Why Are Visitors and Conversion Rate Empty?

Visitors (unique visitors), sessions and the conversion rate stay at zero until Profitario has a traffic source for the shop. There are two: the session data of your Shopify store, which needs one extra Shopify permission, or Google Analytics. This article shows how to turn on either one and what to check when the numbers stay empty.

Where: Home > shop card > Update permissions (Shopify), or Home > Integrations > Google Analytics
Who: Any shop whose dashboard shows 0 visitors. Granting the Shopify permission needs access to the Shopify admin
Time: About 2 minutes for the Shopify permission
Updates: Up to two years of daily sessions are imported, then refreshed every time the dashboard is opened

Where the Numbers Are Missing#

On the dashboard of a shop, the traffic numbers sit in the Visitors card of the Overview and in the group Traffic & Conversions. A grey badge under a number tells you which source is missing.

The Visitors card further up, in the Overview, follows the same rule as Sessions:

The badge says Google Analytics not connected even when the Shopify permission alone would fill the numbers. You do not need Google Analytics for visitors, sessions and conversion rate.

Revenue / Visitor and Profit / Visitor under Unit Economics use the same visitor number and stay empty for the same reason.

Option 1: Use Your Shopify Session Data#

Profitario can read sessions and visitors straight from Shopify. This needs the Shopify permission Store analytics, which stores that installed Profitario earlier have not granted yet.

The window Shopify access opens.

Closing the window, or leaving the Shopify page without approving, grants nothing. Profitario asks you to confirm before you leave.

What happens next

The first import fetches up to two years of daily sessions and visitors. It starts the next time the dashboard of the shop is opened or refreshed.
After that, the sessions are updated every time you open the dashboard or click Refresh, and once a day in the background for accounts in active use. Each update fetches the days since the last import again, so late corrections from Shopify are picked up.
Nothing else is recalculated. Orders, costs and profit do not change.

Option 2: Connect Google Analytics#

Use Google Analytics (GA4) if you prefer its visitor numbers, or if you want the Bounce Rate.

Then assign the property to your shop and switch it on. The full steps are in Connect Google Analytics.

Which Source Is Used#

Profitario decides per shop and never adds the two sources together.

The shop has	Visitors, Sessions	Conversion Rate	Add-to-Cart Rate, Reached Checkout Rate, Session Funnel	Bounce Rate
Only the Shopify permission	Shopify	Shopify	Shopify	Empty
Only Google Analytics	Google Analytics	Orders ÷ Google Analytics sessions	Empty	Google Analytics
Both	Google Analytics	Shopify	Shopify	Google Analytics
Neither	Empty	Empty	Empty	Empty

"Has Google Analytics" means: a property is assigned to the shop, the property is switched on, and its Google connection is connected. As long as that is the case, Google Analytics is used for the shop, even on days for which it delivered no data.

How the conversion rate is calculated. Profitario uses the same formula as Shopify Analytics: sessions that completed checkout ÷ sessions × 100, both from your Shopify session data, for the selected period. Example: 690 sessions completed checkout out of 23,100 sessions gives 690 ÷ 23,100 × 100 = 3.0%. Without Shopify session data, Profitario uses orders ÷ sessions × 100 with the sessions from Google Analytics. That can differ from the rate Google Analytics reports.

Sessions and visitors. A session is one visit; one visitor can have several sessions. Visitors are counted per day, so someone who visits on two days counts twice in the period.

The Numbers Are Still Empty#

What you see	Cause	Fix
The shop card still shows Update permissions	The request was not approved on Shopify	Repeat Option 1 and approve the request on the Shopify page
Permission granted a moment ago, numbers still 0	The first import has not run yet	Open the dashboard of the shop and click Refresh. The numbers appear when the import is finished
Shopify permission needed stays on the funnel numbers although Google Analytics works	The funnel numbers only come from Shopify	Grant Store analytics as in Option 1. The shop card shows Update permissions only while the shop has no visitor data at all, so if the link is missing, contact support
Google Analytics is connected, visitors are 0	The property is not assigned to this shop, is switched off, or the connection expired	Under Integrations > Google Analytics, check the Store of the property, its switch and the status of the connection
Google Analytics is connected but delivers nothing, Shopify permission is granted	Google Analytics takes priority for this shop, so the Shopify sessions are not shown	Switch the property off, or fix the property in Google Analytics. With the property off, the shop uses the Shopify sessions
A combined view shows GA not connected (1 of 2 shops)	Some shops of the view have no traffic source	Set up a source for each shop
Today is lower than in Shopify	Today's sessions are only as fresh as the last import	Click Refresh on the dashboard

Limits#

Session history goes back at most two years from the first import.
Shopify session data covers the visitors of your online store.
Bounce Rate is only available with Google Analytics.
Add-to-Cart Rate, Reached Checkout Rate and the Session Funnel are only available with the Shopify permission.
Visitor numbers from Shopify and Google Analytics are never combined for the same shop.

Contact Support#

If the permission is granted (the shop card no longer shows Update permissions) and the numbers are still empty after a refresh, write to support@profitario.com and include the shop's address (for example your-store.myshopify.com), the source you set up, and the date range you are looking at.