Little Stream Software

Check on your data tracking systems

2024-11-21T07:00:00Z

With the busy season coming up, now is the time to check all of your tracking systems.

You want to make sure that any data you're recording is actually being recorded correctly.

Web analytics
Order analytics
Conversion rates
A/B tests
Ad tracking codes (e.g. UTM campaigns)
Web pixels
Email pixels (though email open rate is flawed)

You can use a tag manager to keep it easy to track but then you have to make sure you're using it in all the right places.

Test and fix that stuff now and you'll get a better picture of how your store performs.

Directive: Regularly verify all your data tracking systems are working as expected.

Eric Davis

Get started getting more from your repeat customers

If you haven't signed up for Repeat Customer Insights, it's an easy process. Just give it your Shopify store url and it'll walk you through the setup, import, and analysis process automatically. No code needed.

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Focus improvements on one small area

2024-11-20T07:00:00Z

One piece of gardening advice is to start improving one small area of 2-4 feet first. Once it's highly fertile, expand to a second small area.

Contrast that to spreading around the improvement to the whole area.

In the first, the focused approach, you're likely to see large improvements and benefits quickly. Often in the first year.

In the second, the wide approach, you might see improvements overall but it could be difficult to know. Would you be able to see a 1% improvement in your day-to-day and know it came from your changes? It can also take years of hard work to get everything up to quality.

This focused approach combines the old advice of quality over quantity along with sustainable growth. Once the first plot is done, it won't be much work to maintain while you work on the next ones.

It also lets you experiment much easier. You could start three areas, each with their own improvement plan, measure their progress, and then pick the one you'd like to keep. I saw one gardener do this with 20 different soil improvement techniques before settling on the handful that worked the best for his new area.

Now to take it into ecommerce, your business is the garden as a whole and harvests are your sales.

You can do changes across the board to try to improve everything. Or you can focus on one area, improve that, and then expand.

You also have the flexibility to determine what your "areas" are. Given my experience with customer segmenting in my app I'd say customer segments are the fastest way to see results. e.g. start by improving the performance of your Loyal segment in all ways, then work on Potential Loyal.

Alternatively you could select areas by function. e.g. Order size, getting the second order, cart abandonment. One problem with functional areas is that they interact with each other a lot so you could be jumping back and forth a lot (i.e. they don't hold benefits like garden soil or customer segments do).

Whatever you do, having a procedure will help keep you on track.

Directive: Focus improvements on one small area.

Eric Davis

Find out how your Average Customer behaves

Learn who your Average Customer is and how they are buying from your store.

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Keep your coupon codes simple

2024-11-19T07:00:00Z

Recently we got an automatic coupon from a major retailer. One of those "Spend $x on a category and get $y back".

The problem was that their system ran into a bug that actually charged us the coupon amount in order to get the coupon. It became a "Spend $x on a category, get $y back after we charge you $y".

As you can imagine, explaining that to their chat bot AI and then customer service took a lot time. We're not even sure if they'll actually fix it for next time or if it'll come back.

So if you offer coupon codes, make sure they are simple to understand.

Any complexity in your coupons beyond "save $x" or "save x%" will cause some customer confusion and loss of revenue. Getting to checkout only to find a coupon doesn't work is a quick way to cart abandonment.

Directive: Keep coupon qualifications simple.

Eric Davis

Measure which customers you're retaining and which you're losing

In order to keep your best customers, you need visibility into what's going on with them. Repeat Customer Insights will help you track down where you're losing customers and how to better target new ones.

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Black Friday is coming, are you ready?

2024-11-18T07:00:00Z

With Black Friday coming up next week, are you ready?

If you'd like some ideas, I'm collecting my articles on my Black Friday topic page.

Eric Davis

Discover which products are bought again and again

Using the Product Reorders report you can discover which products customers are buying again and again.

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Measure your customer loyalty

2024-11-15T07:00:00Z

Customer loyalty, or as described previously customer trust, can be easily measured.

Does that customer buy again?

That's it.

Sure there's other things like: do they recommend you to their friends, have they posted a review, etc. At the end of the day, those don't matter as much as cold hard orders. If the customer is still getting out their wallet then they still trust your store (are loyal enough).

This excludes stores who lock-in orders. If the customer has complained and is still upset, they might not have had time to switch away yet. Those customers are not loyal but there shouldn't be that many of them.

This is why measuring things like Repeat Purchase Rate are so effective for customer retention. They are a direct measurement of customer loyalty.

Want to have your Repeat Purchase Rate calculated for you? It's included for all Repeat Customer Insights.

Directive: Calculate your Repeat Purchase Rate to measure customer loyalty.

Eric Davis

Learn which products build the best customers

Find which products create the most valuable customers with the First Product Analysis in Repeat Customer Insights. It goes beyond your best sellers by looking at long-term purchasing and retention behavior of your customers.

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Averages hide problems

2024-11-14T07:00:00Z

A piece of software I use is "experimenting" with new pricing. They are completely changing how they price and thus the actual end price customers pay is up in the air.

There are a bunch of lessons and rants in how they did this experiment but what I want to write about is some copy they used. In it they claimed the average customer will pay 34% less with the new pricing.

(I can't quote the copy as it seems like they pulled their experiment last-night).

The 34% claim sounds great but the average customer is a problem.

When it comes to pricing changes, it doesn't matter what the average customer pays. It matters what the actual customer pays. What actually is charged to their credit card.

