What Is Purchase Intent? Signs a Shopper Is Ready

Stated, Searched or Shown: Three Uses of the Term

People use "purchase intent" to mean three different things:

Stated intent. A survey asks, "How likely are you to buy this?" People tend to say yes more often than they actually buy.
Search intent. This one comes from ads and SEO. Buyer intent keywords are searches from people close to buying, like "buy trail running shoes size 10."
Shown intent. What visitors actually do on your store. It's the kind that matters for offers, so it's the one we'll cover here.

Don't confuse any of these with exit intent, which is a sign someone's about to leave the page. Think of the mouse heading for the close button.

One Candle Shopper, Four Moments

Intent isn't fixed. It shifts during a single visit. Take one shopper on a candle store:

9:02. She taps an Instagram post and lands on a gift set. She's curious but not shopping yet, so intent is low.
9:05. She reads the scent notes and opens the reviews. Now it's climbing.
9:09. Two candles go in her cart and she starts checkout. Intent is high.
9:10. Shipping costs more than she guessed. She closes the tab.

At 9:10 she still liked the candles. A cost she didn't expect got in the way. If you'd tagged her with one fixed label, "low" or "high," you'd have missed the whole story.

Why Intent Matters More Than Visitor Count

Most visitors aren't anywhere near buying. Our data covers 958 Shopify stores and 24 million visitors, and about 8 of every 100 sessions reached the cart. The average conversion rate was 2.2%. That's how a busy store can still end up with few orders when most of its traffic is low intent. If that sounds like your store, read why a store gets traffic but no sales.

It also helps you decide who should get an offer:

High intent. They've already made up their mind. A discount just cuts your margin on a sale you'd likely get anyway.
Low intent. They're only browsing. An offer probably won't change much.
In between. Interested, but they might leave. These are walk-away customers, and they're where an offer has its best chance to help.

Want to get better at telling these groups apart? Our visitor intelligence guide to Shopify purchase intent goes deeper.

Where Purchase Intent Shows Up in Shopify

Shopify doesn't give each visitor an intent score. You see it in store-wide counts instead:

Analytics: sessions that added to cart, reached checkout and completed checkout. Each step is a stronger sign than the one before.
Abandoned checkouts: shoppers who started checkout in your store but didn't finish.

Analytics counts are about your whole store, not any one person. Abandoned checkouts do name the shopper, but only after they've left. If you want to act on a single shopper's intent while they're still on your site, you'll usually need an app.

Myth: A High-Intent Shopper Is a Sure Sale

High intent means someone wants to buy soon. That's not the same as a safe order. In our visitor data, 42% of carts moved on to checkout, and 57% of checkouts ended in a purchase. Plenty of shoppers left even that late. Keep in mind these are averages across stores, not a controlled test.

So when a ready shopper bails, don't jump straight to a bigger discount. It isn't always the answer. Look for points of friction first, like a surprise shipping fee or being forced to create an account.

How Growth Suite Uses Purchase Intent

Growth Suite is our app, and this idea sits at its core. It tracks products viewed, cart activity, checkout events and timing, then estimates how likely each visitor is to buy. That estimate is called purchase intent prediction.

If a visitor looks ready to buy, the app doesn't show them an offer. It only shows one to visitors who look less likely to buy, and only after signs of real interest like time on page or cart activity. The offer scales with intent, too. The more interested someone is, the smaller the discount and the shorter the timer, within limits you set.