Graphed LogoGraphed
Login

How to Create an E-commerce Dashboard in Google Sheets with ChatGPT

Cody Schneider•

Building an e-commerce dashboard from scratch in Google Sheets can feel like a daunting task, but using ChatGPT as an assistant can dramatically speed up the process. Instead of spending hours searching for the right formula, you can simply describe what you need and get a working solution in seconds. This article will walk you through the entire process, from getting your data into the sheet to building dynamic charts and tables with AI assistance.

Why Use Google Sheets for an E-commerce Dashboard?

While purpose-built business intelligence tools are powerful, Google Sheets offers an unbeatable combination of flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and accessibility. It's part of an ecosystem you already use, making collaboration with your team seamless. For many small businesses and marketing teams, a well-built Google Sheet is the perfect first step away from scattered reports and toward a centralized source of truth without the heavy cost or steep learning curve of tools like Tableau or Power BI.

A Google Sheets dashboard helps you:

  • Consolidate KPIs: See revenue, orders, ad spend, and traffic all in one place.

  • Track trends: Visualize your performance over time to spot growth opportunities or potential issues.

  • Improve accessibility: Share a single link with your team, ensuring everyone is looking at the same data.

Step 1: Get Your E-commerce Data into Google Sheets

Before you can visualize anything, your data needs a home. Your goal is to move raw data from platforms like Shopify, Google Analytics, and Facebook Ads into Google Sheets. You have a few options, ranging from manual to fully automated.

The Manual Method: CSV Exports

The simplest way to start is by downloading CSV reports from your sales and marketing platforms and uploading them into separate tabs within a single Google Sheet. For example, you might have:

  • A Shopify Orders tab with all your order details.

  • A GA4 Traffic tab with website sessions by source/medium.

  • A Facebook Ads tab with campaign performance data.

This process is straightforward but tedious. It's the classic "download CSVs on Monday for the Tuesday meeting" routine that eats up valuable time and means your data is always slightly out of date. It's a great place to begin, but you’ll want to automate it as soon as possible.

The Automated Method: Connectors and Integrations

To keep your dashboard current without manual work, you can use tools that pipe data directly into Google Sheets automatically.

  • Google Sheets Add-ons: Tools like Supermetrics, Coefficient, and others connect directly to APIs from Shopify, Google Ads, and other platforms to pull data into your sheets on a set schedule.

  • Workflow Automation Tools: Platforms like Zapier or Make.com can be configured to add a new row to a Google Sheet every time a new order is placed in Shopify or a new lead comes through.

Regardless of the method, the best practice is to keep your raw data tabs separate from your dashboard visuals. Use one tab for the final report and other tabs as the data sources. This keeps your dashboard clean and your formulas easier to manage.

Step 2: Plan Your Dashboard Layout

With your data in place, resist the urge to start building immediately. First, take a few minutes to decide what you want to measure. A clear plan will save you a lot of time later.

Identify Your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

What are the most important metrics that drive your business? For most e-commerce stores, this includes a mix of sales, marketing, and customer metrics. Your list might include:

  • Total Revenue: The top-line health of your business.

  • Total Orders: The volume of transactions.

  • Average Order Value (AOV): How much customers spend per transaction.

  • Conversion Rate: The percentage of website visitors who make a purchase.

  • Top 5 Selling Products: Which items are driving the most revenue or sales volume.

  • Traffic by Source: Where your customers are coming from (e.g., Google Organic, Facebook Ads, Email).

  • Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): Are your advertising efforts profitable?

Sketch Your Layout

Now, sketch out a simple layout, either on paper or a blank sheet. A popular design includes:

  • Controls at the Top: Place a start date and end date selector at the very top so you can easily filter the entire dashboard.

  • KPI Cards: Below the date controls, create a row of "cards" displaying your most important single-number KPIs (Total Revenue, AOV, etc.).

  • Visualizations: Fill the rest of the space with charts and tables, like a line chart showing revenue over time or a pie chart showing traffic sources.

This structure provides a clean, at-a-glance overview of business performance.

Step 3: Use ChatGPT to Write Your Formulas

Here’s where the magic can happen. Instead of wrestling with VLOOKUP, SUMIFS, and QUERY, you can use ChatGPT as your on-call spreadsheet expert. The key is to be clear and descriptive in your prompts. Tell it what tab the data is on, which columns contain the relevant values, and what you want to calculate.

Example 1: Calculating a Basic KPI

Let's start with something simple: total revenue. Assume your Shopify data is on a tab named ShopifyData and order totals are in column G.

