The other night I ordered some books directly from a mid-sized publisher.
The ordering process was okay (they use WooCommerce) but later I noticed I never got an order confirmation email or receipt from them.
By that time I had closed the tab already and so I had to dig through my history to look for any kind of order confirmation page. Luckily I found it and was able to confirm that I did complete the order but there's no confirmation about my address or email, just the order number and items. I'm still a bit worried about the order though as part of it was time-limited sales.
This shows how easy it is to shake a new customer's trust. I could have ordered on Amazon, paid a bit more but had order confirmations and the books delivered within a day or two. Instead I wanted to help out an independent publisher, though now I have a case of order worry.
Luckily Shopify includes order confirmations by default so your store should already handle the basics. That'll keep the customer in the loop so they don't have to worry.
Just remember, order confirmation emails are the bare minimum with ecommerce today. If you don't send them to customers you'll have problems but sending them won't set you above competitors. To stand out you'll need to invest in a new customer welcome campaign.
Repeat Customer Insights can help you plan out that campaign. It'll give you data on when your customers are first reordering, which products and variants build the best buying behavior, and what kinds of seasonal factors might impact your orders.
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.