across all products.
- Filter for “Out of stock” to see products currently unavailable to customers
- Filter for “Low stock” to see products approaching zero before a stockout occurs
- Sort by “Stock Quantity” to see your full inventory level from lowest to highest
- Use the stock report alongside your Products report to prioritize reorders for high-revenue, low-stock products first
Navigate to WooCommerce > Analytics > Taxes. This report shows tax collected by tax rate class, useful for VAT/GST compliance reporting and year-end accounting.
- See total tax collected per rate class (standard, reduced, zero)
- Filter by date range for quarterly or annual tax period reporting
- Export to CSV for your accountant or bookkeeping software
For stores selling digital products via WooCommerce, navigate to WooCommerce > Analytics > Downloads.
- See which files were downloaded and by which customers
- Track download count per product
- Identify customers who purchased but have not downloaded (potential technical issue or disengaged buyer)
- Monitor for unusual download volume that might indicate sharing of download links
WooCommerce Analytics gives you store-level data. Google Analytics 4 gives you customer journey data: how people find your store, what pages they visit before purchasing, which traffic sources convert best, and where they drop off in the checkout funnel.
Setting Up GA4 for WooCommerce
- Install the Google for WooCommerce plugin (official, free from WordPress.org).
- Connect your Google account and select or create a GA4 property.
- Enable “Enhanced Ecommerce” tracking in the plugin settings. This tracks add-to-cart, checkout initiation, purchase, and refund events.
- Configure the GA4 data stream to include your WooCommerce store domain.
- Verify tracking is working using GA4’s DebugView (enable it in the plugin and look for events in GA4 DebugView within 30 minutes).
Key GA4 Reports for WooCommerce
| GA4 Report | Where to Find | What It Shows |
|---|---|---|
| Ecommerce Purchases | Reports > Monetization > Ecommerce Purchases | Revenue by product, item views, add-to-cart rate, purchase rate |
| Purchase Journey | Reports > Monetization > Purchase Journey | Funnel visualization from product view to purchase |
| Checkout Journey | Reports > Monetization > Checkout Journey | Drop-off rates at each checkout step |
| Traffic Acquisition | Reports > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition | Revenue by traffic source (organic, paid, social, email) |
| User Acquisition | Reports > Acquisition > User Acquisition | New customer acquisition by channel |
The built-in WooCommerce Analytics covers the basics. For deeper analysis, these plugins extend your reporting capabilities:
Metorik
Metorik is a dedicated WooCommerce analytics platform that connects directly to your store’s database. It provides real-time dashboards, cohort analysis, product bundling insights, and customer segmentation that goes far beyond what WooCommerce Analytics offers. Pricing starts at $50/month. Best for stores doing $50k+ per month in revenue.
Putler
Putler aggregates data from WooCommerce, Stripe, PayPal, and other payment processors into unified dashboards. Useful for stores with multiple revenue sources. Includes RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary) customer segmentation for targeted marketing.
Reporting for WooCommerce
A simpler plugin that adds export features and scheduled reports to WooCommerce. Useful for stores that need to email weekly sales summaries to managers or export data for accounting software on a schedule.
Before investing in a paid analytics tool, it helps to know what each option actually covers and where the gaps are. Here is a direct comparison:
| Feature | WC Analytics (Built-In) | GA4 | Metorik | Putler |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue reporting | Yes | Yes | Yes (real-time) | Yes (multi-source) |
| Customer lifetime value | Basic | No | Yes (detailed) | Yes |
| Cohort analysis | No | Partial | Yes | No |
| RFM segmentation | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Traffic source attribution | No | Yes | No | No |
| Checkout funnel | No | Yes | No | No |
| Subscription MRR/churn | Basic | No | Yes | Yes |
| Scheduled email reports | No | Yes (Looker Studio) | Yes | Yes |
| Price | Free | Free | $50/mo+ | $20/mo+ |
For most stores under $20k/month in revenue, WooCommerce Analytics plus GA4 covers everything needed. Metorik and Putler become worth their cost when you are running complex segmentation, subscription products, or multi-source revenue streams that need a unified view.
Google Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) lets you create custom dashboards combining WooCommerce data (via GA4) with Google Search Console, Google Ads, and other sources into a single view.
- Connect Looker Studio to your GA4 property as a data source.
- Add Google Search Console as a second data source to combine organic traffic with revenue data.
