Shopify Analytics / New feature

With bubble maps,
see at a glance where your sales come from

Shipping and billing addresses that are close together are grouped into bubbles and shown on a map, sized by order count or total sales. You can see where sales are concentrated without grouping by city or exporting to a spreadsheet.

On this page
  1. What's changing (in 30 seconds)
  2. How it works: from addresses to bubbles
  3. What you can do on the map
  4. Traditional regional analysis vs. bubble maps
  5. Availability and requirements
  6. Getting started (two entry points)
  7. 5 key points for developers
  8. 3 business use cases
  9. One-line summary for proposals

1What's changing

Previously, to find out which regions were driving sales, you had to group reports by city or region, or export them to a spreadsheet and process the data yourself.
With bubble maps,you can see sales concentration directly in Shopify Analytics as bubble sizes on a map.

Before: aggregate and export tables

Read tables grouped by city or region, or export to a spreadsheet and build your own visualization. Geographic clusters are hard to grasp intuitively.

Bubble maps: see it on a map

Nearby addresses are grouped into bubbles sized by the metric. Zoom, pan, and click to see more detail.

2How it works: from addresses to bubbles

Order addresses Shipping address Billing address Choose one Group nearby addresses Grouping Size by metric Orders Total sales or another selected metric Bubbles on the map Larger = more concentrated
How close addresses must be to be grouped(such as the grouping unit or distance threshold) are not described in the article. The available metrics are described only as "orders, total sales, and more"; the full list isn't given.

3What you can do on the map

Zoom
Zoom in and out on regions
Pan
Drag to move around the map
Click a bubble
See that area in more detail
According to the article, you can use the trends you find to decide where to stock inventory, where to ship from, and which regions to focus marketing on .

4Traditional regional analysis vs. bubble maps

ItemTraditionalBubble maps
Regional aggregation Manual Group reports by city or region Automatic Nearby addresses are automatically grouped into bubbles
Visualization External Export to a spreadsheet and process it In Analytics Shown directly on the map
Seeing concentration Compare tables of numbers Bubble size makes it obvious at a glance
Drilling down Rebuild filters Zoom, pan, and click bubbles
Where it appears — Reports + dashboard cards

5Availability and requirements

Everyone with access to Analytics reports

Available to "everyone with access to Analytics reports." If you have permission, you can use it right away.

Reports and dashboard cards

Available not only within individual reports but also on Analytics dashboard cards.

It's mainly aimed at "merchants who ship orders." The article doesn't cover differences by plan, supported countries, map exporting, or API access.

6How to get started (two entry points)

1

Entry A: Open the new report

Open the new "Order hotspots by shipping location" report.

2

Entry B: Add an address to an existing report

Add "Shipping address" or "Billing address" to any report.

3

Explore on the map

Zoom, pan, and click bubbles to see where sales are concentrated.

Detailed instructions are available on the bubble map page in the Shopify Help Center (linked in the article).

75 key points for technical teams

Billing Shipping

1. The axis is "shipping" or "billing" address

Maps are built from one of two sources: Shipping address or Billing address. Choose by purpose: shipping address for logistics decisions, billing address for understanding where customers are located.

2. Can be added to existing reports

Beyond the dedicated report, adding an address dimension to any report turns it into a map view. Your existing, carefully built reports can be reused as-is.

3. Bubble size means different things depending on the metric

Bubble sizes can flip depending on whether you view by order count or total sales. Treat "regions with many orders" and "regions with high revenue" as separate insights.

API ?

4. No mention of APIs or exports

This was announced only as an Analytics feature in the Shopify admin. There is no information on exporting map data, retrieving it via API, or how the grouping logic works. If you integrate with an external BI tool, you'll still need to aggregate the data separately as before.

5. Dashboard cards enable "always-on monitoring"

Bubble maps are also available as dashboard cards.Instead of digging into reports each time to find regional skews, place them on your dashboard for day-to-day monitoringso they become part of your routine. Access follows the "Analytics reports" permission, so review your staff permission setup as well.

83 practical use cases

USE CASE 1

Reviewing inventory placement and fulfillment locations

Challenge
Even when orders cluster in regions far from your fulfillment locations, table-based summaries make this hard to notice, hiding opportunities to cut delivery times and costs.
Action
Use the "Order hotspots by shipping location" report to identify where shipping destinations are concentrated, and use it as input for deciding where to stock inventory and ship from.
Impact
Decisions to prioritize locations near high-sales regions become easier to justify with a map.
Technical note
Use Shipping address as the axis. View by both order count and total sales to compare volume-based and revenue-based patterns.
USE CASE 2

Designing region-targeted ads and promotions

Challenge
Targets for geo-targeted ads and region-limited campaigns are chosen by intuition or rough prefecture-level summaries.
Action
Add an address dimension to an existing sales report to turn it into a bubble map, zoom in to pinpoint concentrated areas, then design campaigns around those priority regions.
Impact
You can present clients with map-backed decisions on whether to grow strong regions or develop weaker ones.
Technical note
Decide whether to view by shipping address or billing address based on the campaign's goal, and keep the same display settings when comparing before and after the campaign.
USE CASE 3

Eliminate the export-and-reformat step from recurring reports

Challenge
For every monthly report, the team exports order data to a spreadsheet and builds regional charts by hand.
Approach
Add the bubble map as a dashboard card, and share that screen in regular meetings to review regional trends.
Impact
Cuts the time spent exporting and reformatting data, and keeps regional analysis entirely within the Shopify admin.
Technical notes
Viewing requires access to Analytics reports. Export support isn't mentioned, so confirm how you'll turn the map into report materials beforehand.

9One-line summary for proposals

"A new feature that plots shipping and billing addresses as bubbles on a map, so you can see at a glance where sales are concentrated.
No export needed, can be added to existing reports, and works on the dashboard too.
Gives you immediate input for decisions on inventory placement, fulfillment locations, and regional marketing."