How to measure # of referrals or K-factor in ecommerce business?

[TurboBox]

Hey guys,

So one of the main indicators of a productocracy is word-of-mouth. But how can you measure this on a shopify store or on Google Analytics?

With repeat purchases and poor attribution on channels like Facebook ads, I'm struggling to find a way to measure and improve this.

Anyone solve this problem willing to share their solution?

 

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[alexkuzmov]

Hey guys,

So one of the main indicators of a productocracy is word-of-mouth. But how can you measure this on a shopify store or on Google Analytics?

With repeat purchases and poor attribution on channels like Facebook ads, I'm struggling to find a way to measure and improve this.

Anyone solve this problem willing to share their solution?

Have you checked for mentions of your site/products across websites or social media?

 

[Pink Sheep]

There are sites that measure your social presence, mentions of your trademark, you can look at sales beyond marketing.

 

[TurboBox]

Have you checked for mentions of your site/products across websites or social media?

Would prefer a hard metric like a k-factor that can be measured and improved

 

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[Pink Sheep]

Would prefer a hard metric like a k-factor that can be measured and improved

You can't.

 

[TurboBox]

You can't.

Rather than say you can't and disregard the metric completely, I'm sure there's a way you can measure it to some degree of accuracy.

If software companies look at k-factor, why shouldn't an ecommerce store?

 

[alexkuzmov]

Would prefer a hard metric like a k-factor that can be measured and improved

Well I would prefer a k-factor as well, but thats not likely to happen in e-commerce.
Word-of-mouth by its very nature is an audible channel.
The closest thing to this online if someone mentions your site and/or product somewhere.

To somewhat track this you could use: About Enhanced Ecommerce - Analytics Help in combination with Google Analytics.

This will give you the best chance to attribute a sale to a source.
You can then try and cross reference the source with found mentions.
Like I said, not likely to happen.

 

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[eramart]

If you have a lot of sales, you can do some kind of after purchase survey

 

[TurboBox]

Well I would prefer a k-factor as well, but thats not likely to happen in e-commerce.
Word-of-mouth by its very nature is an audible channel.
The closest thing to this online if someone mentions your site and/or product somewhere.

To somewhat track this you could use: About Enhanced Ecommerce - Analytics Help in combination with Google Analytics.

This will give you the best chance to attribute a sale to a source.
You can then try and cross reference the source with found mentions.
Like I said, not likely to happen.

Is there no way to track new customers through google analytics? If you could attribute new customer acquisitions to channels (not just any transaction, including repeat purchase), you could compare this to the total number of customers (viewable in shopify) to get a k-factor.

You can see new users in GA but I haven't found a way to view new customers.

Since this is already very close to the solution, I'm certain there's a workaround somehow...

 

[alexkuzmov]

Is there no way to track new customers through google analytics? If you could attribute new customer acquisitions to channels (not just any transaction, including repeat purchase), you could compare this to the total number of customers (viewable in shopify) to get a k-factor.

You can see new users in GA but I haven't found a way to view new customers.

Since this is already very close to the solution, I'm certain there's a workaround somehow...

Thats what the Enhanced Ecommerce is used for.
You need to have both Enhanced Ecommerce and GA integrated plus a product feed submitted to google (regularly updated)
Based on that in GA you get this:



This is a breakdown of one of the Traffic Channels.
You can go more indepth with custom graphs.

BUT again, this is close to having something like a k-factor metric.
New user based on channel doesnt mean new user for sure.
What if the user just had their cookies expire? Or delete them? Or open your shop from somewhere else?
You need to work more with probabilties and marketing and not so much with general analytics.
You could be easily mislead by the data.

 

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[maverick]

Create a Refer-a-Friend program with incentive.

 

[Pink Sheep]

Is there no way to track new customers through google analytics? If you could attribute new customer acquisitions to channels (not just any transaction, including repeat purchase), you could compare this to the total number of customers (viewable in shopify) to get a k-factor.

You can see new users in GA but I haven't found a way to view new customers.

Since this is already very close to the solution, I'm certain there's a workaround somehow...

You can track new users, new customers, and most their behaviour once they visited you, and compare numbers to trend of new customers VS marketing.
Why not spend all this energy on making a better product? Or doing a PR move?

 

[TurboBox]

You can track new users, new customers, and most their behaviour once they visited you, and compare numbers to trend of new customers VS marketing.
Why not spend all this energy on making a better product? Or doing a PR move?

My goal is to create a better product, but rather than rely on feedback saying "yes this is great!", I wanted a way to actually see that it's better (increasing the number of referrals per customer). For example, there's an ecommerce brand that does $200m+ per year and they say that each customer acquired is actually 1.4 customers. This sounds like they track their k-factor and monitor it closely

 

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[Johnny boy]

Hey guys,

So one of the main indicators of a productocracy is word-of-mouth. But how can you measure this on a shopify store or on Google Analytics?

With repeat purchases and poor attribution on channels like Facebook ads, I'm struggling to find a way to measure and improve this.

Anyone solve this problem willing to share their solution?

The thing about people telling other people is you’ll probably hear about it.

People make posts online about stuff. People write articles about stuff they find. People make YouTube videos about how to solve a problem by using your product.

If you’re small, you should just call these people. If you’re big, you would be seeing evidence of digital word of mouth if it was helping people