Customer analysis is the process of looking at data from a customer to figure out their behavior.
In the context of ecommerce and Shopify stores, customer analysis is used to better understand why a customer buys so that you can:
- help them order again, and
- attract similar customers.
Customer analysis supports acquisition and retention
Customer analysis, and customer analytics in-general, provide the information needed to support customer acquisition and customer retention. Customers usually won't come out and tell you how to get them to buy again so you have to observe their behavior and tease out what could be happening. That's the point of customer analysis.
Types and results
There are numerous types of customer analysis and measurements depending on what your goal is. Some measurements are solid and have been used by numerous companies for decades.
- Average Order Value
- Repeat Purchase Rate and Churn
- Customer Lifetime Value and Average Lifetime Value
- Total order sizes
Other customer analysis methods are more conditional and useful in certain circumstances.
Paired with customer segmenting
Customer analysis is frequently paired with customer segmentation, especially using RFM, customer grading, and cohort analysis. Segmenting lets you compare how different types of customers behave differently.
Articles for further reading
The following are various articles on Customer Analysis, both methods of performing the analysis and measurements to use.
The newest articles are at the top.
- Take stock of your customer base
- Data study on Shopify repeat customer metrics
- Do Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or the winter holidays actually matter to your store?
- Product Reorders
- Average Customer Analysis
- Different uses of start date
- Digging deeper into start dates
- New release: custom analysis start date
- Send reminder emails to one-time customers
- Compare your Average Order Value across different acquisition channels
- Focus on your best Shopify channels to attract better customers
- Compare your loyal customers to your average customers
- Measure repeat customer loyalty by combining two metrics
- Evaluate your November customer cohort to find repeat customers
- Automatic Segments give you advice to reach and convert your repeat customers
- RFM to analyze subscription customers
- Customer grade filters added to Repeat Customer Insights
- Analyzing many small orders vs infrequent large orders
- Better metrics every Monday with the revised Monday Morning Metrics
- Calculating the value of a repeat customer
- Measuring when customers should be ordering soon
- Start your customer behavior analysis before the holiday season
- Analyze customer cohorts by their running totals
- Order sequencing for a unique view of your repeat customer behavior
- Big Data and AI... itty bitty living space
- Why you need to save historic metrics
- When shouldn't you use RFM analysis
- Discover silent wholesale customers using order analysis
- The Cohort Analysis: finding profitable customer behavior
- Use the right analysis tools to optimize your repeat customer performance
- Stop collecting data you never use
- Customer segments to watch for your best customers and defecting customers
- Why Customer Grids show every customer in your Shopify store
- New release: Customer Grading report
- Leverage your customer insights to find hidden opportunities
- Compare your cohort analysis to find customer behavior changes
- Customer retention in Shopify is tough
- Understand the 3D RFM model by looking at it as a 2D Customer Grid
- Returning Customer Rate now measured by Repeat Customer Insights automatically
- Customer segment sizing for smaller Shopify stores
- How refunds can skew Shopify reports
- Analyze how your customer base changes over time to find hidden trends
- Use customer lifetime as your customer retention metric
- Analyze your 2022 holiday performance to see what your Shopify store accomplished
- The Customer Predicted Spend Tier: clear as mud
- Let a computer do the boring analysis
- Start improving customer reorder behavior
- Are holiday customers dormant or gone?
- Picking one and only one metric for customer analysis
- An easy way to start with your store analysis is to look at last week
- Common customer analysis circumstances Shopify stores run into
- Discover if your customers are becoming more loyal over time
- How does your customer base evolve from month to month?
- New period comparison insights added to Repeat Customer Insights
- Not rushing the results can create a better outcome
- Giving discounts to your best repeat customers
- When to stop marketing to lukewarm customers
- How your customers automatically decay with RFM
- How is a Shopify customer assigned automatic segments?
- How often does customer behavior change?
- Find out which marketing campaigns are your keepers
- Finding your consistent big spenders in Shopify
- How chasing squirrels can teach you customer behavior
- How RFM scores customer behavior from 1 to 5
- Keep your Shopify store out of the digital shredder
- Have conversations with customers to learn what they really need
- How to assemble a VIP customer list in Shopify
- The complexity of using survey data for decision making
- Segment based on what customers do, instead of what they say
- Pretty bad predictions: Portland snow in summer
- Using latency to detect defecting customers in your Shopify store
- Give each customer segment a purpose
- How RFM self-adjusts as you sell better and more expensive products like subscriptions
- How to find the top 1% of your customers using RFM
- Merging Shopify's customer data with Repeat Customer Insights analysis
- Knowledge (about your customers and products) is power
- How three phone calls can save a high-value subscription
- Dangers of unsegmented marketing
- How to select the next tactics to grow your Shopify store
- Making an offer your customers never even considered
- The handful of metrics to follow while your Shopify store is growing
- Doing the wrong thing, twice as fast with automation
- Creating a sales forecast for your Shopify store using Customer Purchase Latency
- Predicting customer orders using Customer Purchase Latency in Shopify
- Giving your email sending a health checkup using Gmail Postmaster Tools
- Putting more F in the RFM customer analysis
- See how your Shopify customer behavior changes over time with the new date-based Customer Purchase Latency report
- Data-driven gems that can be mined from a customer purchase latency analysis on a Shopify store
- Grading your Shopify customers with RFM segmentation
- Visualizing all of your Shopify data in one place with Google Data Studio
- Uncover the products your repeat buyers are buying
- How to find the optimal time to email your store's customers
- Predicting when your customer will buy again
- Why Customers Disappear After the First Sale -- and How to Keep Them