The most important Shopify metrics you need to optimize with cross-channel personalization

Srikant Kotapalli

Jul 13, 2021

If you’re reading this, you’re most likely a Shopify merchant looking for tips and strategies to drive engagement and sales. 

But this isn’t another rundown of basic things you can do to level up your business. Instead, we’ll discuss how you can use powerful cross-channel personalization strategies to boost your Shopify dashboard metrics. 

No doubt, you have access to plenty of cross-channel marketing tools to implement these strategies with just a click and with no IT dependency during integration. Insider’s platform is mighty technology that syncs perfectly with Shopify’s integration, execution, measurement, and iteration.

In this blog, we’ll touch on the execution piece and show you what strategies you can apply to get easy results.

What are the everyday metrics Shopify merchants care about?

Table of Contents
  1. Total online visits

  2. Repeat customer rate

  3. Online store conversion rate

  4. Average order value

  5. Anonymous visitor personalization and conversion

Total online visits

How do you get customers to keep coming back? Keep them engaged with new products, trends, bestsellers, sales, and more using web push notifications. 

Web push notifications don’t require users to enter their personal information like email signups. Instead, all they have to do is opt-in. Then, once they’re in, you can send them personalized content and tailored product recommendations using Insider’s easy-to-use AI-based customer experience optimization technology. 

The best part? Your customers don’t have to be on your website to see them. They could be catching up on the news, watching their favorite series, or browsing your competitor’s content, when they see a message for them. They can even leave their computers and come back to see your web push notifications waiting. 

By sending them generic web push notifications, you can directly grab their attention. Wouldn’t it be nice if you had more chances? Utilize these quick strategies to generate not only traffic numbers but also qualified and potentially high customers.

Share news about new arrivals 

Send individually tailored updates using AI-backed segmentation based on users’ previous onsite behaviors. By matching user intentions with your product line, your store will generate qualified traffic with high CTR web push notifications.

Image showing generic web push notifications

Share news about trending products

Is there anyone who doesn’t enjoy owning the latest and best products? By taking advantage of consumer psychology, you can offer your customers products that they prefer or that are trending in the market. 

Web push notifications allow you to alert shoppers about these popular products instantly.

Image showing generic web push notifications 2.

Price Alerts

Marketing and eCommerce managers can setup price drop notifications to create alerts when product pricing changes, leveraging the idea of urgency and limited supply. 

In the event that a consumer visits a product page a certain number of times within a certain period of time, such as three times within five days, they will receive an alert when the product’s price drops. At the end of the day, they will be more inclined to click on web push notifications and land on your website. 

Image showing price alerts.

In-stock web push notifications

Taking their customers away just because they are out of stock is never a good thing. But customers often run into this roadblock: they love the product, but it is not available. 

A retailer might wonder, “How can I get these users to buy again when their product is available again?” 

Customers can be notified when their favorite products are in stock with stock push notifications. This well-timed engagement strategy can help retailers drive higher traffic and eventually conversions. 

Image showing in-stock web push notifications.

Repeat customer rate

Post-purchase cross-channel journey 

Yay! Someone made a purchase. 

Now what? 

The idea is to keep customers coming back and buying from you. But how do you do that when they’ve ghosted you? 

Maybe they… 

  • Forgot
  • Got busy
  • Aren’t looking for something specific right now

You can create a post-purchase journey to thank your users for their purchase, ask for their feedback and offer recommendations or new collections to lead frequent purchases.

Based on your product that you sell, customer replenishment campaigns can create a personalised customer experience by letting customers know when their item is on the verge of being replaced. Your customers will be reminded to replenish their stock just before their products run out with these handy automated reminders. It is therefore convenient for me to repurchase from you. Therefore, you can reduce the likelihood of customers choosing your competitors. Automated replenishment cross channel campaigns should be the new best friend of your Shopify store.

Image showing Post-purchase cross-channel journey.

Cross-channel campaigns empowered with diversified channels such as web push and email are the perfect way to get dormant customers back to your site. The more they interact with your brand, the more Insider’s AI will be able to help you personalize their experience with relevant content, products, offers, and discounts, so that you’re getting the right messages across on the right channels when they really need.

