Leaking new customers out of your funnel

The rains started here for the season which gave me the opportunity to test out a new rain gutter system I setup.

Instead of a standard downspout that bends toward the wall and then goes into the sewer, I setup one that feed into a flexible tube that waters the garden bed. The hope was that this would help water the garden and a pair of trees from October to April.

Unfortunately, there was enough rain that the tube got overwhelmed, filled, and then started leaking.

I updated it to version 3 yesterday using a larger pipe. Not as pretty but it should be able to handle more before leaking.

Just about every Shopify store I've seen leaks new customers, especially when a lot of water customers are acquired.

Staff gets overwhelmed with new orders. They rush to keep up. They aren't able to focus on the little things that customers appreciate.

This shows up in my app as lower Repeat Purchase Rates during the busy months.

There are a few ways to work around that drop, most center around having more capacity for orders (e.g. hire staff) and optimizing processes ahead of time (e.g. create order appreciation freebies).

With the holiday season approaching, now's the time to get those figured out before there's a huge leak.

Eric Davis