Shopify customer churn and cohort analysis
Shopify does not tell you who stopped buying. Your orders do. Group customers by the month they first bought, then see how many came back each month after.
The question
“Of the people who bought from my store in a given month, how many bought again?”
Ask it in your own words. You get the answer, with the steps that made it.
What in your data answers it
These are the fields the connector reads.
| Stream | Field | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| orders | customer_id | Who placed the order. Ties every order to one buyer. |
| orders | created_at | The day of the order. Sets the first-order month and each return month. |
| orders | total_price | What the order came to. Shows whether returning buyers spend more. |
| customers | orders_count and total_spent | A quick count of orders and money per customer. |
Shopify pulls the last 60 days of orders by default. To see months of return visits, set days_back higher when you ask.
A real sample report
This sample report runs the same method on public online-store order data (UCI Online Retail II). It is not Shopify data. Order data from a Shopify store has the same shape: a customer, a date and an amount.
Other questions to ask
- “Which month's new buyers came back the most?”
- “Do customers who return spend more per order?”
More free tools for this data:
Questions
What is a cohort?
A cohort is a group of customers who first bought in the same month. We follow each group month by month and count who came back.
Does Shopify give me a churn number?
No. A customer who stops ordering has left, but Shopify does not mark it. Cohort retention shows it from the order dates.
How far back can I look?
Orders default to the last 60 days. You can ask for a longer window, and a longer window shows more months of return visits.