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20 MAR 2024
Understanding Sales and User Data Better with Targeted Reports
How much is the revenue per day, week, or month? How many new customers are there? Which product categories are in high demand at what times? Online retailers can delve into these questions with the help of reports. Magento or Adobe Commerce offers a reporting solution by default. However, it is not flexible enough for many use cases. Therefore, DELABYTE has developed interfaces to external reporting tools like Cyfe and Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio).
Magento reporting at a Glance
What is the benefit of Magento reporting?
Magento reporting refers to the automated analysis and clear presentation of data from Magento. Reports present data in an organized manner and make patterns in the data transparent through visualizations. They help shop operators make better business decisions.
What reporting options are available for Magento?
Magento and Adobe Commerce come with their own reporting solution. However, it is quite limited in terms of the reports that can be generated and the presentation of the data. Alternatively, data from Magento can be transferred to external reporting systems – for example, the dashboard solution Cyfe or Google Data Studio.
Which reporting solution does DELABYTE recommend?
An externally connected reporting system allows for the generation of individual reports based on data from Magento. We currently recommend connecting Google Data Studio. It is easy to use and offers the greatest flexibility in evaluating and visualizing the data.
Magento Reporting: Internal vs. External Tools
Reports are indispensable in online retail. Many web shop operators start their day by reading a report – typically automatically generated as a PDF and delivered via email. The reports show them how the business is doing and form an important basis for decisions. Magento or Adobe Commerce comes with its own reporting solution. At first glance, it offers a comprehensive repertoire of evaluations. The categories range from Marketing Reports, Review Reports, Sales Reports, and System Insights, to Customer Reports and Product Reports, and even Business Intelligence.
However, internal reporting has three major drawbacks: The reports are predefined. The system is inflexible and hardly customizable. The presentation of the reports is not up-to-date. The internal tool cannot graphically process the data. Magento reporting operates on the same database as the shop, putting additional strain on the system.
An alternative is the integration of external reporting solutions. We have already successfully connected two reporting systems to Magento and used them in production: Cyfe and Google Data Studio.
"External reporting solutions offer much more possibilities than the integrated reporting system of Magento. We are particularly impressed by Google Data Studio – a very powerful tool with interactive dashboards."
Cyfe and Magento: Solid Solution for Fixed Report Formats
To be able to evaluate and visualize data from Magento more flexibly, we first developed an interface to Cyfe – a Software-as-a-Service solution specializing in building individual dashboards. In Cyfe, external sources can be defined. Through this channel, we integrate the Magento data from our interface. The reports are then defined in Cyfe. The system is quite flexible on one hand. We have predefined about 30 different reports. On the other hand, defining the reports involves some effort. You have to think carefully in advance about how the reports should look. They are fixed.
Google Data Studio and Magento: Powerful and Flexible Data Analysis
We have also realized a connection for Google Data Studio. The integration primarily consists of data synchronization. We transfer data from the Magento database into BigQuery – a Google cloud data warehouse that processes even large volumes of data very efficiently. The data stored in BigQuery (which, by the way, is stored in the EU) can then be used as a source in Google Data Studio. This makes the system ready to use.
Defining reports in Data Studio is significantly easier than in Cyfe. The system contains many interactive elements, allowing for flexible data exploration. For example, out-of-the-box filters can be set for viewing periods. It's possible to drill deeper into specific data such as product categories. Moreover, Magento data in Data Studio can be easily combined with data from Google Analytics and Google Ads. This lets webshop operators see exactly when campaigns have run and how they have impacted.