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from my experience you definitely want plenty of airflow, in fact I'd recommend making the shelter 3-sided, or make 2 walls out of lattice or something. If it exhausts through the top, leave at least a foot above the top and a clear path for that heated air to buzz off. Direct sun is bad, but so's blanketing. You don't need to absolutely shade it though, all the refrigerant needs to do is condense - there's not really any additional benefit to cooling it beyond condensing.
Not super scientific, but as an experiment at my old house I ran a sprinkler on my a/c condenser to see if supercooling it with water would increase effectiveness, by measuring the temperature of the cooling vent nearest the evaporator inside my house. It was 58 degrees during the half hour I was watering it, and 58 degrees for the remainder of the day that I wasn't watering it.
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