See how Insider’s long-term partner Hipvan achieved conversion rate uplift of %46.7 by using Individualized cross-channel journey orchestration.

Gamification and repeat customer rate 

Keeping customers interested, engaged, and excited about your products can be challenging, but they can also be highly effective.

The easiest way is to send them product recommendations or special offers after purchase, but this can be irritating and may end up in spam. 

Gamification helps marketers get around this problem. 

For example, Insider’s gamified “Spin the Wheel” templates let you bypass noisy inboxes and grab users’ attention. 

Irvins, a Shopify Plus and Insider’s long-term partner, uses customer gamification to increase their repeat customer rate to great effect. They segment loyal users and serve them up gamified templates with enticing offers on both desktop and mobile.

Image showing gamification example, spin the wheel.

Online store conversion rate 

Increase product visit with immersive stories

All starts with the first interaction. Increasing the conversion rate from first visit to product visit will lead to improvement in overall conversion rate in your Shopify store. Drive product discovery and engagement with InStory, thumbnail experiences that expand into immersive product discovery experiences that drive engagement. Populate InStories with content that’s relevant to each user. From trending products to special offers to sales to influencer diaries, the possibilities are endless. 

Image showing immersive stories for increasing conversion rate.

Kickstart the landing experience with homepage personalization 

Your website’s homepage can’t be the same for every person who lands there. Show that your brand is invested in each visitor’s experience by tailoring your content toward their interests and needs. 

If you’re thinking about personalization, your homepage is a great place to start. 

In a world without third-party cookies, eCommerce brands need to expand their focus to first-party data. Insider’s platform lets you do precisely that: customize product recommendations, banners, text, visuals, and more, all with first-party data. 

Let’s say someone is shopping for children’s clothing. The shopper should see children’s clothing front and center when they visit your site. 

By showing this shopper the category they’re interested in, you’ll save them time and reduce unnecessary steps in the customer journey by removing irrelevant categories and offers from their path. 

People judge books by their covers. Your homepage is like the cover of a book. Visitors are more likely to explore more of your site if your page is appealing and relevant. 

A Shopify Plus customer, All Nutrition, created an onsite survey using Insider to identify user segments. Then, they customized their website based on the user data. Their homepage, for example, features a personalized banner with content tailored to users’ interests and behaviors. 

Image showing homepage example.
An example of a customized banner for a “young sportsperson” user segment

Increase the funnel flow with one-to-one product recommendations

You can drive more sales by offering personalized product recommendations. In a study by the Barilliance, personalized product recommendations lead to 5.5 times more conversions than those without them, with personalized product recommendations accounting for 12% of total revenues.”

Online retailers are familiar with this strategy. In most eCommerce sites, you’ll see recommendations such as bestsellers, trending, recently viewed, and purchased together. 

One way to improve product recommendations would be to diversify the types of recommendations you make. This will ensure that the benefits of this strategy are maximized and increase the conversion rates from first visit to product page, product page visit to adding to cart action and eventually, from cart visit to checkout page. Here’s some recommendation guidance for each type of page. 

Make your one-to-one product recommendations available on different channels and keep your messages consistent. Implement the same strategy on mobile web and mobile apps. You can add product recommendations to your email and web push notifications. 

Improve the conversion from product page visit to adding to cart event 

Create urgency and the fear of missing out (FOMO) by using social proof. What is social proof? Messages like “20 people have bought this item” or “Only 4 left in stock” on product pages. Including social proof on your product pages can have a profoundly positive impact on conversion rates. 

PowerReviews, a software review company, found reviews are the second-most important factor influencing consumers’ buying decisions. According to their research, displaying reviews and ratings on product detail pages (PDPs) increased conversion rates by up to 115%. 

Opte, a Shopify Plus customer, recently rolled out cross-channel personalization across desktop and mobile. 

On both their mobile and desktop sites, Opte applied social proof and kept the messaging consistent. The goal was to increase the funnel flow by driving add-to-cart actions and cart page visits.

