Analytics across Shopify must provide a cohesive and consistent user experience.
Merchants need data at the right time and in the right place to make great decisions, and users need timely access to data relevant to their role. We provide easy-to-find, relevant data across the admin, where and when it’s needed. Analytics experiences across the admin should be connected, guiding merchants to answer their unique business questions. They should enable merchants to easily transition from monitoring, to investigating, to building their own data explorations. Analytics should strike a balance between technical accuracy and approachability. The ultimate goal is to be helpful and ensure merchants quickly understand what the data is trying to communicate. We add contextual elements when necessary to help merchants better understand and leverage their data (e.g. legends, tool-tips, labels). Though data visualizations show up on multiple surfaces and in varying contexts, there's a visual identity that unifies them. An analytics object is easily identifiable through its design language and unique behavior. The elements and behavior in our experiences generate meaningful delight for our users. Animations and colors support storytelling and help users understand the underlying data—thoughtful details in how we present the information provide an overall enjoyable experience that also imparts valuable meaning and takes accessibility into account. At Shopify, merchants’ businesses, and therefore their data, are dynamic. Our charts need to accommodate this variety, scaling gracefully to adapt to a broad range of data points, from two to two thousand. The visualizations we provide should always look good regardless of the volume of data.