The Best Post-Purchase Survey Question for New Shopify Customers: "How Did You First Hear About Us?"

If you’re running an online store on Shopify, one of the smartest ways to gain insight into your marketing efforts is by using a post-purchase survey. One simple yet powerful question you should be asking every new customer is: "How did you first hear about us?"

While it may seem like a basic question, the key lies in the phrasing. Asking how customers first heard about your Shopify store focuses on the moment when your brand initially caught their attention. This helps you identify which marketing channel was responsible for attracting new customers, allowing you to see what’s really working.

Why "First Hear" is Essential in Post-Purchase Surveys

In today's digital landscape, customers encounter your brand through multiple touchpoints before completing a purchase. Without honing in on how they first heard about your store, they may simply mention the last touchpoint—whether that was an email promotion, an ad, or a direct visit to your site—rather than the marketing channel that originally piqued their interest.

By using post-purchase surveys in your Shopify store and specifically asking about the first encounter, you gain valuable insights into the marketing channels that are driving the most awareness. This helps you avoid confusing last-touch data with the actual source of discovery, which could lead to incorrect conclusions about your marketing efforts.

How Post-Purchase Surveys Can Help You Understand Marketing Effectiveness

Post-purchase surveys are one of the most direct ways to gather feedback on which marketing strategies are working. Shopify store owners often rely on data from platforms like Google Analytics, Facebook Ads Manager, and email tracking, but these tools don’t always tell the full story—especially with the rise of cookie-blocking technologies. By complementing this tracking data with post-purchase survey responses, you gain clearer insight into where your customers are coming from.

Here’s how Shopify post-purchase surveys help:

• Identify key marketing channels: If the majority of customers say they first heard about your Shopify store through Instagram ads or organic search, you’ll know where to allocate more of your marketing budget.
• Optimize underperforming channels: If you’re spending heavily on paid search or influencer marketing but post-purchase survey data shows few customers are discovering you through these channels, it may be time to rethink your strategy.
• Track customer behavior changes: Over time, customer preferences and behaviors shift. A post-purchase survey helps you stay on top of which channels are consistently driving traffic to your Shopify store, and where new trends might be emerging.

The Limits of Data Tracking and Why Surveys Are Essential

Tracking tools like Google Analytics can provide useful insights into traffic and conversions, but they often fall short when it comes to attributing customer journeys accurately. With an increasing number of customers using ad blockers and disabling cookies, it’s harder to pinpoint the exact marketing channel that led to a sale. This can be a major challenge for Shopify store owners who want to understand their marketing effectiveness.

That’s where post-purchase surveys come in. By directly asking your customers how they first heard about your store, you gain valuable feedback that can fill in the gaps left by data tracking. Even when tracking pixels fail or cookies are blocked, your customers can tell you firsthand which marketing effort drew them in.

Conclusion

Using a post-purchase survey in your Shopify store is a simple but effective way to gain actionable insights into your marketing performance. Asking new customers "How did you first hear about us?" allows you to focus on the marketing channels that are successfully bringing in new traffic. With tracking data becoming less reliable due to cookie blockers, post-purchase surveys offer a crucial way to get direct feedback from customers on what marketing strategies are actually working.

By integrating post-purchase surveys into your Shopify store, you can make data-driven decisions to optimize your marketing efforts and grow your business.