- Create a dashboard with: daily revenue chart, top products table, traffic source breakdown, and conversion rate by page.
- Schedule automatic email delivery of the dashboard to yourself and your team weekly.
Recommended Looker Studio Dashboard Layout
A practical WooCommerce Looker Studio dashboard has three sections:
- Page 1 – Revenue Overview: Daily revenue trend line, comparison to prior period, net revenue vs gross, refund rate trend. This is the page you check first each morning.
- Page 2 – Product Performance: Top 20 products by revenue, products by refund rate, category revenue breakdown. Review this weekly before making inventory or pricing decisions.
- Page 3 – Traffic and Conversion: Sessions by channel, conversion rate by channel, add-to-cart rate, checkout abandonment. Use this to guide marketing budget allocation monthly.
For WooCommerce stores focused on SEO alongside analytics, see our WooCommerce SEO guide for how to connect organic traffic performance to your revenue data. For product attribute optimization that improves conversion rates visible in your analytics, see how to change the order of product attributes in WooCommerce.
| Metric | Formula | Source | Review Frequency |
|---|---|---|---|
| Net Revenue | Gross Sales – Refunds – Discounts | WC Analytics > Revenue | Daily |
| Average Order Value (AOV) | Net Revenue / Orders | WC Analytics > Overview | Weekly |
| Conversion Rate | Orders / Sessions | GA4 | Weekly |
| Customer Lifetime Value | AOV x Purchase Frequency x Avg Customer Lifespan | WC Analytics > Customers | Monthly |
| Repeat Purchase Rate | Returning Customers / Total Customers | WC Analytics > Customers | Monthly |
| Cart Abandonment Rate | (Carts Created – Orders) / Carts Created | GA4 > Purchase Journey | Weekly |
| Revenue by Traffic Source | Revenue attributed per channel | GA4 > Traffic Acquisition | Monthly |
| Refund Rate | Refunds / Gross Sales | WC Analytics > Revenue | Monthly |
Data without a decision-making framework is just noise. Here is a practical interpretation guide for the most common WooCommerce analytics situations:
Revenue Is Up But Net Revenue Is Flat
Check your refund rate and coupon usage. If gross sales grew 20% but net revenue stayed flat, you are likely running a heavy coupon campaign that is not generating incremental sales – it is discounting purchases that would have happened anyway. Pull the Coupons report and calculate the actual margin impact per campaign code.
High Traffic, Low Conversion
GA4’s Purchase Journey report shows exactly where customers leave the funnel. If the bulk of drop-off happens on product pages, your product descriptions, photos, or pricing are the issue. If drop-off happens at cart, your shipping cost or cart experience is the friction. If it happens at checkout, form length, available payment methods, or page speed are the usual causes.
Good New Customer Volume But Low Retention
Filter your Customers report to show customers who made their first purchase 90-180 days ago. What percentage have made a second purchase? If that number is below 20%, you have a post-purchase experience problem. Check whether you have an email follow-up sequence, review your post-purchase communication timing, and look at whether returning customers are hitting any friction in the checkout process.
Strong Sales But Margin Erosion
WooCommerce Analytics does not track cost of goods, so net revenue still includes your product costs. If revenue is growing but profits are not, look at: AOV trend (are customers buying lower-margin products?), coupon overuse, and shipping cost absorption. Cross-referencing WooCommerce data with your accounting software gives the full picture.
Checking dashboards manually every day does not scale. Set up automated alerts so problems surface immediately rather than days later.
GA4 Custom Insights
In GA4, navigate to Advertising > Custom Insights and create alerts for:
- Daily transactions drop more than 30% compared to the same day last week
- Conversion rate falls below your defined threshold (set based on your store’s baseline)
- Revenue from any single traffic channel drops more than 40% week-over-week
GA4 sends an email notification when these conditions are met. You will find out about a broken checkout or a traffic source loss the same day rather than discovering it at your next weekly review.
WooCommerce Stock Alerts
In WooCommerce > Settings > Products > Inventory, enable low stock notifications and set your low stock threshold. WooCommerce emails you when any product hits that threshold. Set the threshold based on your reorder lead time – if it takes two weeks to restock, set the alert at two weeks’ worth of typical sales volume, not at zero.
These are the reporting errors that lead WooCommerce store owners to make bad decisions based on misleading data:
- Using Gross Sales as your revenue number: Gross Sales includes refunds and discounts. Always look at Net Revenue for actual income figures. Gross Sales will always look better than the reality.
