Most store owners know exactly what they want to sell this month. The trouble is that the goal usually sits in a spreadsheet or a notebook, and the real numbers sit somewhere else. Lining the two up takes extra clicks and a bit of guesswork, and by the time you’ve done it, half the month is gone.
Shopify now addresses this with Create target, a feature inside Shopify Analytics. You pick a business metric, set a goal, and see how your store is doing against it without leaving your dashboard. At TMS, we think it’s a handy update for anyone who wants to run a store with clear numbers in mind. Here’s how it works and how to use it effectively.
What Is Create Target?
Create target is a goal-setting tool inside Shopify’s reports. Instead of only looking back at what happened, you decide ahead of time what a good result looks like, and Shopify shows your live performance next to that goal.
The real benefit is focus. Analytics pages are crowded with charts, and it’s easy to stare at all of them and learn nothing. A target gives you one number to care about, and you can tell at a glance whether you’re ahead, on pace, or behind.
What Can You Set a Target For?
You can set targets for the metrics that drive a store day to day. Gross sales is where most people begin. You choose a revenue goal for a month or a quarter and watch your progress. If you care more about volume than revenue, you can target the number of orders.
Conversion rate is another choice, and it’s a useful one. It tells you how many visitors actually buy, so a target here keeps your eyes on product pages, checkout, and the overall shopping experience instead of traffic alone. You can also set a target for sessions, which helps when you’re running a campaign to bring more people to the site and want to know if it’s working.
There’s an optional filter too. You can narrow a target to one product or one sales channel. That’s handy if you’ve just launched something new or you’re trying to grow a single channel without losing track of the rest.
How to Create a Target
It takes just a few minutes. Open your Shopify admin and head to Analytics, then click Create target. Choose the metric you want to follow, whether that’s gross sales, orders, conversion rate, or sessions. Enter the amount you’re aiming for and the time period, such as a month or a quarter, and save it. You can add the target to your dashboard as well, and we’d suggest doing that. A goal you see every day tends to influence your choices. One hidden in a report usually doesn’t.
Once it’s saved, Shopify shows a target gauge by default. It displays your current value, the percentage of your target achieved, and the number of days remaining. The gauge is only the starting view, and you can change it whenever you like. Open the Visualization menu on the right side of the report and you’ll find other options, including Display metric, Display table, Donut, Breakdown bar and List by dimension. The metric view is useful when you want one clean number you can read at a glance. The table view suits you better when you want to look at individual data points, compare several metrics across different dimensions, or export detailed order data for accounting. Try a couple of them and keep the one that makes your progress easiest to read.
The three together tell the real story. Being 40 percent of the way toward your target means little by itself, but reaching only 40 percent when just a quarter of the period remains tells you it’s time to act.
Why Targets Are Worth Setting
A target changes how you read your numbers. Say you took 300 orders this month. Without a goal, that’s just a figure. With a target, it becomes either good news or a warning sign. You stop looking backward and start steering.
It also helps a team stay on the same page. When everyone can see the same gauge, There’s less disagreement about which numbers are accurate. Your marketing person can watch the sessions target, and whoever handles products can follow the sales goal for their collection. The conversation shifts to how to close the gap.
Then there’s the early warning. Because the gauge shows days remaining, you don’t have to wait until the month ends to find out you missed. If you’re behind at the halfway mark, there’s still time to run a promotion, tweak your ads, send an email, or fix a weak landing page.
Tips for Setting Better Targets
Set ambitious but realistic targets. Check how your store has done over the last few months, then set a goal a little above that. If it’s too easy, you learn nothing. If it’s out of reach, people stop paying attention to it.
Don’t start with everything at once. Many merchants begin with gross sales and add conversion rate later, once they’re comfortable with the tool. Fewer targets means each one gets proper attention.
Use filters with some thought. A store-wide sales target shows whether the business is healthy overall, while a product or channel filter shows whether one specific push is paying off. Having both gives you a better picture than either alone.
Review your performance when the period ends. Seasons, launches, and ad changes all affect what’s realistic. See how you did, take the lesson, and set the next target with that in mind.
Get More Out of Your Shopify Store With TMS
A feature like this works best as part of a broader strategy , with the right store setup, proper tracking, and steady improvements over time. If you want help choosing which metrics to follow or building a growth plan around them, The TMS team would be happy to help.
Official guide: Setting targets for metrics in Shopify reports.