How to Use Your Shopee, Lazada, and GA4 Data to Grow Ecommerce Revenue
Most ecommerce brands in Southeast Asia are sitting on a goldmine of data and doing absolutely nothing with it. Not because they don't care — but because nobody ever showed them what to look at, or what it means.
This guide will change that. Whether you sell on Shopee, Lazada, Shopify, or all three, here is how to use your data to make better decisions and grow your revenue.
The first problem: you don't own your data
If you sell on Shopee or Lazada, your sales data lives inside the platform. The moment you stop selling there, you lose access to your history. More importantly, most sellers never export that data at all — which means they are making decisions based on memory and gut feeling instead of facts.
The first step is simple: export your data regularly and put it in a spreadsheet you control. Shopee and Lazada both allow you to download sales reports, product performance data, and ad campaign data. Do this monthly. Once you own the data, you can start asking the right questions.
The three questions every brand should be able to answer
Before you look at any dashboard, you need to be able to answer these three questions:
1. Where is my traffic coming from? This tells you whether people are finding you through the platform's search, your paid ads, promotions, or external sources like TikTok or Instagram. If you cannot answer this, you are flying blind on marketing spend.
2. What is my conversion rate, and what is causing it to drop? Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who actually buy. On Shopee and Lazada, this is calculated as orders divided by clicks. A healthy conversion rate for most categories is between 2% and 5%. If yours is lower, the problem is usually one of three things: the product title does not match what people searched for, the images are not building enough trust, or the price is not competitive.
3. Are my promotions actually making money?
This is the big one. And most brands get it completely wrong.
The promotion trap — and why it costs you more than you think
Here is what happens at almost every Shopee or Lazada store I audit. The seller has a person managing the account — often someone junior, sometimes a freelancer. That person joins every promotion the platform recommends, enables free shipping on all products, and accepts every platform voucher because it seems like the right thing to do.
What they do not realise is that free shipping on Shopee and Lazada is not free. It typically costs the seller an additional 5% commission. Every platform voucher, coupon, and cashback offer comes out of your margin. The platform does not pay for it — you do.
When I sit down with a brand and open their dashboard together, the moment they see the full picture is always the same. They look at how many of their orders came through promotions, what each promotion cost them, and what their actual margin per order was after all the deductions. For many brands, they discover they have been selling at a loss during their busiest promotional periods without knowing it.
The fix is not to stop using promotions — it is to choose them deliberately. Ask these questions before joining any campaign: Which products have margin to absorb a discount? Which promotions historically drive my highest-converting traffic? Am I joining this because the platform recommended it, or because the data supports it?
How to read your Shopee and Lazada analytics
Both platforms give you access to a Business Insights or Data Centre section in your seller dashboard. Here is what to focus on:
Traffic metrics — Product visitors, product views, and shop visits tell you how many people are finding your products and whether they are curious enough to look around your store. Sort these from high to low and compare them against your sales. If a product has high traffic but low sales, you have a conversion problem — usually the images, title, or price. If a product has high conversion but low traffic, you have a discoverability problem — usually a keyword issue in the title.
Conversion rate — This is the most important metric in your store. A high add-to-cart rate combined with a low purchase rate tells you that people want the product but something stops them at checkout — often the shipping cost, a lack of vouchers, or uncertainty about the product. A low add-to-cart rate tells you the product page itself is not convincing enough.
Ad performance — If you are running Sponsored Solutions on Lazada or Shopee Ads, look at your ROAS (return on ad spend) and your cost per click. A ROAS of 5 or higher generally means your campaign is working. Below 3, you need to review which products you are advertising and whether those products have the reviews and conversion rate to justify the spend. Lazada distinguishes between "Direct Guided" sales (directly from your ad click) and "Guided" sales (indirect influence). Both matter, but direct guided is the cleaner signal.
Promotion performance — Export your promotions data and look at which promotions drove the most orders versus which ones simply gave away margin. The answer often surprises sellers.
How to read GA4 if you sell on Shopify
If you run a Shopify store and have Google Analytics 4 connected, your most important reports are different from the marketplace dashboards — but the logic is the same.
Start with your acquisition report. This shows you which channels are sending traffic: organic search, paid search, social media, direct, and email. Most Shopify brands in Singapore discover that a large percentage of their traffic is direct — meaning people are typing the URL or coming from a bookmark. This sounds good but is actually a warning sign that your organic and paid acquisition is not working hard enough.
Next, look at your conversion funnel. In GA4, go to the Funnel Exploration report and build a simple funnel: sessions → product views → add to cart → purchase. Where do most people drop off? If the biggest drop is between product view and add to cart, your product pages need work. If the biggest drop is between add to cart and purchase, your checkout has friction — or your shipping cost is too high.
Finally, look at revenue by channel. This tells you which marketing activity is actually generating sales, not just traffic. A channel that sends a lot of traffic but very few purchases is costing you money without delivering results.
The metric most brands forget: average order value
Whether you are on Shopee, Lazada, or Shopify, average order value (AOV) is one of the fastest levers to pull. If you can increase the average amount each customer spends per visit by 10–15%, your revenue grows without needing any additional traffic.
The most effective ways to increase AOV are combo deals (buy two items together at a small discount), tiered vouchers (a larger discount kicks in at a higher spend threshold), and cross-selling related products at checkout. A practical rule: identify your current AOV, then set your minimum voucher spend at approximately 10% above it. This pushes customers to add one more item to qualify — without feeling forced.
What to do with your data every month
Set aside one hour at the end of each month to answer the following:
Which product had the highest traffic last month, and did it convert? If not, why? Which promotion drove the most orders, and what was the actual margin after platform fees? What is my conversion rate this month compared to last month — did it go up or down, and what changed? Which ad campaigns generated a ROAS above 5, and which ones are wasting budget?
These four questions, answered monthly, will do more for your revenue growth than any new marketing tool or platform feature.
The gap between data and action
Only 26% of businesses globally describe themselves as data-driven. In Southeast Asia, that number is lower still. Most brands have access to the same dashboards — the ones that grow are the ones that actually open them, understand what they are looking at, and make decisions accordingly.
If you have been managing your store by instinct, you are not alone. But the data is there, waiting for you to use it.
If you want to learn how to read your own store data in a structured way — whether you are on Shopee, Lazada, or Shopify — the iBoost Online 10-hour ecommerce data and planning course walks you through exactly this, with your own numbers. Learn more about the course here.
This article was written by Kelly Hezemans, founder of iBoost Online, based in Phuket, Thailand. Kelly has over 10 years of ecommerce experience across China and Southeast Asia, specialising in data-driven growth for brands on Shopify, Shopee, and Lazada.