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Items Purchased

How many units of a product sold, not how many orders contained it.

60 second readAppears on: Products

What it means

Items Purchased is the number of units purchased across all purchase events in the period. Units, not orders: one order containing 3 of the same item adds 3. It's GA4's count, taken from what the site's tracking recorded at checkout, and it sits beside Item Revenue on every row of the Products table as the volume half of the pair.

Show the math

Formula and a worked example

Nothing is divided. The count rises by the quantity on each item in each purchase event, so a single order can add several units to one row and several rows at once.

Worked example. Ten orders each contain 2 candles and 1 holder. The candle row reads 20 and the holder row reads 10 — from the same 10 orders. If the candles show €600 of Item Revenue, the unit price is 600 ÷ 20 = €30, which is what the app puts in the next column.

Because it counts units, it moves when a multipack replaces a single, or when a bundle is split into its parts. Neither of those is a change in demand, and both look like one here.

It answers the question

How many of this actually went out the door? Revenue moves whenever price moves; units only move when people buy more or fewer.

Why it matters

It's the cleanest demand signal on the Products table. A month where revenue held and units fell is a price rise; one where revenue held and units rose is a discount. Neither shows up in the revenue column at all, and both change what you'd do next.

It's also the denominator that makes the rest of the row readable — Item RevenueItem RevenueItem Revenue: the total revenue from items only, excluding tax and shipping divided by units is the average unit price the app displays alongside. Read down that column and the products whose price has quietly drifted stand out in one pass.

What good looks like

There's no benchmark for a raw count — it scales with your traffic, your catalogue and how many units a typical order holds. Judge each row against its own last 30 days, and against Items ViewedItems ViewedItems Viewed: the number of times item details were viewed on the same row: units flat while views climb means you're paying for attention that isn't converting into anything. Whole-catalogue totals are less useful here than single rows, because a change of pack size moves the total without moving demand.

How to improve it

LeverWhat you doExpectHow longWatch out for
Fast
Preselect the multipack
Make the larger pack the default choice on the product page instead of the singleUnits per order rise1–2 weeksIf the multipack is priced below the per-unit single, units rise while Item Revenue stays flat — and a stocked-up customer comes back later than one who bought a single.
Fast
Put the product where it gets seen
Move it into the first row of the collection page and into the next emailViews up, units up behind them3–5 daysShelf space is finite. Everything you promote past has fewer views that week, and the products you keep demoting never build a history worth promoting.
Slow
Fix the variant that keeps selling out
Set reorder points from unit velocity on the size or colour that empties firstThe units you were losing to stockouts return1 quarterDeeper cover ties up cash and raises the risk of marking that stock down at the end of the season, which takes back some of the revenue the units earned.
Slow
Work on the page with the weak cart rate
Rewrite images, sizing and delivery detail on the product with high views and low addsMore of the same traffic converts into units1 quarterPage work competes with everything else on the roadmap, and a better page can lift units without lifting revenue when the wins land on your cheapest variant.

Every lever costs something somewhere. The last column is the one to read twice.

Read it with

Units are what you sold; views are how many chances you had. The gap between them is where the work is.

Items Purchased and Items Viewed, product by product on the Products table
Items Viewed up
Items Viewed down
Items Purchased up

Attention turning into units

More people looking and more of them buying. The page and the traffic agree, which is the combination worth funding.

Check stock cover, then send it more traffic.

Views that don't sell

You bought attention the page can't use. Broader targeting reaching the wrong people looks exactly like a page problem from this column.

Check where the new views came from before rewriting the page.
Items Purchased down

Quiet but persuasive

Few people find it and most who do buy it. The page already works, so traffic is the only thing missing — the cheapest growth on this table.

Give it more shelf space in collections and email.

Neither found nor wanted

Both halves down. Before writing it off, confirm the events still fire on this template — a product that stopped reporting looks identical to one that stopped selling.

Decide whether to fix it or stop stocking it.
Items Purchased + Item RevenueItem RevenueItem Revenue: the total revenue from items only, excluding tax and shipping

Units against euros, and the ratio between them is your average unit price. It's the pair that catches the quiet failures: 20% more units for the same revenue is a 17% price cut, and you'd never find it in either column on its own.

Items Purchased + Cart To View RateCart To View RateSee the full entry.

The middle of the funnel against the end of it. A strong cart rate with weak units means shoppers add and don't finish, so the loss is at checkout rather than on the product page — and that's a completely different afternoon's work.

Common misreads

“Items Purchased is my order count.”

It counts units. One order with 3 of the same item adds 3, so this figure runs above your order count and won't reconcile with it. Read TransactionsTransactionsPair with sessions to sanity-check conversion and spot tracking gaps. when you want orders.

“Units are down, so demand is down.”

Check whether the variant structure changed. Merging two singles into one multipack halves the unit count on exactly the same demand, and nothing in the column tells you it happened.

“This is what we shipped.”

It's what the site's tracking recorded at checkout, not what left the warehouse. Cancellations, failed payments and any order the tracking missed all pull the two apart.

Also called

Units sold · quantity purchased · item quantity

See yoursUnits sold per product for the period, beside Item Revenue, unit price and the view-to-purchase rates.

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