Learn more about using existing order history data to drive more sales.
80% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company that provides a personalized experience. The order history data holds the key to this personalization!
In this article, we’ll tell you how to use order history data to drive more sales and repeat purchases from your customer base.
It’s time to tap into all the data your Shopify customer account page holds.
What is order history data?
Order history is a list of all the orders a customer has placed with your business over a period of time – typically their entire life cycle so far with the brand from the first day of acquisition.
It’s a convenient way for your customers to keep track of all the necessary information about their orders, such as product information, purchase details, invoices, shipping status and so on. But in addition to the same, all of the same data can also be used by a business to understand the consumer preferences and purchase behavior better.
Learn more about order history and how it works here.
How Can Order History Data Help You Make More Sales?
The only reason to track customer purchases is to understand what products are working in your favor and where you can create an opportunity to drive more business.
To make your work easier, here is the list of all the factors that you should keep track of from the order history data of your Shopify store:
1. Pattern in purchase periods
When a customer buys from you multiple times, a certain pattern will arise concerning when they order. When analyzing, you’ll find the specific days, weeks, or months when they order more frequently.
Also, identify if there are any particular seasons when the order frequency increases or decreases.
This is because, just like yours, your customer’s purchasing will depend on seasonal ups and downs. And analyzing your customer’s order pattern will help you take pre-emptive action, such as getting more stocks ready.
2. Type of products ordered
Focusing on what products your customers buy from you frequently will eventually increase your business profits.
How?
Here’s your answer: if you analyze your customer’s order history, you’ll understand what products your customers are repeatedly buying from you and the ones your customers are not interested in at all.
This observation will help you determine what products you need to get more stocks of and what products you should stop stocking so that you don’t have to invest in the products that aren’t adding profits to your business.
You can then invest those resources into the stocks of top-selling products and other business and marketing activities – resulting in an increment in your profits.
3. Frequency and amount of purchases
Finally, analyze the amount or frequency of your customer’s orders as this is also a great way to analyze their repeat purchase behavior.
By looking at the purchase amount and the regularity in their purchasing behavior, you can identify your loyal customers, which will increase your up-selling and cross-selling opportunities and give you a chance to keep their interest hooked.
Now that you know the data you can capture through the order history in your customer account pages, let’s look into how you can put it to work.
How to use order history data to double your sales?
While there’s no one strategy that helps ecommerce businesses sell more, we do think that order history data can be effectively used for the following:
1. Make personalized product recommendations
Once a customer purchases from you, they’re more likely to buy again as well, provided they had a personalized purchasing experience. Around 60% of consumers report that they will become repeat buyers after a personalized purchasing experience.
But it’s always better to initiate the process and persuade your customer to make another purchase rather than wait for them to return.
And to do that, you need to make their purchasing process and decision easier by giving them a nudge. And, what would be a better way than upselling and cross-selling to them by sending personalized product recommendations?
For example, while analyzing your customer’s order history, you find a particular dress is one of your top-selling products.
So now you can filter the customers who bought it and send them an email recommending a watch or a pair of shoes that go perfectly with the dress.
This strategy works great since 91% of consumers say they are more likely to shop with brands that provide offers and recommendations that are relevant to them.
To make their purchasing decision easier, you can also offer coupons and additional discounts because statistics show online coupon users spend 24% more than regular shoppers.
Imagine using order history to know just what to sell to the consumer next!
2. Target your promotions and advertisements better
Since an order history gives you all the necessary information about your customer, you can leverage it to target your promotional, advertising campaigns better.
For example, you can use their demographic data to run ads featuring particular products that might do well in their locations. And psychographic data on when those products/ offers will appeal to them the most.
Let’s say you have a best-selling item for Christmas; then you can run ads in December targeting locations where Christmas is the chief festival, such as Finland and New York.
Also read: How to segment customers using customer account page
3. Create personalized marketing messages
As your order history will tell you which customer bought what product, you can tailor your marketing strategies and messages specifically to their preferences.
You can easily segment your customers and send communication – emails, SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger messages, and more, highly relevant to what they’ve purchased before or contextual to the purchase patterns they have displayed.
This strategy is more effective than sending one generic message to everyone because here, you’re adding a touch of personalization, and statistics show that 72% of customers will only engage with personalized messaging.
Conclusion – It’s time to tap into your order history data!
Now, It’s evident that order history isn’t just for customers to keep track of their purchases from your online store. This one data set actually holds a lot more value than businesses give it credit for and at Flits, we want to change that.
The Flits Shopify customer account page offers a detailed order history section that is meant for both businesses and consumers. While consumers use it for keeping a tab on their purchases, businesses can deep dive into the information here to learn more about the buyers, and also recognise patterns around advanced parameters such as returns, cancellations and exchanges.
Ready to see how you can tap into order history data with the Shopify customer account page? Install the Flits app today.
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