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Metrics type: Supporting Metrics • Category: Ecommerce Platform
Composite of refund rate, fulfillment rate, OOS count, and 30D revenue trend. The single number a store-owner glances at.

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At a glance

A composite 0-100 score blending refund rate, fulfillment rate, OOS count, and 30D revenue trend. The single number a store-owner glances at on Monday morning to know whether to celebrate, investigate, or fix.

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Calculation

Calculated automatically from your Shopify data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

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Worked example

A UK lifestyle brand on Shopify Plus. Snapshot 12 May 26. Six things to notice:
  1. 82 is healthy. The default thresholds: ≥85 excellent, 70-84 healthy, 60-69 watching, <60 problem. Most well-run stores hover 75-85 most of the time.
  2. The score hides bad news. A score of 82 with one component at 60 and three at 90 is meaningfully different from four components at 82. Always drill into the components, especially when the score moves more than 5 points week-over-week.
  3. A drop in any one component below 60 should prompt drill-down. Even if the composite stays >70, an outlier component is a fire. Set alerts on each component individually for resilience.
  4. The weights are configurable. A logistics-heavy DTC brand might prefer 40% fulfillment, 30% refunds, 20% revenue, 10% OOS. A growth-stage brand might prefer 50% revenue, 25% refunds, 15% fulfillment, 10% OOS. Tune in Nerve Centre → Health Score Weights.
  5. The score is RT. Components refresh on their native cadences (5-min for OOS, hourly for refunds, daily for fulfillment, hourly for revenue). The composite recalculates whenever any component updates.
  6. The score doesn’t replace the components. It surfaces “is something wrong?” but never “what’s wrong?”. Always click through to the breakdown.

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Sibling cards merchants should reference together

The Health Score is the composite. The four components and their families:

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Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look in Shopify Admin: Shopify doesn’t expose a composite store-health score; the closest is the Home dashboard with separate tiles for sales, orders to fulfil, inventory alerts. Reconstruct manually by reviewing each component report. Apps that produce composite-style health scores:
  • Glew, Polar Analytics: produce their own dashboard health scores; methodology differs.
  • Shopify’s “Sales over time” with multiple tiles: assemble manually.
Why our number may legitimately differ from app-based health scores: Cross-connector reconciliation:

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Known limitations / merchant FAQs

My score dropped from 85 to 70 overnight. What happened? A composite drop of 15 points usually means one component went sharply south. Drill into the four components:
  1. Revenue trend dropped: check Revenue Over Time. Real revenue dip or sync issue?
  2. Fulfillment rate dropped: check Fulfillment Rate. Stockouts, 3PL, or warehouse issue?
  3. Refund rate rose: check Refund Rate. Quality, sizing, or fraud event?
  4. OOS count rose: check Products with Zero/Negative Stock. Sync glitch or real depletion?
Why is my score consistently below 70? Three usual causes:
  1. Naturally high refund / low fulfillment category: clothing brands with 25%+ refund rates score lower on the default refund weighting. Re-tune weights.
  2. Persistent stockout pattern: chronic under-stocking. Address with safety-stock policy.
  3. Stagnant revenue: flat or declining trend penalises the score. Evaluate growth strategy.
Can I customise the score? Yes:
  • Weights: in Nerve Centre → Health Score Weights. Change which component matters most.
  • Component swap: replace OOS with a different component (cancellation rate, NPS, etc) on roadmap.
  • Threshold: alert level <70 default; lower to <65 for more-tolerant brands or raise to <80 for stricter monitoring.
Why doesn’t the score include conversion rate? Conversion rate isn’t reliably available from Shopify webhooks (requires session-level data from GA4 or similar). Future versions will incorporate when CR connector is integrated. Should I obsess over the score? No. The score is a glance-tool. The components are the actionable diagnostics. A score going from 82 to 81 isn’t a story; a single component going from 90 to 60 is. Focus on the components. My subscription store, does the score behave differently? Subscription-heavy stores typically score higher because:
  • Revenue trend is more stable (recurring billing absorbs noise).
  • Fulfillment rate is higher (subscription fulfilment is operationally smoother).
  • Refund rate is lower (subscribers pre-committed).
This isn’t a flaw; subscription brands are operationally healthier on these dimensions. My multi-store setup, do scores aggregate? Each store has its own score; not aggregated across stores. On the cross-store roadmap. For now, monitor each store individually; if you have 3 stores at 75/80/65, the 65 deserves attention. Action playbook for using the Health Score:
  1. Daily: glance at the score. If unchanged, move on. If down >5 points week-over-week, drill in.
  2. Weekly: review all four components even if score is stable. A balanced 80 may hide a 60-component on the verge of breakdown.
  3. Monthly: review weights. Are they still relevant to your business priorities?
  4. Quarterly: review threshold. Is <70 still the right alert level?
  5. For team-wide alignment: use the score as a shared north star. Operations, marketing, finance all see the same number; conversations get aligned.

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Store Health Score is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Shopify and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.