Measure twice, optimize once
This week I’ve been doing performance optimizations on Repeat Customer Insights reports. The reports load fast but collecting the data for the reports was getting slow. I had a lot of ideas to speed them up but long ago I learned there’s an important first step: Measure the current performance… Read more
Using planning to avoid a major disruption in your Shopify store
Recently I planned out the next set of major features for Repeat Customer Insights that I’ll be working on next. Most of them I already have the data for so, but one of them required going back to Shopify for more order data. Getting the data from Shopify is no… Read more
Growth: keep it steady or try and maybe fail at something new?
Yesterday I was chatting with another business owner about growth. His business was growing online steadily but he wanted more growth. The problem was that he only had one solid customer acquisition channel and there weren’t a lot of levers he could pull to control it (e.g. it would be… Read more
Have conversations with customers to learn what they really need
When was the last time you had a conversation with a customer? Your customers are a rich source of content, marketing, and product ideas but many businesses try to isolate their customers like unwanted puppies. That doesn’t mean you have to handle all of the customer service or sales. That… Read more
Segmenting your traffic into different buying groups using Google Analytics
A subscriber emailed me a segmenting question: I am writing to you as I’m looking for your advice. We sell to Businesses of all sizes and schools K-12 plus higher ed, and recently have started to embrace consumer. Our challenge is identifying traffic (and behavior) on our site that is… Read more
How the Customer Purchase Latency metric can guide subscription frequency in your Shopify store
When Shopify stores first start selling subscriptions, they default to once a month. Or they copy Amazon and offer a few monthly subscription offers. That’s fine to start but there’s a better way. You can use a metric called the Customer Purchase Latency to see how often customers actually are… Read more
Dusting off your email marketing the right way
Yesterday I received an email newsletter from a Shopify app I signed up for years ago. It was a newspaper-like email with half a dozen half-articles. Not bad but they’ve never emailed me before so it was a bit confusing. What probably happened was they added me to their mailing… Read more
Comparing apples to apples with your Average Order Value and Repeat Purchase Rate
One of the final features added to Repeat Customer Insights before the holidays is the automatic comparison of your repeat customer’s behaviors versus your store average. Many of the other insights compare how your Shopify store performs against industry averages and published statistics. That’s great for benchmarking but oftentimes your… Read more