Before buying anything, build four views from data you already have. They answer most of what a paid dashboard would tell you.
1. The funnel, split by device
Sessions, product views, add-to-carts, checkouts, orders. Then the same thing for mobile and desktop separately.
Averaging mobile and desktop together is the most common analytics mistake on a store. They usually fail at different steps.
2. Conversion by traffic source
Branded search and direct will convert far better than cold paid social. That is normal. What matters is whether a channel is far below what it should be, which tells you the problem is targeting rather than the store.
Diagnosing the store before checking this is how CRO budget gets wasted on traffic that was never going to buy.
3. Zero-result searches
The most actionable single report in a store's analytics. Every row is a customer who told you exactly what they wanted and got nothing.
4. Repeat customer rate, by cohort
Not lifetime value, which takes too long to be actionable. The 90-day second-order rate by acquisition month moves fast enough to act on and predicts everything downstream.
If you build only one thing from this list, build the funnel split by device. It locates the problem to a step and a platform, which is most of the diagnosis.
The gap that justifies paying
Shopify reports last-click. It cannot tell you what a paid social impression contributed to a branded search three days later. Cross-channel attribution is the genuine gap, and it is the only thing in this area worth buying early.
Cohort and LTV tooling is the second, and it is considerably cheaper than full attribution.
On trusting attribution
No attribution platform is truth. They are models with assumptions, and two of them will disagree about the same week. Pick one, understand what it assumes, and read trends rather than absolute numbers.
Watch the attribution window. A platform crediting itself for any sale within seven days of any email open will flatter itself enormously. Compare with a shorter window before believing the number.
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About the author
Manpreet Singh
Founder of Proscube. Leads the studio's Shopify, headless and CRO engineering, and works directly with founders rather than through account managers.
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