If your Shopify Analytics overview looks cluttered — or hides the numbers you actually check every morning — you don't have to live with the default layout. Shopify lets you rebuild the dashboard around your own metrics in a few minutes.
This guide walks the exact steps, then covers the harder question the setup screen never answers: what to do when the metric you most want (profit) simply isn't a card you can add.
The quick version: how to change your dashboard
The dashboard editor lives inside the Analytics section of your admin. According to the Shopify Help Center, you can only enter it from a desktop computer — but the changes you save display on both desktop and mobile.
Here's the flow:
- From your Shopify admin, click Analytics.
- Click the ••• (more options) menu, then Customize.
- Make your changes in the editor (details below).
- Click Save.
If you make a mess of it, there's an escape hatch: Reset to default restores the original set of metric cards in their original order and sizing.
What you can actually change
Once you're in the editor, the dashboard becomes a drag-and-drop canvas. There are two things you're moving around: individual metric cards, and the sections that group them.
Metric cards
Each card is one number or chart — total sales, sessions, conversion rate, average order value (AOV, your total revenue divided by orders), returning-customer rate, top products, and so on.
- Add a card by dragging it from the metrics library on the left, or clicking its name.
- Remove a card with the X button.
- Resize a card by dragging its lower-right corner.
- Rearrange cards using the drag handle.
The practical move here is subtraction, not addition. A dashboard with seven cards you check beats one with thirty you scroll past. Put the two or three numbers you act on weekly at the top, sized large.
Sections
Sections are labeled containers that keep related cards together — for example, a "Marketing" block separate from an "Operations" block.
- Create a new section and give it a custom label.
- Rename a section with the edit icon.
- Reorder sections through the reorder dialog.
- Delete custom sections, or collapse them to hide temporarily.
Grouping matters more than it sounds. If you review acquisition on Mondays and inventory on Fridays, sectioning lets you collapse the half you're not looking at instead of hunting through a wall of cards.
Depends on your plan: what cards are even available
Not every store sees the same menu of cards and reports. The overview dashboard exists on every paid plan, but the depth of reporting behind it is tiered.
A widely cited breakdown from Saras Analytics describes the tiering roughly like this: Basic gets the overview and finance reports plus limited sales reports; the mid Shopify plan adds fuller sales, behavior, and marketing reports; Advanced unlocks custom report building and profit reports with margins and COGS by product; and Plus layers on deeper operational reporting and API access.
So if a card or report you read about isn't in your library, it may be gated above your current plan. Confirm what you actually have in Settings → Plan, because Shopify shuffles features between tiers about twice a year. Our guide to what changed in the latest Shopify dashboard update tracks the recent additions, and if you're locked out of the editor entirely, start with how to access your Shopify dashboard.
The card you can't add: profit
Here's where rearranging stops helping. You can build the cleanest dashboard in the world and still not see whether your store made money — because Shopify's native analytics doesn't compute net profit.
The reason is scope, not a flaw. Independent guides consistently name the same blind spot: native reports show revenue and, on Advanced-and-up with COGS entered, gross margin — but not net profit after ad spend, shipping, transaction fees, and returns. Your dashboard shows what sold. It doesn't show what you kept.
There's a second gap right beside it. Shopify credits the last channel a customer touched before buying, so it undercounts the SEO article or email that started the journey. And the dashboard has no idea what you spent on Meta or Google Ads — those numbers live on other platforms entirely.
Why a clean dashboard can still lie to you
Say you sell a product for $50. That looks like a healthy sale on your sales card. Walk the real math on a single order:
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Selling price | $50.00 |
| − Product cost, packaging, inbound freight | −$15.00 |
| = Gross profit | $35.00 (70%) |
| − Outbound shipping and fulfillment | −$8.00 |
| − Payment and platform fees (~3%) | −$1.50 |
| − Attributed ad spend to win the sale | −$12.00 |
| − Returns reserve spread across orders | −$3.00 |
| = True contribution | $10.50 (21%) |
The card on your dashboard shows the $50, and maybe the $35 gross profit if you're on Advanced. The $10.50 — the number that decides whether scaling this product makes you richer or poorer — appears nowhere. A "70% margin" product is really a 21% product once you actually sell it online.
Do that across your catalog and the picture flips for a surprising number of SKUs. Some of your best "sellers" are the ones quietly costing you money on every order.
Fixing the profit gap after you've fixed the layout
Rearranging cards is a UI fix. Seeing profit is a data fix, and it takes connecting the platforms Shopify's dashboard can't see.
Broadly, three kinds of tools close the gap. Profit trackers pull orders, COGS, ad spend, shipping, fees, and returns into one net-profit view. Attribution tools reconcile which ad dollar actually produced which sale. And BI or dashboard platforms unify everything into cohorts, lifetime value, and blended return on ad spend. Our rundown of the best ecommerce reporting and analytics tools maps which category fits which question, and the broader ecommerce business intelligence hub covers the sequence of questions an operator should answer first.
PodVector takes a different shape from a dashboard. It connects Shopify, Meta Ads, Google Ads, Printify, and Printful, then computes your true per-order profit across all of them. Victor, its AI operator, reads that live data, spots where margin is leaking, and proposes moves — the changes he executes are Shopify-side and only with your approval. He reads your ad data to explain performance, but he does not touch your ad account. It's not another dashboard to arrange; it's the profit answer the dashboard can't give you.
Ready to see per-order profit instead of just revenue? Connect your store to PodVector and let Victor do the math.
FAQs
Why can't I customize my Shopify dashboard on mobile?
The dashboard editor is desktop-only. Per the Shopify Help Center, you have to enter Customize from a desktop browser — but any layout you save there displays on both desktop and mobile, so you only have to set it up once.
How do I undo changes to my Shopify dashboard?
Open the editor again and click Reset to default. That restores the original array of metric cards in their default order and sizing, which is the fastest way to recover if a customization got out of hand.
Why doesn't my dashboard show profit?
Because Shopify's native analytics is designed around revenue, not net profit. It shows sales and, on higher plans with COGS entered, gross margin — but not profit after ad spend, shipping, fees, and returns. No card in the editor computes that number, because the dashboard doesn't know your ad spend or fulfillment costs.
What metric cards should I put at the top?
Lead with what you act on weekly rather than what looks impressive. A focused starter set is net profit or contribution margin, AOV, conversion rate, customer acquisition cost, and repeat-purchase rate — roughly seven numbers. Revenue alone belongs lower; a rising revenue card can sit right above a falling profit you can't see.
Do more expensive plans get more dashboard options?
Yes. The overview exists on every plan, but the Saras Analytics tiering shows custom report building and profit reports arriving at the Advanced tier, with Plus adding deeper operational reporting and API access. Check Settings → Plan for your exact report list, and if you're building apps against the admin, our guide to the Shopify Partner dashboard and app creation covers that side.