Using historic data to optimize your Shopify store's marketing

With the weather warming up for Spring here I've started to plant the next phase of our garden.

We want to plant seeds when the soil is warm enough but we also don't want to wait too long or we'll miss out on our short growing season.

Last Friday when it was sunny enough I seeded the last of the Spring plants. Just in time for a solid rain over the weekend.

By timing things right I can save a lot of work. Letting the sun heat the beds for the seeds and the regular Portland rains keep everything watered.

But that's not possible without looking at how the weather worked in the past and using that to forecast the future. If I didn't know Portland has April frosts, I might lose most of the garden by planting too early.

In ecommerce you can use your customer's past behavior to forecast how and when they'll buy in the future.

Comparing all of your customers buying habits in specific month will show you seasonal predictions e.g. holiday shopping, slow seasons, demand spikes.

Comparing the customers who first bought from you in a month will show you their buying environment e.g. your promotions, news events, etc.

Those can give you enough insight to plan date-based promotions (e.g. June sale) and time-based promotions (e.g. 90-day re-order campaign).

Both of which can add some stability and predictability to your sales and ordering.

In Repeat Customer Insights those buying habits are analyzed in the Customer Cohort and Customer Purchase Latency reports. Combined they give you the predictive power to plan your promotions.

Eric Davis