- Not filtering out test orders: If you placed test orders when setting up your store, filter them out by date or order status. Test orders inflate your early period data and distort comparisons.
- Comparing different date range lengths: Comparing “this month” (20 days in) to “last month” (30 days) makes this month look worse. Always compare equivalent date ranges: this week vs last week, this month vs same month last year.
- Ignoring the Refund Rate trend: A refund rate that climbs from 2% to 6% over three months signals a product quality or expectation issue that needs investigation before it gets worse.
- Treating all revenue sources the same: Revenue from first-time buyers and revenue from repeat customers have very different implications for your business health. A store that looks like it is growing may actually be churning customers at a high rate while compensating with expensive new customer acquisition.
If you sell in multiple currencies, WooCommerce Analytics shows revenue in your store’s base currency, converting other currencies at the exchange rate at the time of the order. This means your historical revenue figures will not change when exchange rates move, which is the correct behavior for revenue recognition.
Watch for these multi-currency reporting issues:
- Large exchange rate swings can make month-over-month comparisons misleading if a significant portion of your revenue comes from non-base currencies
- The Taxes report may show tax collected in the original currency rather than your base currency, depending on your tax plugin configuration
- GA4 always reports in the currency of your GA4 property settings, which may differ from WooCommerce’s base currency – reconcile the two reports accordingly
Where are WooCommerce reports in WordPress admin?
WooCommerce Analytics is at WooCommerce > Analytics in your WordPress admin. The older WooCommerce Reports section (which still exists for legacy data) is at WooCommerce > Reports. For new stores, use WooCommerce Analytics as it is more powerful and actively maintained. The old Reports section is primarily for accessing historical data from before Analytics was implemented.
How do I export WooCommerce sales data to CSV?
In any WooCommerce Analytics report, look for the “Download” button (CSV icon) in the top right of the report table. This exports the filtered, date-ranged data shown on screen. For automated exports on a schedule, use the Reporting for WooCommerce plugin which can email CSV exports to specified addresses on daily, weekly, or monthly schedules.
Why don’t my WooCommerce Analytics numbers match Google Analytics?
WooCommerce Analytics and Google Analytics count differently. WooCommerce counts orders when they reach “completed” status. GA4 counts purchase events when the thank-you page loads. Discrepancies arise from: order status timing differences, sessions blocked by ad blockers (which affect GA4 but not WooCommerce), and tax/shipping handling differences. Expect 5-15% variance as normal. Consistent tracking via the Google for WooCommerce plugin minimizes the gap.
Can I track WooCommerce subscription revenue separately?
Yes. WooCommerce Subscriptions creates subscription-specific reports under WooCommerce > Analytics > Revenue, where you can filter by subscription renewal vs initial purchase. Metorik provides more detailed subscription analytics including MRR, churn rate, and lifetime value by subscription plan – essential metrics for subscription-focused stores.
How do I see which products are frequently bought together?
WooCommerce does not have a built-in “frequently bought together” report. To find product associations, use the Orders report and export to CSV, then analyze co-occurrence in a spreadsheet. Google Analytics 4’s Ecommerce Purchases report shows item combinations in the item-scoped data. Plugins like Metorik provide product affinity analysis built in. For using this data to set up WooCommerce upsells and cross-sells, see our related guides on product comparison and customer loyalty strategies.
How long does WooCommerce Analytics keep historical data?
WooCommerce Analytics stores data in your WordPress database indefinitely – there is no built-in data expiry. However, the analytics performance degrades on very large datasets (millions of orders) because queries run against the wp_wc_order_stats and related tables directly. If your store has years of order history and Analytics is running slowly, consider a database optimization plugin or export older historical data to an external analytics platform while keeping recent data in WooCommerce.
What is the difference between sessions and orders in my reports?
Sessions (from GA4) represent individual visits to your store. Orders (from WooCommerce Analytics) represent completed purchases. The ratio between the two is your store-wide conversion rate. A store getting 10,000 sessions per month and 200 orders has a 2% conversion rate. Industry average for ecommerce is 1-3%, though this varies widely by product type, price point, and traffic source quality. Your paid traffic channels typically convert at a different rate than organic – segment by channel to see where conversion performance differences exist.
For WooCommerce stores looking to grow through better data, contact our team for WooCommerce analytics setup, GA4 integration, and custom reporting dashboard development.
