Shopify blog
Knowledge is power. That’s especially true when using Shopify’s analytics and reports to find your next best customers (and keep your current ones coming back for more).
The better you know your customers and how they interact with your business, the more well-equipped, empowered, and prepared you are to tailor your marketing for maximum impact. How are customers finding your online storefront? Where are they located? What products are they looking for the most? Are they using mobile devices, tablets, or desktops?
This kind of information helps you optimize your storefront marketing and advertising strategy, so you can convert more shoppers into loyal, satisfied customers.
In this post, we’ll discuss how you can use Shopify’s data, analytics, and reports to find your next best customers (and keep your current ones happy, too). Let’s take a look!
Know Your Customers
When you know who your customers are, you get a much clearer picture of who your online store attracts—so you can pinpoint your marketing strategy to attract more of them in the future.
To start, go to your Shopify admin, and select Analytics > Reports.
Use the Category filter to select Customers, then choose the report that you want to see.
New Customers Over Time
The New customers over time report shows you how many new customers placed orders over your selected time period.
You can use this data to spot patterns such as seasonality in buying behavior. If your products are seasonal, you’ll want to ramp up your marketing efforts before your high sales period to attract more new customers.
If your products are non-seasonal, dig into this report to find patterns during discount periods. For example, you can learn whether more new customers purchased from your store during last year’s Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales.
New vs. Returning Customer Sales
The New vs returning customer sales report lets you dive deeper by comparing sales from new and returning customers.
If your store’s strategy is focused on growth and expanding your customer base, this report will quickly show you whether you’ve been successful. And if your goal for this year is to increase sales from existing customers, you’ll be able to see that data too.
You can even compare new and returning customers to see which are more valuable for your business. Let’s say you discover that a high number of new customers bought from your store during Black Friday/Cyber Monday, yet they contributed less in overall sales compared to returning customers. That’s an interesting piece of information, right? You might want to consider ramping up your marketing for that period to reach more existing customers—and also to incentivize first-time buyers to return for higher-ticket purchases next time.
The New vs returning customer sales report lets you visualize sales during specific windows of time including by the hour, day, week, month, quarter, or year. Or you can aggregate purchases within buckets. For instance, you can track whether your sales are higher in the morning vs. the evening, whether Tuesday is a better selling day than Saturday, or exactly when your holiday sales peaked last year. Use these reports to make the most of your hottest sales moments.
Know Where Your Customers Are
Knowing more about your customers—how they landed on your website and where they’re located—can also help you improve your online sales.
Shopify has Acquisition and Behavior reports to put this information at your fingertips, so you can know exactly where and how to invest your marketing efforts.
Sessions by Referrer
On a surface level, the Sessions by referrer report gives you a snapshot of how your digital visitors are finding you—via direct, search, or referral sources.
The real magic comes from using referral and UTM data to understand your traffic sources. Did you run a marketing campaign in a specific region? Add that region and UTM parameters to your report to see how visitors arrived from each source. Then use Shopify’s marketing reports to review conversion and sales metrics for your marketing activity.
Once you know which sources drive the most conversions, you can focus your marketing efforts on your best referrers.
Sessions by Location
The Sessions by location report breaks down the countries, regions, and cities from which visitors are accessing your website, letting you pinpoint hotspots where your store is attracting traffic, so you can better focus your marketing spend and improve operational efficiencies. You can also review conversion metrics for each location to see where your online store is missing the mark for that area.
Sessions by Device
The Sessions by device report shows you the types of devices customers use to access your store.
With this knowledge, you can make better-informed decisions about prioritizing your marketing and ad spending to reach top customers on their preferred devices.
Meet Your Customers’ Needs
Customers are telling you what they need with every search. Give them what they want! Shopify’s search reports show you their queries, so you can showcase the product information they’re searching for most frequently.
Searches by Search Query
Want to see a breakdown of the most frequently searched terms in your online store? The Searches by search query report gives you a powerful view into what your customers are most interested in, as well as what words they use when searching for your products. This makes it easier to see what your customers want to buy and how to reference and promote them.
