Since September 21, 2026, Shopify has improved its session measurement. Sessions, conversion rates, and other visit-based metrics may change. Shopify clarifies that orders, sales, and customer counts are not affected by this measurement change. A new baseline for comparison must therefore be established before interpreting any rate fluctuations. See the official Shopify announcement.
What is changing in the dashboard
The default measurement seeks to better distinguish human visits from automated traffic when the corresponding filter is available. It classifies bot and system traffic more consistently, while retaining valid customer journeys that do not include a standard page view. Depending on your traffic composition, the number of sessions may shift without any real change in the number of orders.
This particularly affects sessions, add-to-cart rates, reaching checkout, conversion rates, and page views per session. Orders and revenue remain the distinct commercial benchmarks.
Building a reliable comparison
- Mark September 21, 2026, as a break date in your report.
- Export at least two periods of equal duration on either side of this date, using comparable weekdays.
- Display sessions, orders, sales, and conversion rates separately.
- Segment by channel and country if these dimensions matter for your store.
- Include promotions, price changes, stock shortages, and campaigns launched during each period.
Fictitious example: a store goes from 10,000 to 8,000 sessions and remains at 200 orders. Its calculated rate rises from 2% to 2.5%. This arithmetic increase does not prove that the shopping experience has improved: the denominator may have changed. Compare orders and revenue before attributing a commercial gain to the new rate.
Which table should be kept weekly?
Maintain one row per week with sessions, orders, sales, conversion rate, main channel, and commercial events. Add a "new Shopify method" note to comparisons that span the September 21 date. To track a specific action on a product page, supplement the global data with its views, additions to cart, and sales. Do not rewrite an old rate to give it the appearance of a consistent measurement.
For the definitions and filters available on your account, also consult the Shopify reports documentation. Once the new baseline is established, judge your store changes based on observed orders and sales, then use sessions to understand the journey.
