Seeing different numbers between Heatmap and Shopify? Good! That's by design. Shopify provides a broad view of your store’s overall performance across all channels, while Heatmap is laser-focused on website behavior and engaged sessions. Neither is “right” nor “wrong;” they simply track data differently, which is why their numbers don’t always align.

This article will help you understand how Shopify vs Heatmap approach metrics differently and then get started with Heatmap!

Shopify defines a session as a continuous period of activity by a visitor, which expires after 30 minutes of inactivity or at midnight UTC (Shopify session definition). Even if a visitor lands directly at checkout and buys, Shopify still counts this as a session. (Shopify acquisition reporting).

Heatmap sessions, on the other hand, are engagement-driven: a session only starts when a user clicks, scrolls, or spends at least 5 seconds on the site.
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Shopify sessions are great for overall traffic volume, while Heatmap sessions show when real shoppers are actually engaging with your site, giving you more accurate data for CRO and UX optimization.

Shopify calculates AOV across all channels (online store, Shop App, social commerce, point-of-sale, etc.). Its formula includes $0 orders, refunds, and exchanges, while excluding shipping and taxes. This often results in a lower reported AOV because these factors pull the average down.

Shopify calculates Average Order Value (AOV) using:

Heatmap focuses only on website-originated transactions. It excludes refunds and post-purchase adjustments (like exchanges), while including shipping and taxes in the calculation. Every tracked transaction is tied to an engaged session that began on your site, so the resulting AOV more accurately reflects true customer spending behavior during a visit.

Heatmap AOV Calculation:

Because Shopify’s AOV mixes in $0 orders, returns, and non-website sales, the number can look lower or more volatile than what you see in Heatmap. Heatmap’s AOV strips out these data distortions and focuses purely on the value of transactions that originate on your website, giving you a more actionable benchmark for testing pricing strategies, measuring product performance, and guiding conversion rate optimization.

Shopify’s AOV is valuable for financial reporting across your entire business, while Heatmap’s AOV is tailored to reveal how much each engaged website visitor is really worth.

Shopify’s analytics primarily measure "Sessions with Add-to-Cart" events, defined as:

This approach provides broad insights into cart interactions at the session level, which is useful for a general understanding of cart engagement across your site.

Heatmap tracks individual "Add to Cart" events explicitly and precisely:

Shopify’s session-level approach offers a broad sense of cart activity but misses details about the frequency and intensity of engagement within the same session. Heatmap’s detailed, event-level tracking gives you those insights, making it easier to understand exactly how customers interact with products, optimize product pages, and improve conversion rates by focusing on true shopping behavior.

When you click the Analytics tab in Shopify, you’ll see a large chart with a revenue number at the top. This number is Total Sales, which is calculated with all purchase methods, including off-website sales. While this helps understand overall business performance, it doesn't isolate website-specific transactions.

Shopify’s Total Sales is most useful for business and not website performance for multiple reasons:

Heatmap, by contrast, reports Website Revenue only. It includes taxes and shipping in the calculation but may not capture upsell adjustments or subscription renewals that happen after checkout. Heatmap’s goal, as a behavioral analytics tool, is to capture human behavior exclusively on your website.

You may also notice a slight difference in revenue (often less than 5%) when comparing Shopify and Heatmap. A common reason is that some shoppers land directly on Checkout without first browsing the site; Heatmap is designed to exclude these, since they aren’t part of a true shopping session. Additionally, Heatmap records revenue when its tracking snippet fires on the Thank You page. If a user exits too quickly, loses connection, or navigates away before the snippet loads, that order may not be captured. This accounts for 4–8% of conversions being untracked (sometimes 10–12% for mobile or social-heavy traffic). These differences are expected and intentional. Heatmap focuses only on genuine on-site shopping activity, giving you a cleaner lens for website optimization.

Discrepancies between Shopify and Heatmap revenue are normal and don’t mean either platform is “wrong.” They reflect differences in channel coverage, data methodology, and tracking scope. Shopify is built for comprehensive accounting and business reporting, so its totals will almost always be higher. Heatmap is built specifically for website optimization, focusing only on on-site shopper behavior.

Small mismatches can also occur due to untracked conversions, upsell adjustments after checkout, or time zone alignment. For an apples-to-apples comparison, we recommend using Shopify’s Total Sales by Channel report and selecting Online Store. That number will align most closely with Heatmap.

Ultimately, Shopify is your source of truth for accounting, while Heatmap is your best lens for understanding how shoppers behave on your website and where you can optimize conversions.

In Shopify, there are two “transactions” metrics: Orders and Orders Fulfilled. Orders as a metric include all sources, including those that are off-website transactions. This will make your Heatmap Purchases metric appear lower than Shopify’s Orders as we are only tracking this metric.

Orders Fulfilled is a better metric to use, as some may be processing, but still reports on all purchase sources beyond your website. You can view Orders Fulfilled on this image below:

Heatmap focuses strictly on website behavior, so its purchase counts will be lower than Shopify’s global orders metric. This is intentional as it ensures you see only true website sales activity.

The key takeaway: Shopify and Heatmap are built to answer different questions. Shopify is designed for full-business reporting across channels, while Heatmap is intentionally focused on website engagement, conversions, and actionable insights.

By using Heatmap’s session-based lens, you get a clearer picture of how often shoppers return, engage, and convert on your site, helping you optimize UX, CRO, and revenue growth.

How Heatmap Collects Data

Heatmap Data Definitions & Methodology

Understanding Heatmap vs Google Analytics (GA4) Data

Why Do I See Different Revenue or AOV Numbers in Heatmap?

If you have questions or run into any issues while using Heatmap, our support team is here to help. Contact us anytime at support@heatmap.com.