How Does Shopify Calculate Conversion Rate?

Shopify calculates conversion rate as the percentage of online store sessions that ended in a purchase: sessions that completed checkout, divided by total sessions, times 100. It counts sessions, not visitors, and not orders.

Those two choices explain almost every "why doesn't this match?" question. This page covers what goes into each side of the formula. If you just need to find the number, see where to find your conversion rate in Shopify Analytics.

The formula

Conversion rate = sessions that completed checkout ÷ sessions × 100

Shopify defines the two parts in its Behavior reports documentation:

• Sessions: the total number of sessions on your online store.
• Sessions that completed checkout: sessions where a customer purchased a product.

Say your store had 8,400 sessions last month and 97 of them included a purchase. 97 ÷ 8,400 × 100 = 1.15%.

What counts as a session

According to Shopify's Analytics documentation:

• Sessions and visitors are based on cookies. One cookie identifies the device and another tracks how long the session lasts.
• A session ends after 30 minutes of inactivity.
• The same visitor can have many sessions, so sessions usually outnumber visitors.
• Opening your store from the desktop admin with View store doesn't count as a session.

So a shopper who browses on Monday, comes back on Thursday and buys counts as two sessions and one conversion. Per visitor, that's a 100% conversion. Per session, it's 50%. Shopify reports the second.

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What changed in September 2026

Shopify changed how it measures sessions between 21 and 23 September 2026. Its notes on the update list three changes:

• Sessions now follow continued activity instead of ending at midnight UTC. Late-night browsing that used to count as two sessions can now count as one.
• Some sessions without a pageview now count, such as a customer going straight to checkout from a cart link.
• Identified bot sessions are filtered out of session reports by default.

Each change moves the denominator. Filtering bots tends to raise your conversion rate. Counting sessions without a pageview can lower it. Orders, sales and customer counts aren't affected. Shopify says to treat post-update data as your new baseline, and its bot classification only applies to sessions from 7 October 2025 onward.

What counts as a conversion

A session counts once if it includes a purchase. Shopify notes that a customer can make more than one purchase in a single session, so your order count and your sessions that completed checkout might not match.

That's why dividing total orders by sessions gives you a number at least as high as Shopify's, and often higher. Your order count can also include sales that never had an online store session, like in-person POS sales. Those orders can't appear in a rate built from store sessions.

How the funnel rates are worked out

The Conversion rate breakdown report shows the steps between a visit and a purchase. Each step's rate is that step divided by total sessions, not by the step before it.

Using the same example store:

A session only counts as reaching checkout if there was some input during checkout, like a key press or a mouse click.

Because every rate is divided by total sessions, the report doesn't show the drop between steps directly. To get checkout completion, divide it yourself: 97 ÷ 210 = 46%. Benchmarks for checkout completion often use their own definition of "started checkout," so treat comparisons with Shopify's reached-checkout figure as rough.

Why Shopify and Google Analytics disagree

Google Analytics 4 has two conversion rates, and only one is comparable:

• Session key event rate: sessions in which a key event happened, divided by total sessions. This is the one closest to Shopify's.
• User key event rate: users who performed a key event, divided by total users. It will usually read higher, for the same reason a per-visitor rate does.

Even the session version won't match exactly:

• It counts whatever you've marked as a key event. It only lines up with Shopify if purchase is the event you're measuring.
• GA4 sessions also time out after 30 minutes, but GA4 estimates session counts rather than counting each one.
• Shopify now filters identified bots out by default, and GA4 needs its own tracking set up to see the same purchases.

Neither number is wrong. They measure slightly different things, so pick one and track it over time.

What to do with the number

Knowing how the rate is built tells you what it can and can't say. For what to do when it's low, our Shopify conversion rate optimization guide works through it stage by stage.

Frequently asked questions

Does Shopify calculate conversion rate with visitors or sessions?

Sessions. Shopify's conversion rate is the percentage of online store sessions that resulted in a purchase. One visitor can have several sessions, so a visitor-based rate for the same store would come out higher.

Why doesn't orders divided by sessions match my Shopify conversion rate?

Shopify counts sessions that completed checkout, not orders. One session can include more than one purchase, and your order count can include sales that never had an online store session, like in-person POS sales. So orders divided by sessions comes out at or above Shopify's figure.