Image showing social proof example 1
Image showing social proof example 2.

Use countdown timer to increase checkout page visit

Opte, Insider’s active Shopify Plus customer, implemented an urgency-inducing onsite trigger to encourage users to complete their purchases both on desktop and mobile on Mother’s Day. 

Image showing the use of countdown timer to increase checkout page visit
Image showing the use of countdown timer to increase checkout page visit.

Using a countdown timer plays on human psychology and capitalizes on the idea of FOMO (fear of missing out) on a limited-time opportunity. It gets discount-seeking consumers or shoppers putting off a purchase until one last message drives them to buy. 

Average Order Value 

Some purchases require a lot of thought. Fortunately, these types of purchases are rarely made alone.

 For example, if someone is shopping for a new sofa, they’ll likely buy pillows, slip covers, a coffee table, end tables, and related accessories.

Using smart recommendations, you can increase average order values by showing users relevant items based on their interests. Another strategy is showing users related bestsellers. 

Recommendations based on past purchases, whether in email or on-site, can be a great way to upsell and cross-sell your products. 

One-to-one recommendations make shoppers feel like you know they are a helpful companion on their journey, advising them based on their interests, past purchases, and real-time needs. 

Progress bar

Showing shoppers progress bars has a profound effect on average cart values. Seeing that they only have X amount left to unlock a special offer inspires many of them to add more to their carts to claim a reward like free shipping, 10% off, or a free gift. 

Cart page recommendations

The cart page. The make it or break it page. 

Your customer is about to checkout and is already ready to hit buy. Why not channel that energy to related products and bestsellers on the cart page? 

Show them what else they could be buying, personalized to their intended purchase. Insider’s smart recommendation engine analyzes customers’ onsite activity, past purchases, and affinities and lets you customize recommendations that drive your cart values up. 

Using Insider’s AI-based recommendation engine, Shopify merchants can increase the average order value of their carts and bundle products together to enhance their cross-sell and upsell strategies. Another interesting approach is optimizing for accessibility. This will help mitigate cart abandoment by people with disabilities. The latter will have a challenging time getting to the finish line if you rely on Shopify’s built-in accessibility features, so it’s recommended you use a Shopify accessibility app.

Using Insider’s AI-powered product recommendation solution, Maty increased average order value (AOV) by 6.69% and incremental revenue by 9.69%. Avon, another Insider customer, increased their AOV by 11% and their click-through rate by 13%.

Anonymous visitor personalization and conversion

First-time visitor popups 

How can you win the hearts and minds of first-time visitors? With a bit of love. 

Offer them a special deal, like 20% off on their first purchase when they subscribe to your mailing list. This way, you can collect their email address and start nurturing them into becoming paying customers. 

Bonus tip: Use power words like “exclusive” to convince visitors in these first-time messages. In addition to popups, you can use announcement bars to grab first-time visitors’ attention and direct them to relevant offers. 

Revival Rugs, a Shopify Plus user, is a master at enticing first-time visitors. They show first-time visitors an onsite lead generation overlay encouraging them to share their emails. In addition, Revival Rugs conducted A/B tests to determine which message converted more first-time visitors. You’ll want to do this to maximize conversions. 

Image showing first-time visitor popups

Ask anonymous visitors to log in or create a profile

Understanding users’ behavior across channels and your website is crucial for stitching all data points together to create a unified profile. Visitors can benefit greatly from this, as you can personalize their offers and provide relevant recommendations.

Remind your visitors what they can gain by creating a profile. When they arrive on your website, prompt them to create an account and offer them the right incentive to do it. 

eCommerce metrics and use case explorer

Check out our free interactive digital growth tool and learn what proven strategies and use cases you can implement to hit your goals. 


Srikant is a seasoned product marketing leader with 15+ years of experience in building and marketing SaaS products. As VP of Product Marketing at Insider, Srikant is responsible for Insider's product positioning, GTM and analyst relations. When not working on product marketing projects, Srikant loves exploring the design and engineering of things