Your Prompt for ChatGPT:

"I have a Google Sheet with a tab named 'ShopifyData'. Column G contains the total price ('total_price') for each order. Write a formula to calculate the sum of all values in column G."

ChatGPT's Likely Response:

=SUM(ShopifyData!G:G)

Just copy and paste this into one of your KPI cards, and you’re done.

Example 2: Creating a Dynamic KPI with a Date Filter

Now, let's make that total revenue calculation dynamic based on the date range selectors you planned. Assume your order dates are in column B of ShopifyData, and your start and end dates are in cells B1 and C1 on your Dashboard tab.

Your Prompt for ChatGPT:

"Update the previous formula. On my 'Dashboard' tab, cell B1 is the start date and C1 is the end date. In my 'ShopifyData' tab, column B is the order date. I only want to sum the revenue in column G if the order date in column B falls between the dates in Dashboard!B1 and Dashboard!C1, inclusive."

ChatGPT's Likely Response:

=SUMIFS(ShopifyData!G:G, ShopifyData!B:B, ">="&Dashboard!B1, ShopifyData!B:B, "<="&Dashboard!C1)

This single formula now powers a dynamic KPI. You can apply this same logic to calculate total orders, AOV, and nearly any other metric.

Example 3: Building a "Top Products" Table with QUERY

The QUERY function is one of the most powerful in Google Sheets, but its syntax can be tricky. Let’s ask ChatGPT to do the heavy lifting.

Your Prompt for ChatGPT:

"Using my 'ShopifyData' tab, write a Google Sheets QUERY formula to show me the top 5 distinct products by their total quantity sold. Product names are in column E and quantity for each line item is in column F. Order it from highest to lowest quantity."

ChatGPT's Likely Response:

=QUERY(ShopifyData!E:F, "SELECT E, SUM(F) GROUP BY E ORDER BY SUM(F) DESC LIMIT 5 LABEL E 'Product Name', SUM(F) 'Total Quantity'", 1)

This prompt gives you a clean summary table that you can use to power a bar chart visualization.

A Quick Note on Accuracy

ChatGPT is excellent for writing code and formulas, but it's not a data analyst. It's guessing based on the structure you describe. If you tell it the wrong column, the formula will be wrong. Always double-check that the columns and tab names in your prompt match your sheet perfectly. It helps to have your spreadsheet open while you work with the AI.

Step 4: Visualize Your Data with Charts

Once you've used ChatGPT to create your summary tables and KPIs, turning them into charts is easy.

Highlight the data from your QUERY summary table (e.g., your top 5 products and their sales). Then, go to Insert > Chart. Google Sheets will suggest a chart type, but you can select your own - a bar chart is great for comparing product sales.

You can even ask ChatGPT for advice on visualization. For example:

Your Prompt for ChatGPT:

"I have a table showing my monthly revenue for the past year. What is the best chart type in Google Sheets to show this trend over time?"

ChatGPT will correctly recommend a line chart and might even provide tips on how to format it for clarity.

Putting It All Together

By following these steps, you can assemble a functional and insightful dashboard. A finished product might look something like this:

  • A header with controls for the date range.

  • A KPI section at the top with clean, bold numbers for Total Revenue, AOV, and Total Orders, all powered by SUMIFS formulas you got from ChatGPT.

  • A line chart below that visualizes daily or weekly revenue trends.

  • Two smaller charts side-by-side: a bar chart of your top-selling products and a pie chart to show your traffic mix from Google Analytics data.

You’ve now moved from raw data to actionable insights without learning a single complex formula from scratch.

Final Thoughts

Building a custom e-commerce dashboard in Google Sheets, supercharged with ChatGPT for formulas, is a fantastic way to take control of your analytics. This approach bridges the gap between manual data entry and expensive BI tools, giving you a centralized view of your business performance that is flexible, free, and easy to share.

As powerful as this method is, the underlying process still relies on exporting data and managing formulas within a spreadsheet. That’s why we built Graphed to remove these steps entirely. Instead of teaching ChatGPT how to write a spreadsheet formula, you simply tell Graphed what you want to see. When you connect platforms like Shopify, Google Ads, or Google Analytics, our AI already understands the data structure. You can just ask things like, "Create a dashboard comparing Facebook Ads spend vs Shopify revenue for the last 30 days," and get a live, interactive dashboard in seconds. No CSVs, no formulas, no spreadsheets - just your data, visualized instantly.