What Is a Purchase Insight Report? How Buyers Decide

The Three Numbers in a Purchase Insight Report

Most store reports just count things, like visits or sales. A purchase insight report starts at each order and works backward to see how that buyer got there. It usually boils down to three numbers:

Time to purchase: the days between a buyer's first visit and their order.
Sessions before purchase: how many visits they made before buying. A session is one visit to your store.
Products viewed before purchase: how many product pages they looked at along the way.

Shopify's analytics overview gives you totals like sessions, sales and conversion rate. That's how many people bought. This report is about how they made up their minds.

Why Buying Time Changes How You Judge Products

Plenty of shoppers don't buy on their first visit. They leave and compare, then come back once they've thought it over. If you only look at same-day sales, a product with slow, careful buyers can look like a flop.

Say you sell $24 candles and $210 diffusers. Your report shows most candle buyers order on their first visit. Diffuser buyers come back about four times over a week. That doesn't mean the diffusers are failing. People just take longer to decide on them.

This matters when you plan offers. Someone who's still deciding isn't the same as someone who's ready to buy now. We cover that gap in our page on how dedicated buyers differ from walk-away customers.

When the Average Hides the Real Pattern

Time to purchase is often shown as an average. But one slow buyer can drag that average a long way from what most people did.

Example: Five orders came in this week. The buyers took 0, 0, 1, 2 and 27 days from first visit to order.

Average: (0 + 0 + 1 + 2 + 27) ÷ 5 = 30 ÷ 5 = 6 days
Median (the middle value when you line them up): 1 day

Four of the five decided within two days, and nobody took six. If you can see the median or the spread, look at it before you act on the average.

A couple of other things can throw the numbers off. Tracking usually ties visits together through the browser. So a shopper who browses on a phone and buys on a laptop can show up as a one-visit buyer. Small samples swing hard, too. Ten orders in a month is too few to trust a pattern.

Purchase Insight Report vs. Funnel Report

A funnel report shows where visitors drop off between steps, like going from a product page to the cart. A purchase insight report only looks at people who made it all the way to an order. The funnel tells you where you're losing people, and this report tells you how long your buyers take. You'll get more out of them if you read them side by side.

Slow Buying Doesn't Mean Something's Broken

It's easy to see "4 sessions over 6 days" and assume your store has a problem. Often that's just how people shop for pricier or less familiar items. The report shows what buyers did, not why they waited. And since it only covers people who bought, it can't tell you anything about shoppers who left for good.

Be careful with patterns that look like cause and effect. Buyers who view more products may also take longer. That doesn't mean showing more products slows people down. Both could just come from a bigger decision.

How Growth Suite Handles Purchase Insights

Growth Suite (our app) has a Purchase Insight Report in its analytics, right next to its Funnel Report and Cart Insights Report. The app records each visitor's timestamps, product views, cart activity and checkout events. It can also segment return visitors. That way you can use what you learn about buying time when you pick who sees an offer.

Want the three numbers in more detail, plus how to act on them? See our purchase insights guide on time to purchase.