Product Journey

Product Journey shows what a group of new customers buys first, second, third and so on. It follows each customer’s orders in turn and draws which product leads to which.

How It’s Calculated

The report starts from a cohort: every customer whose first order falls in the date range. It follows each customer’s orders in the order they were placed, up to 10 orders.

One product stands for each order, called its anchor: the line item with the highest Item Net Sales. If two tie, the one with more units wins, then the one with the lower Shopify product ID. An order with several products shows only its anchor.

The Purchase Sequence Flow diagram has one column for each purchase step: 1st order, 2nd order and so on. Each box is a product at that step. Each band is the number of customers who bought one product at one step and another at the next.

The Cards

  • Cohort Customers: the customers in the cohort, or in the part of it you’ve drilled into.
  • Repeat Purchase Rate: the share of those customers with more than 1 order.
  • Avg Orders per Customer: their orders divided by their number.
  • Cohort Item Net Sales: the Item Net Sales of their anchor products, after discounts. It isn’t the order total.

All four count orders up to the last step the diagram shows, so a lower Depth gives a lower Avg Orders per Customer. Once you’ve drilled through 2 steps, every customer in view has ordered twice, so Repeat Purchase Rate reads 100%.

The Table

Current Step Detail lists the products at the first step in view, with the biggest first and Other last. It’s Step 1 until you drill in. The columns are:

  • Product, or Variant when you group by variant.
  • Customers: the customers who bought it at this step.
  • Orders: the same number as Customers, because each customer has one order at a step.
  • Units: the units of the anchor product on those orders.
  • Item Net Sales: the anchor product’s sales after discounts.
  • AOV: Item Net Sales divided by Orders. It’s the average for the anchor product, not for the whole order.
  • % of Cohort: Customers as a share of the cohort in view.

Drilling In

Click a product in the first column of the diagram to see only the customers who bought it at that step, and what they bought next. The cards and the table follow. Other can’t be clicked, and neither can the later columns.

The trail above the diagram starts at All Customers and adds each product you chose. Click any part of it to go back.

Filter by Product (start the journey here) picks the first product directly. It’s there only when Group By is Product.

The Controls

  • Group By: Product or Variant. Changing it clears the trail. When you group by variant, a line item with no variant goes into Other.
  • Top Branches: how many products each column keeps before the rest are grouped into Other. The choices are Top 3, 5, 8 and 10, and the default is Top 10. The 3 most common next products of every box stay visible even when they rank lower.
  • Depth: how many steps the diagram shows, counted from the step you’re on. The choices are 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 10 steps, and the default is 5.
  • Segment, Sales Channel and Filters narrow the report down.

What Counts

  • The cohort is the customers whose first order that counts is in the date range. With a Sales Channel or Filters set, the first order that counts is the first one that matches them.
  • Orders that were canceled, or whose payment was voided or expired, don’t count. Neither do orders Shopify has no customer for.
  • Only orders placed in the date range count. A customer’s order after the end of the range isn’t shown, so the Repeat Purchase Rate is lower for a range that ended recently.
  • An order with no product line, such as one with only custom items, has no step. The customer’s next order keeps its number, so a column can be skipped. A customer whose first order has no product isn’t in the cohort.
  • Refunds and returns aren’t taken off.
  • Dates follow your store’s time zone, and every amount is in your store’s currency.
  • Results are saved for up to 30 minutes, so a new order can take that long to appear.

This report has no Compare control. If no customer placed a first order in the range, it shows No purchase journeys in this range.

What Good Looks Like

There’s no target. It depends on what you sell: a refill brings repeat orders, and a one-off purchase doesn’t.

Compare the Repeat Purchase Rate of different first products. Drill into each one and read the card. A first product with a higher rate than the rest brings in customers who come back.

A short range gives a small cohort and little time to reorder. A range of a year or more gives the early customers time to return.

What to Do About It

  • A first product with a high repeat rate: feature it in your ads and on your landing pages.
  • A first product with a low repeat rate: look at what its customers buy next, if anything, and offer that in a post-purchase email.
  • A next product many customers choose: bundle it with the first, or show it on the first product’s page. Products Purchased Together shows what sells in one order.
  • Customers who buy the same product again: it may be a refill. Product Repurchase Rate shows which products customers buy again.

Get AI Insight at the top of the report asks Copilot for a short read of it, for the date range and filters you chose. Pin to Dashboard adds the diagram for the whole cohort to a dashboard, with the Repeat Purchase Rate in its header. Export CSV saves the table for the step you’re on, when you can export data.

Where to Find It

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