OpenSearch sum(totalIncTax) GROUP BY channel_id. Surfaces channel concentration risk + which channel is paying its rent.
At a glance
Revenue split across BigCommerce channel_id values for the period, shown as both absolute dollars and percent-of-total. Surfaces channel concentration risk (which marketplace is “paying the rent” and which is failing to scale) and tells you when a new channel has graduated from “experiment” to “material to the business”.
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your BigCommerce data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A US homewares brand on BigCommerce Enterprise. The 30-day window covers 14 Mar 26 to 12 Apr 26.
What’s interesting:
- Web concentration is 75.4%, healthy band. Single-channel concentration above 80% is fragile (one CMS / theme / hosting issue takes the whole business down); below 60% means marketplace dependency may have crept in. The 75% web / 25% diversified split is where most multi-channel BC stores aim to land.
- Amazon grew +24.2% vsP, this is the “graduating channel” pattern. Three months ago Amazon was 4% of revenue; today it’s 11.7%. Once a channel crosses 10% it deserves named attention (a dedicated weekly review, a per-channel inventory-buffer rule, a contingency plan for channel disruption). BC Channel Revenue Trend shows the trajectory.
- Facebook Shop is shrinking (-8% vsP, only 1.1% of revenue). The decision: invest to grow it, or accept it as a low-priority channel and stop allocating attention. Don’t leave shrinking marketplace channels in zombie state; they consume operational overhead (inventory sync, support tickets, returns) without revenue justification.
- POS at 2.1% is small but real. A single physical retail location bringing in ~$10k/month is meaningful. The decision pivots on whether the location justifies its rent / staff cost, the revenue alone doesn’t tell you that.
- Phantom revenue is 9.7% of headline. Almost all on web. The headline 45k, see BC Total Revenue FAQ for the phantom-revenue context.
- Watch the deltas, not just the levels. A channel growing from 1% to 10% over 90 days is the signal worth acting on; a channel sitting flat at 60% rarely needs a strategic conversation.
- Set thresholds for “graduated” channels. When a channel crosses 10% of revenue, give it dedicated weekly review attention. When it crosses 25%, treat it as a primary business risk.
- Pair with BC Channel AOV to understand whether a growing channel is bringing volume or higher-value orders. Amazon often shows higher AOV than web due to bulk-buyer traffic.
- Use BC Channel Currency Mix to understand whether a “channel” growth signal is actually a “currency / region” signal in disguise.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in BigCommerce Control Panel: Channel Manager lists channels and IDs. Analytics → Sales on Plus and Enterprise tiers offers a Sales by channel view that approximates this card; the figures should match within ±2% (BC excludes Cancelled / Declined / Incomplete by default). Other BC views that look adjacent:- Settings → Channels: lists configured channels but no revenue.
- Reports → Channel performance (Plus / Pro): partial overlap, often lags by 24h.
- Insights → Customer behaviour: tracks behaviour, not revenue, by channel.
Cross-connector reconciliation:
The BC
channel_id field is unique to BC’s data model. Shopify uses sourceName (string) and Adobe Commerce uses store_id plus a separate channel taxonomy. Per-channel revenue cards exist on both platforms with different field shapes.
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
One channel is 65% of my revenue, is that risky? Yes, materially. Concentration above 60% means a single point of failure (Amazon suspension, Meta policy change, marketplace fee hike, BC theme issue on web) can disrupt most of the business overnight. Diversification is the answer, but it’s a 6-12 month project: identify the next-best growth channel, allocate dedicated marketing spend, accept that the second channel will be small for the first 6 months. Concentration risk doesn’t show up until it does. A new Channel Manager integration shows zero revenue, did I configure it wrong? Possibly. Common causes: (1) the integration is connected but listings haven’t been published to the marketplace yet (Channel Manager → Listings status), (2) the marketplace requires approval before traffic flows (Amazon for some categories, Walmart in general), (3) the sync is paused (Channel Manager → Sync status). Check each in turn. Brand-new channels can take 2-6 weeks to start producing revenue even when configured correctly. My web channel (channel_id = 1) keeps shrinking as a percentage, is that bad?
Not necessarily. If marketplace channels are growing while web stays flat, web’s percentage shrinks but its absolute revenue is fine. Watch the absolute figure on web: if it’s flat or growing, you’re successfully diversifying; if it’s falling in absolute terms, web is genuinely losing share to marketplaces and you should investigate the cause (SEO loss, brand erosion, paid-traffic efficiency drop).
Why does my POS channel show small revenue but disproportionate operational cost?
Physical retail carries fixed costs (rent, staff, hardware) that don’t scale down with revenue. A POS channel at 2-5% of revenue but 15-20% of operational cost is normal for stores with retail locations. The decision is whether the store presence has strategic value beyond the immediate revenue (brand presence, fulfilment hub, customer-experience anchor) or whether it should be closed.
Should I include phantom revenue (Incomplete + Declined) in this card?
The card includes them by default, matching BC Total Revenue semantics. The phantom-revenue impact is concentrated in channel_id = 1 (web); marketplace channels barely have phantom revenue because they pre-authorise payment. If you want a “real cash collected per channel” view, subtract per-channel failed value (use BC Failures by Channel ID for the count and per-channel AOV math for the dollar approximation).
My multi-currency Amazon channels (UK, US, EU, AU) all show under one channel ID, why?
Channel Manager assigns one ID per integration instance. If you set up Amazon UK separately from Amazon US in the BC admin, they get different IDs; if you connected a single Amazon Seller Account with multiple regional sites, they may share an ID and rely on currencyCode to distinguish. Check Channel Manager → Connected channels for the actual configuration; the right pattern is one Channel Manager instance per regional Amazon account.
Can I split Stencil web traffic by storefront (multi-storefront on Enterprise)?
Yes, BC Enterprise multi-storefront uses separate channel_id values for each storefront (typically 1, 2, 3 etc. depending on store creation order). Each storefront-channel produces its own row in this card. Don’t confuse multi-storefront channel_id with Channel Manager channel_id, BC overloads the field.
The vsP delta on a channel looks dramatic, should I act on it?
Look at absolute revenue first. A +200% delta on a channel that grew from 1,500 is operationally trivial; a +25% delta on a channel that grew from 50k is meaningful. Filter by absolute revenue thresholds before reading deltas, the percent change without the dollar context misleads.
My alternative-payment-method channel (BNPL, crypto) shows tiny revenue, do I keep it?
Depends on whether the alternative-method customers would have purchased without it. If your BNPL channel is at 3% of revenue but those customers have higher AOV than card-only customers, the surface is additive not just substitutive. If the AOV is the same, the BNPL surface is mostly just shifting payment timing without growing the pie. Cross-reference BC Channel AOV before deciding.
Why does my channel mix change so much month to month?
Marketplace seasonality, paid-ads timing, and inventory availability all move share dramatically across months. Black Friday massively spikes web; Q1 typically spikes Amazon (gifting); summer often spikes physical retail. Compare same-month vs same-month last year, not month-to-month, for stable trend reads.