Where Do Customers Hear About Your Shopify Store?

If you're paying for ads, sending products to creators or putting time into content, you need to know which of those actually brings in buyers. Your reports give you one answer. Your buyers may give you a different one.

Why attribution misses the real decision point

Attribution tools credit a sale to the touchpoints they can see, most often the last click before the order. That's useful, but it isn't the same as where the shopper made up their mind.

A typical path might look like this. Someone watches a creator review your product on YouTube. A week later they talk about it with a friend. Then they search your store's name and buy. The last click is a branded search, so the sale looks like it came from search. The video that convinced them may get no credit at all.

Some channels are especially easy to miss:

• Video and creator content watched on another platform, often without a click.
• Word of mouth, such as friends, family, forums and group chats.
• Podcasts and offline mentions, with no link to click.
• Content seen on one device and bought on another.

Your analytics answer a narrower question: which tracked link came last? To learn where people decided, you have to ask them. Here's how to set up those conversations.

Post-purchase "where did you hear" questions

The simplest step is a single question after the order: "Where did you first hear about us?" You can ask it on the thank-you page (usually through a post-purchase survey app) or in a follow-up email.

To make the answers useful:

• Offer the channels you actually use, such as YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, a specific creator, search, a friend or a podcast.
• Always include "Other" with a text box. Some of the most useful answers are ones you'd never have listed.
• Keep it optional and short. One short question is easier to answer than five.
• Ask soon after the order, while the buyer still remembers.

Then read the answers every week, not once a quarter. Put the "Other" answers in a simple list and look for names that repeat: a creator, a newsletter, a forum thread. A name that keeps coming up is a channel worth a closer look, even if it never shows up in your reports.

This tells you where shoppers first heard of you. That's helpful, but it isn't the full picture.

Asking where they decided, not where they clicked

"Where did you first hear about us?" and "What made you decide to buy?" are different questions, and the second one can be worth more.

A buyer might first hear about you from an ad, then decide only after watching a long creator review that answered their doubts. If you only ask about the first touch, you'll credit the ad. If you ask about the decision, you'll learn that the review did the convincing.

In a short conversation with recent buyers, ask questions like:

• "Where were you when you decided to buy?"
• "What did you see or hear that made you sure?"
• "Was there anything you checked before ordering?"

Then follow up on the specifics. If they say "a YouTube video," ask which channel or creator, and what the video said that mattered. If they say "a friend," ask what the friend told them. These details tell you which claim actually sells your product and who is making it.

Write down their exact words. Compare the channels buyers name with what your analytics credit. Where the two disagree, you've found a channel that's doing more work than your reports show.

What to do with the answer: creator landing pages

Once you know where buyers decide, make that path easier.

If buyers say a particular creator or video convinced them, give that channel its own landing page:

• Repeat the claim that convinced them. If the creator's point was, say, "it's quiet enough for a bedroom," put that front and center, in plain words.
• Match the shopper's context. Someone arriving from a review already knows the basics. Skip the generic intro and answer the next question they're likely to have.
• Use a dedicated link or code for each creator, so future sales from that source are easier to see in your reports.
• Keep facts consistent. The landing page, product page and creator's claims should all agree. If a creator overstates something, don't repeat it.

The same idea applies to other channels buyers name. If many people mention a forum or a podcast, consider what someone arriving from there needs to see first.

Send Scout on it: "Where do my buyers decide?"

Here is how that question works as a Scout mission.

• The question: "Where do my buyers decide?"
• What Scout does: interviews recent buyers about where they made up their mind, and keeps their exact words.
• What comes back: a pattern such as "many buyers say they decided on YouTube, not on the store."
• What you might do next: build a landing page for each creator that repeats the claim that convinced their viewers.

Frequently asked questions