Searches with No Results
Now we’re getting into the advanced lessons. The Searches with no results report reveals customer searches that came up empty for shoppers.
Why does this matter to you? Because it doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t have what they want (though if you don’t, you now know which products you should add), but simply which words they are using to describe and search for that item. For example, if customers fail to get results when searching for “violet handbags”—but you know you sell “purple purses”—you should update your product descriptions or create a synonym group accordingly. How you describe a product in your listings can make all the difference in making the sale.
Reach More of the Right Customers
Let’s take a look at how you can use all this new data to hone your marketing efforts and reach even more customers.
Improve Storefront Search for Your Top Searches
Once you know which search terms are most popular in your online store, focus your efforts on improving your storefront search experience for those terms.
For example, if the Searches by search query report told you that customers arriving at your store are frequently searching for “red leather boots,” you can take steps to ensure relevant products appear prominently for that search term. It’s a great way to build on your strengths and ensure customers can find their boots—and you.
Similarly, let’s say your Searches with no results report reveals that customers in your store are searching for “seersucker shirts” but getting no results. Assuming that you carry them (but aren’t describing them this way), you’ll want to add that term to your relevant product listings’ tags or create a synonym group. The next time customers search for that term, your search results will be buttoned up.
Examine Your Conversion Rates by Channel
Conversion rates give you a clear picture of which marketing channels perform the best.
This allows you to allocate your marketing budget with greater efficiency and impact. So, if you know that search advertising is very effective at driving sales, consider focusing more of your budget on this high-performing channel. At the same time, if you have identified growth in new channels as a top strategic priority, you can quickly see which ones may need a little more love in your budget.
Compare Conversion Rates by First and Last Interaction
Shopify's analytics lets you select an attribution model when a report includes both a sales metric and a marketing dimension. If your goal is to attract more potential customers, choose the first click model to attribute conversions to the first channel a customer interacted with. If your goal is to understand what helped close a sale, choose the last click model to see the final channel customers interacted with before purchasing.
Use data, not guesswork, to improve your sales
As we said at the beginning of this post, knowledge is power. And if you’re serious about finding the signal in the noise of all your marketing data, Shopify analytics and reports are key tools for understanding who your customers are, where they're coming from, and how you can attract more of them to your store. Shopify’s analytics take the guesswork out of your marketing campaigns with a data-driven approach that helps you focus your time, money, and energy on attracting more customers and driving more effective and efficient sales.
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New Customers FAQ
What defines a new customer versus a returning customer?
A new customer completes their first purchase from a store, while a returning customer has ordered before. Distinguishing between the two shows whether growth is coming from expanding the customer base or from repeat purchases, and lets you compare how much each group contributes to overall sales. This split becomes especially useful when evaluating results from promotions or seasonal sales periods.
How can I attract new customers to my online store?
Attracting new customers usually combines organic and paid tactics: refine product listings for the exact terms shoppers search, run targeted ads on channels your audience already uses, and lean on customer reviews for social proof. Encouraging reviews and testimonials can help build trust and increase conversions from first-time visitors.
Is it better to prioritize new customers or repeat customers?
Growing a store depends on both, though many established businesses lean toward prioritizing returning customers because they may convert at higher rates and spend more over time. New customers still matter for offsetting natural customer turnover and expanding your reach, so track both groups rather than favoring one at the expense of the other.
How can I turn first-time buyers into repeat customers?
Turning first-time buyers into repeat customers starts with a smooth post-purchase experience, followed by a targeted email inviting them back with a small incentive like a discount or free shipping. Email marketing is especially useful here, since new customers may return multiple times to a store once they're hooked on a brand's content and offers. Loyalty programs and personalized product recommendations also encourage a second purchase.
Which marketing channels typically bring in the most new customers?
Search advertising and organic search can be effective sources of new-customer traffic, since many shoppers use search to research products before checking other channels. Search visibility can be a high-leverage way to reach people who don't yet know your store. Social media and paid social ads work well too, especially for reaching audiences who match your target profile but aren't actively searching yet.