You might think if you pay $30 now so then you'll bill would drop to $20.

That's not how averages work though.

They could have someone paying $20 who now has to pay $104 and someone who is paying $25 who now has to pay $0. Those are actual bill estimates from myself and another customer.

Instead of only looking at averages, look at the maxes, ranges, distributions, and outliers. Taken all together they tell a much better story that just one number. It's more work but then you can spot problems like a 5x price increase to a customer.

Otherwise you might run into that Bill Gates statistics joke.

What's the fastest way to create the average millionaire?

Have Bill Gates walk into a room of people.

Looking at your average customer is great for following overall performance to see if your customer base as a whole are improving. That's what the Average Customer Analysis in Repeat Customer Insights is for. e.g. if your average customer's AOV is increasing then customers are spending more on average (some more, some less). Even then, the Average Customer Analysis should be just the first step to investigate your data.

I wouldn't use average customer stats for public marketing messages. It just takes one outlier to get upset and cause a lot of negative press.

Directive: Be careful using any "average" statistics, especially in public statements.

Eric Davis

Find out how your Average Customer behaves

Learn who your Average Customer is and how they are buying from your store.

Learn more

Customer trust, not customer loyalty

2024-11-13T07:00:00Z

Customer loyalty is a funny phrase.

It sounds permanent and firm like a rock. "Our customers are loyal to us and will never leave"

Problem is, like all of human behavior, customer loyalty can shift quickly.

There are countless tales of a company or executive making a bad decision for short-term gain and customers evaporating. "Those darn customers and their fake loyalty caused the business to suffer"... No man, you just abused your customer's trust and they left.

A better term would be customer trust.

Does the customer trust you to treat them right? (right by their view, not yours)

Do you do things to earn and keep their trust?

When there's a breech of trust, do you apologize and work to repair it?

We also have much more personal experience with trust. Ever have a friend say something that hurt you as a kid? You saw exactly how you trusted them less and maybe stopped being their friend. Judging trust is built-in to humans.

Customer trust also shows that the customer is the one who has the power. They can walk away at any time (excluding contracts, etc). They have what is called walk-away-ility.

In this light, the loss of customer and brand loyalty looks completely different.

It's a loss of customer trust.

Which is something you can work to improve.

Directive: Think of customer loyalty as customer trust, something you have to earn and keep. Not something you deserve just because you exist.

Eric Davis

Analyze your winter holiday performance

Figure out how your winter holiday performed versus the rest of the year with the Winter Holiday report.

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Letting time do your work for you

2024-11-12T07:00:00Z

Last year in autumn I collected a bunch of leaves and stored them in a huge bag.

Now a year later they've mostly decomposed and turned into compost.

After collecting them it took no work on my part. Just needed space for the bag and time. Basically free compost for 1/10th the effort.

The one-time work I put in a year ago paid off by saving me work this year. It only took time to wait.

Setting up a New Customer Welcome Campaign or any other customer loyalty system works the same. You put in work upfront, but over the years it reduces the total amount of work you need while giving you better repeat customers.

They are great for the time-strapped Shopify stores. Even if your campaign is only 2-3 emails long.

Since those leaves worked so well I spent some time last Sunday collecting more for next year.

Directive: Create a New Customer Welcome Campaign to automate early new customer interactions.

Eric Davis

Refine your automated marketing campaigns with better timing

When building any automated marketing campaign that sends messages over time, you need to know how long the campaign should be and how long to delay the messages. The Customer Purchase Latency metrics calculated by Repeat Customer Insights can help you figure out that timing.

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Concentrate on keeping your existing customers during downturns

2024-11-11T07:00:00Z

During any sort of downturn you should focus on retaining your loyal and returning customers.

Technically you should focus on them all the time but the siren song of new customer acquisition can catch many Shopify store's attention.

If you can keep your existing customers during a downturn, keep them buying, and keep costs under control, you'll have a better chance of getting through the rocky periods.

It might be easier said than done but for many stores, there are a lot of customer retention options that they haven't tried yet. You only need one or two to work.

For help identifying who your loyal customers are, Repeat Customer Insights includes an entire dashboard for Downturns. That dashboard alone could surface information you need to keep focused on surviving.

Once you survive, then you can look back at growing.

Directive: In any downturn, focus on keeping existing customers around and continue buying.

Eric Davis

Get a complete view of your customer behavior

The cohort analysis in Repeat Customer Insights will automatically build cohorts for all of your customers. It has the ability to go back through your entire store history so you can get a complete view of your customer behavior.

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Backup data from your Shopify store before you need it

2024-11-08T07:00:00Z

As the busy season approaches, it's time to take a minute to think about protecting your data.

That means data backups.

Shopify backs up their data as a whole but you don't have access to those backups. So if something happens in your store like a mistake or a bad import, you're left recovering the data.

Taking exports of your orders, customers, products, and theme should be a regular part of your operations. If you can automate it, great, but even a manual backup every month or so can save you headaches.

Go and grab those exports right now and toss them in a secure place.

If you use Repeat Customer Insights, grab an export from it too. It'll include your analyzed customers and reports from the app, all in one handy archive file.

Directive: Take regular backups of your store data.

Eric Davis

Retain the best customers and leave the worst for your competitors to steal

If you're having problems with customers not coming back or defecting to competitors, Repeat Customer Insights might help uncover why that's happening.
Using its analyses you can figure out how to better target the good customers and let the bad ones go elsewhere.

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