Skip to main content

Product Intelligence & Merchandising Playbook

Standard Shopify analytics give you raw numbers—total product page views, orders, and units sold. But they fail to tell you why a product is succeeding, which products are being held back, or how products interact with each other in multi-item purchases.

ShopGuide's Product Intelligence correlates customer browsing behavior, add-to-cart actions, and final orders across your entire catalog. It automatically identifies hidden conversion heroes, warns you of at-risk products experiencing demand decay, and surfaces actionable merchandising combinations.

The Sales × Popularity Matrix​

Product Intelligence sorts your catalog into four buckets by comparing each product's sales and traffic with your shop median:

quadrantChart
    title Catalog Performance Matrix
    x-axis Low Traffic (Views) --> High Traffic (Views)
    y-axis Low Sales --> High Sales
    quadrant-1 "★ Stars (sales at or above median)"
    quadrant-2 "★ Stars (high sales, lower traffic)"
    quadrant-3 "🪨 Underexposed (low traffic, low sales)"
    quadrant-4 "💎 Hidden Gems (high traffic, low sales)"

At-Risk is a trend rule rather than a fixed quadrant: it applies to products with sales at or above the median whose traffic is dropping.

Click a bucket chip or a KPI card to filter the scorecard. A callout then shows that bucket's rule, definition and a recommended action.

1. Stars (★) — "Top Performers"​

  • Rule: Sales at or above the shop median and steady or growing traffic.
  • What they are: Your core revenue drivers. A high-converting product with modest traffic is also a Star if its sales are at or above the median.
  • Action: Protect visibility, maintain stock levels, and feature them in top collection spots and ad campaigns.

2. Hidden Gems (💎) — "High Interest, Low Conversion"​

  • Rule: Traffic at or above the shop median, with sales below the median.
  • What they are: Heavily browsed products that shoppers rarely buy.
  • Action: Inspect the product page for friction: pricing, imagery, customer reviews, or shipping disclosure.

3. At-Risk (⚠️) — "High Sales, Traffic Dropping"​

  • Rule: Sales at or above the shop median and traffic down 30% or more compared with the previous period (with at least 30 prior views).
  • What they are: Revenue generators whose visibility is falling. Sales may still look healthy, but the drop in traffic is an early warning.
  • Action: Check upstream traffic: ad spend, search rankings, collection placement, or navigation links.

4. Underexposed (🪨) — "Catalog Long Tail"​

  • Rule: Sales below the shop median and traffic below the median.
  • What they are: Products shoppers rarely discover, with few orders.
  • Action: Test featuring promising items in key collections or chat recommendations; consider bundling or pruning chronic non-performers.

Collections have their own buckets on the Intelligence tab, see Intelligence tab.

The Product Scorecard​

The Product Scorecard is sortable (click a column to re-rank) and can be filtered by bucket. Columns: Product, Bucket, Score, Views (or Exposed), Revenue, Sales, Popularity, Behavior and Demand.

  • Search by product name, handle or variant SKU (SKUs come from your synced catalog).
  • Filters for minimum and maximum revenue and for supplier (vendor).
  • Export CSV downloads everything matching your current filters, see Export & reporting.

The "Why is this in this bucket?" Reason Drawer​

Clicking a product row opens a drawer on the right titled "Why <status>". It lists the drivers behind the classification, with up and down arrows, plus a timeline. The drivers compare the product's view-to-cart and cart-to-order rates with your shop's own medians and show which stage is leaking.

Customer Journey Signals​

Below the scorecard, Customer Journey Signals shows which products start a relationship and which keep it going:

  • Gateway Products
  • Second Purchase Heroes
  • At-Risk Alerts

The tab also has KPI cards per bucket and a "Sales × Popularity Quadrant" scatter chart. The Intelligence tab shows a Product Intelligence card that points here.

The Merchandising Playbook​

Located on the Chat Impact tab (see Chat Impact), the Merchandising Playbook gives recommendations calculated from real order affinity and chat cohorts. Each tip is labelled with a type and a priority badge (High Impact, Worth Trying or Consider):

  • Proven Bundle
  • Bundle Opportunity
  • AI Discovery
  • Anchor Product
  • Hidden Hero
  • AOV Insight
  • Cart Booster

Tips can also include a "Promotion channels" block with suggestions on where to promote the product.

Catalog Modes: Traditional vs. Funnel & Subscription Stores​

Not all stores follow the "visit collection, view product page, add to cart" model. Tick Funnel / subscription catalog ("For box-builders and subscriptions: count add-to-cart sessions as exposure, and keep renewals out of conversion. Leave off for standard product pages.") to reveal two options:

  • Funnel exposure: counts unique sessions that viewed the page or added the product.
  • Split recurring orders: conversion uses the first purchase of the product; later orders stay in revenue.

When on, the scorecard and CSV add columns such as Exposed Sessions, Add to Cart Sessions, Acquisition Orders and Recurring Orders.

How to Use Product Intelligence Day-to-Day​

  1. Weekly Catalog Triage: Filter for Hidden Gems (heavily browsed, rarely bought) and review their pages for friction, then check At-Risk products for falling traffic.
  2. Diagnose High-Ad-Spend Landers: Search for products running paid Meta/Google ads. Check their bucket and the Why drawer before scaling ad spend.
  3. Merchandising & Cross-Sells: Use the Merchandising Playbook recommendations when setting up post-purchase upsells, checkout offers, or AI recommendation suggestions.