Campaign launches, landing page releases, supplier changes, pop-up openings — "what happened when" now appears as markers on the chart. For annotations added by apps, you also see which app added them (app name and logo). The report figures themselves do not change at all.
You could tell that "sales spiked on 7/12," butwhy it spikedlived outside the chart. You had to dig through spreadsheets or your memory of Slack threads to piece it together.
Annotations such as campaign launches, landing page releases, and supplier changes line up on the same chart.You can read metric changes and events on the same screen. For app-added annotations, the source (app name and logo) is shown too.
Examples listed in the article. The key point is that you can mark a date range, not just a specific date.
The metrics the article lists as "analytics data you can compare against annotations." It covers not just sales, but returns and fulfillment performance as well, which is what makes it useful in practice.
Overlay a date-range annotation on the sales curve.
Compare before and after the launch date.
Cross-check against fulfillment metrics.
This is the main point of this update. When an app adds an annotation, the Shopify admin displays that app's name and logo. Anyone reading the report can tell where the context came from.
The annotation label carries the app's name and logo. Even in an environment where several apps are posting annotations at once, you can tell the sources apart.
In the article's words, it "helps you understand where that context came from when you look back at a report." The design keeps annotations of unknown origin out of the mix.
| Item | What this article states | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Show event markers on a chart | Annotations can be shown on a specific date or a date range | Yes |
| Identifying app-added annotations | Annotations added by an app show their source via the app's name and logo | Yes |
| Cross-referencing multiple metrics | Sales / sessions / CVR / AOV / units sold / returns / fulfillment performance | Yes |
| Change the numbers in a report | Explicitly states that "annotations don't change report data" | does not |
| prove causation | "helps you understand whatmight haveinfluenced a metric" — it goes as far as adding context, and | does not |
| Eligible plans / countries | Not mentioned | Not documented |
| Steps to add an annotation manually | No steps are given in this post (see the help doc "Annotations in Shopify reports" for details) | Not documented |
| API / GraphQL / Webhook specs | Not mentioned | Not documented |
| List of supported apps | Not mentioned (only the phrase "when an app adds an annotation") | Not documented |
| Which reports / charts are covered | Only "your analytics charts." No individual report names are specified. | Not documented |
The post states explicitly that "annotations don't change your report data." There's no need to worry about impact on existing aggregation, exports, or BI integrations.an overlay laid on top of the visualization— that's the right way to think about it.
a specific date or date range is what the post says. One-off events like a launch and ongoing ones like a sale period or a pop-up shop can be handled with the same mechanism.
The app's name and logo are displayed.Who the claim comes fromis guaranteed in the UI, so even when multiple apps post annotations you can separate noise from useful signal.
This post is an announcement that they now show up.how an app registers them (Admin API / GraphQL / scopes) isn't documented. If you want to push annotations from your own app, you'll need to check the developer documentation separately.
The article consistently uses the phrasing "what might have influenced your metrics." Annotations only line up "this happened around this time" — they don't calculate how much each thing contributed.Designing the measurement (comparison windows, seasonality, overlap with other initiatives) remains a human responsibility. When you carry them into an analytics report, spell out that an annotation is a hypothesis, and you'll avoid arguments later.