Magento 2 Advanced Reporting Guide (2021)

Running an eCommerce business these days comes with several challenges in enticing customers. And convincing customers to make purchases is just the iceberg’s tip.

When the eCommerce competition has become intense day by day, it takes an e-retailer to go the extra mile to stand out from the pack. And people have started talking and considering more about differentiation and personalization.

That’s why it’s understandable when a popular eCommerce platform like Magento attracts more clients with Business Intelligence. An analytics system enables enterprises to harness the power of data for better business decisions.

Still, in this post’s scope, we will talk about one of Magento Business Intelligence’s widely-used tools - Advanced Reporting.

Table of Contents

• Magento 2 Business Intelligence vs. Advanced Reporting
  • Magneto 2 Business Intelligence: Brief introduction
  • Advanced Reporting in Business Intelligence
• Who can use Magento 2 Advanced Reporting and Requirements?
• How to use Magento 2 Advanced Reporting
  • Step 1: Activate the Advanced Reporting from the store’s backend
  • Step 2: Access Advanced Reporting from the Admin Panel
• Access Data resources from the Advanced Reporting dashboard
• Scale up your business with Magento 2 Reports extension
• The bottom line!

Magento 2 Business Intelligence and Advanced Reporting

Magneto 2 Business Intelligence: Brief introduction

The role of eCommerce analytics increases. Obviously, the giant Magento sees this opportunity and puts more effort into integrating their dashboard with more advanced analytics tools.

To become the right choice for those who want to build high-performance online stores, Magento introduced Business Intelligence (earlier known as Magento Analytics) with 2 primary tools:

• Advanced Reporting: Offer detailed reports on business performance based on the products, orders, and customer data

• MBI: Available for users who have Magento BI accounts. MBI gives you access to 5 dashboards including up to 70 reports for the most personalized and precise customers’ insights

These tools allow Magento users to learn more about customers’ insights and business heath via detailed reports with charts and tables.

Advanced Reporting in Business Intelligence

Powered by Magento 2 Business Intelligence, Advanced Reporting is a cloud-based service that specifically:

• Provide you with a suite of beneficial reports based on your data about products, orders, and customers

• Magento users will get a highly personalized dashboard tailored to their needs with a straightforward and intuitive interface

The best thing about Advanced Reporting is that it’s accessible to both Magento Commerce and Open source customers.

Though Advanced Reporting uses Magneto Business Intelligence (MBI) to analyze data, you won’t need to have a Commerce Reporting account to use it. But the MBI does require it which’s a different topic that we won’t cover in this post.

Furthermore, Magento Advanced Reporting service will be provided through the integration of Magento easily with the Adobe Commerce Reporting.

Who can use Magento 2 Advanced Reporting and Requirements?

As mentioned above, Magento 2 Advanced Reporting comes with no charge to use. And it’s available for only Magento installation (quite obviously).

Still, there are some prerequisites you should be aware of in order to use Advanced Reporting for your Magento stores, particularly:

• The need to run on a public web service

• Get for your domain valid security (SSL) certificate

• Make sure your Magento store has been installed or upgraded with no error

• Most importantly, Advanced Reporting is available to only the Magento installations that have used a single base currency since the installation time. If you have orders processed with different base currencies, it won’t work

• In the Magento configuration, your settings for the Base URL are correct. It means that the store view needs to point to the secure URL. Plus, remember to set Use Secure URLs on the storefront and Use Secure URLs in Admin = Yes

• The Magneto crontab is created successfully at the store’s backend, and there’s nothing wrong with cron jobs on the installed server

Note: It can take you a day for Advanced Reporting to collect and analyze data.

One recommended solution is to set a preferable time of a day for data collection. This action can help you avoid system overload during its prime time.

How to use Magento 2 Advanced Reporting

Step 1: Activate the Advanced Reporting from the store’s backend

• Go to your Magento store’s backend, then navigate to Stores > Settings > Configuration

• Expand the General section and tap on the Advanced Reporting

In this area, you need to configure some settings for the Magento Advanced Reporting, including:

• Set Advanced Reporting Service = Enable (Default setting)

• Time of day to send data: Here, you can set the specific time (hour/ minute/ second) that the Advanced Reporting receives your store’s updated data. By default, this field is set up at 2:00 Am

• Industry Data: Select your industry in the drop-down list so that the analytics of Advanced Reporting can be more personalized

• Finally, click on the Save Config button when you’re done

Don’t forget to check your subscription’s status and ensure that your installation meets all the conditions.

Step 2: Access Advanced Reporting from the Admin Panel

Now, you have completed the step that allows Magento Advanced Reporting to collect and analyze your store’s data. It’s time to see the results.

To see the Magento 2 Advanced Reporting dashboard, go to Reports > Business Intelligence > Advanced Reporting. The dashboard of Advanced Reporting comes with 3 primary tabs:

• Orders: Offer 12 different types of reports, from Revenue, AOV to Tax and Shipping fees

• Customers: Coms with 4 reports on Unique Customers, New Registered Accounts, Top Coupon Users, and Customer KPI Table

• Products: Display 4 product reports including Quantity of Product Sold, Products Added to Wishlists, Best Selling Products by Quantity and by Revenue

You just need to click on the wanted tab and scroll down to see its full report. Magento provides its users with the Filters feature placed in the upper-right corner to better view the data. It allows you to set the wanted period and even the store view to include in the report.

Access Data resources from the Advanced Reporting dashboard

While viewing all dashboard reports from the store’s backend, Magento enables users to get quick access to the Magento Data Resources. This is where you can get helpful information through 3 main sections:

• Thought Leadership

• Support

• Magento Business Intelligence

To access Data Resources, just click on the Additional Resources in the upper-right corner of the Advanced Reporting dashboard.

Scale up your business with Magento 2 Reports extension

It’s undoubtedly that the Advanced Reporting of Magento does come with great advantages. Merchants helpful information about their stores’ performance through detailed reports on customers, products, and orders.

However, in terms of advanced statistical analysis, the Advanced Reporting by default seems not to be comprehensive and user-friendly enough. Thus, it would be best if you had an extension specializing in-store analytics like this Magento 2 Reports extension by Mageplaza.

Outstanding features which make it a go-to analytics module for Magento 2:

• More advanced reports that the Advanced Reporting service doesn’t have, such as Sales Report By Location, Report Customer Rate, Conversion Funnel, and so forth

• Most of the reports are represented in chart forms which helps store owners to track and read all the statistic data easily

• Offer a more robust filter. Users get various filter options for different types of reports

• Store admins can customize dashboard layouts to fit their needs. And you can even save multiple layouts to use at a different time and for various marketing purposes

The bottom line!

You might have heard this a lot - Still, personalization and data-driven strategy are 2 determining factors for a business’s success. Especially when the digital world is your main playground, reports and analytics are more vital than ever.

That’s why tracking each period of your business development for optimization is the most effective way to become a market leader.

Don’t hesitate to invest your money in a robust Magento 2 Reports extension that helps you leverage data power to succeed in both the online and offline world.