Why are my Shopify sales down?

Part 1

Check orders before sessions, since Shopify changed how it counts sessions in September

• Shopify's session measurement update rolled out September 21 to 23, 2026. Sessions now follow continued customer activity instead of ending at midnight UTC, and identified bot sessions are filtered out of session reports by default.^{1, 2}
• Shopify says orders, sales and customer counts aren't affected. Sessions measured before the update aren't directly comparable, even with the same bot filter, and Shopify says to use data from after it as the new baseline. Read orders, sales and order value year over year, and sessions and conversion rate only after September 23, 2026.^{1, 2}
• The Performance by marketing channel report now includes rows it didn't include before, such as organic and referring traffic. Shopify notes a report that spans late September 2026 can reflect both changes.¹
• Sessions count only visitors who accept cookies through your banner. Shopify's own advice when counts look low is to check that the banner displays and works.³

Part 2

Split the drop into sessions, conversion and order value

• Online store sales roughly track sessions times conversion rate times average order value, so a real drop shows up in at least 1 of the 3.
• Shopify defines conversion rate as the percentage of sessions that resulted in a sale, and average order value as the average value of orders placed, excluding any post-order adjustments.³
• Online store orders roughly track sessions times conversion rate, so orders falling with order value steady means fewer shoppers bought. Total sales by referrer points at where from, read with care: Shopify lists sales as unaffected by the session update, and also says metrics that attribute orders to sessions can change.^{2, 4}
• Net sales are gross sales minus discounts minus sales reversals, the term Shopify now uses in place of returns. Read the same measure for both periods.^{3, 4}

Example

A worked example, with round numbers

A fictional candle store charges no shipping, tax, duties or fees and had no returns, cancellations or other sales reversals, so its total sales are orders times average order value. It compares the 4 weeks to October 11, 2026 with the same 4 weeks of 2025. Total sales fell from $30,000 to $24,000, down 20%.

• Orders fell from 500 to 400, and average order value held at $60. 500 times $60 is $30,000, and 400 times $60 is $24,000, so fewer shoppers bought and each spent the same. That rules out Part 5.
• Total sales by referrer: Instagram fell from $9,000 to $3,600, and every other source together went from $21,000 to $20,400. Instagram's $5,400 is 90% of the drop. The 4 weeks span the session update, so this is a pointer, not proof.
• Sessions by referrer, weeks after September 23, 2026 only: Instagram sent 410 sessions in the week of September 28 and 390 in the week of October 5. Flat across both weeks, so the weeks after the update can't say when the fall began.
• The check outside Shopify: the store's own Instagram link clicks for the same 4 weeks against last year. If they fell by about as much, it's Part 3, a referrer, and the fix starts with what changed on Instagram.
• The trap it avoids: set against weeks before the update, the store's sessions might read lower on every source and look like traffic lost everywhere. Shopify says those weeks aren't directly comparable, so the example never reads them.²

Part 3

If sessions fell, find the referrer that fell

• Sessions by referrer shows whether visitors come directly, from search or by a referral. Shopify groups referrers by medium, such as social, search and email, and by traffic type: direct, organic and paid.⁵
• Total sales by referrer shows sales by the site customers came from, credited to the last interaction referrer, so you can tell a source that sent browsers from one that sent buyers.⁴
• Paid down: a paused campaign or a spent budget cuts sessions the same day. Organic down: check Google Search Console clicks on your top pages against last year. Email down: count the sends, since a skipped campaign shows here.
• Sessions by landing page and Sessions by location narrow it to the page, or the country, region or city, that lost visitors.^{5, 6}

Part 4

If conversion fell, find the step where shoppers leave

• Shopify's funnel has 4 steps: all sessions, sessions with cart additions, sessions that reached checkout, and sessions that completed checkout.⁶
• Fewer cart additions points at the product page: price, stock, photos or reviews. Fewer checkouts completed after reaching checkout points at shipping cost, a payment method or a discount code that stopped working.
• Searches with no results breaks down the terms shoppers searched for in your store, a quick fix if a product was renamed or sold out.⁶
• Conversion rate can read higher or lower than before the update. Shopify says filtering bots out by default can raise it, and counting some sessions with no pageview can lower it. Reports that support it have a Human or bot session filter.^{1, 2}

Part 5

If order value fell, look at discounts and product mix

• Sales by discount codes shows the sales of the line items each code applied to, so a code that leaked to a coupon site shows up as a jump. With combinable discounts, one order can appear more than once.⁴
• Total sales by product excludes shipping, so set it beside Total sales over time to tell a product falling from a change in shipping charges.⁴
• Average order value over time reflects only product revenue generated when the customer placed the order, and Shopify's field definition excludes post-order adjustments. Sales reversals show in net sales, which subtracts them, and never in gross sales.^{3, 4}
• A drop on Shopify can sit inside a growing business. Amazon down, Shopify up walks through the channel shift trap, and the same fork for other channels is in why are my Amazon sales down and why are my Etsy sales down.