CRM for online stores: what to track and how to start

Most guides to CRM were written for companies with salespeople: a deal, a meeting, a quote, a signature. In an online store the story runs the other way. Most customers buy without talking to anyone, the money is in the second and third purchase, and the most important information about a customer already sits in their orders. That is why a CRM for online stores has to start from the store, not from a sales pipeline. This article explains how a store differs from a service business, which customer data to bring together, how to connect a CRM to the store, what to do with the data so customers return, and how to get started in a week.

CRM for online stores vs a general CRM

In a general CRM the central unit is the deal: a salesperson opens it, moves it through stages and closes it. That suits a software company or a service provider, where each customer is worth a lot and a sale takes weeks. A broader explanation of CRM types and how they differ from other systems is in the guide to customer relationship management.

In an online store the picture is different:

• The order is the central event, and it is created by itself at checkout, with no salesperson.
• There are many customers, each worth relatively little, so you cannot handle each one by hand. You need segments and automation.
• Profit comes from repeat customers. A customer who bought once and never returned cost you their full acquisition cost and did not pay it back.
• Some inquiries do need personal handling: a wholesale order, corporate gifts or a custom product request. Those are leads, and they need to be managed separately. If the store also sells to businesses, read about the differences in B2B sales.

Customer data for an online store

The base is order history: every order, from every store, with date and amount. Without it there is no store CRM. Segments, tags and open inquiries are built on top of it.

RFM segments: three numbers per customer

Each customer has three numbers: when they last ordered, how many times they ordered, and how much they spent in total. Together these are known in marketing as RFM (recency, frequency, monetary), and they are enough to split customers into useful groups:

The higher the total spent, the more attention a customer deserves. That is the basis of customer lifetime value (LTV), and customers who stop buying are what gets measured as churn.

Tags and open inquiries

• Tags. Manual labels the data cannot work out by itself: "wholesale", "influencer", "asked not to be messaged". Keep the list short and agreed.
• Open inquiries. People who have not bought yet but asked for a quote or left their details. We cover building that process in the article on lead management.

CRM for WooCommerce and Shopify

The connection to the store is the difference between a live CRM and a list that goes stale. Three questions to check:

1. What comes across? Customers and orders are a must. Products help when you want to segment by what a customer bought.
2. How is a customer identified? Where customers shop through messaging, the phone number is often the most reliable key. A system that matches by email only will split a customer who once used a work address and once a personal one.
3. What happens with several stores? If you run more than one store, check whether you can see all customers in one list and filter by store.

What not to bring across: old contact lists without marketing consent and without history. They grow the count, not the value.

Customers who buy by phone or chat

In many stores some sales close in a conversation rather than at the site's checkout. If those orders are not recorded in the same system, your most engaged customers, the ones who bother to write or call, will look in the CRM as if they never bought. What to do:

• Open those as orders in the system too, with the same phone number, so they join the same customer record.
• Total spent and last order date stay accurate, because every purchase counts.
• Your segments do not miss them, and they get the treatment repeat customers deserve.

Repeat purchases from existing customers

A CRM nobody uses is an expensive spreadsheet. These are the uses that pay back in a store:

• Encouraging a second order. A few days after a first order, a message with a tip for using the product or a suggestion for a matching one.
• Looking after loyal customers. A VIP tag, so when such a customer writes, whoever answers sees it right away.
• Winning back at-risk customers. A list of people who bought a lot and have not ordered in a while, and a personal message to them.
• Handling large inquiries. A wholesale order or corporate gifts go in as a lead, with a status and an estimated value, until they become an order.
• Dividing the work. "Call the customer who wants to swap a size" is a task with an owner and a date, not a message lost in the team's group chat.

Every marketing message goes only to customers who agreed to receive it. Check the consent rules that apply where your customers are.

Example: a cosmetics store and the second order

A natural cosmetics store finds that most of its customers buy only once. This is how it builds a path to a second order:

1. A message after two weeks. It goes only to customers for whom this was their first order, with a short note on how to use what they bought and an offer to help.
2. A personal reply. Customers who reply get an answer from a team member who can see beside the chat what they ordered.
3. Exclusion by tag. Customers tagged "wholesale" are left out, because the store talks to them differently.
4. Measurement. After two months it compares how many new customers ordered again with the period before.

Common store CRM mistakes

• Building the CRM around a sales pipeline when most customers never pass through one.
• Sending everyone the same message. A loyal customer and someone who bought once a year ago need different approaches.
• Leaving large inquiries in the personal chat of whoever answered, instead of opening a lead for them.
• Measuring only sales. The number of customers who came back to buy says more about the store's health than one month's revenue.

Setting up a store CRM in a week

1. Connect the store so customers and orders come in by themselves.
2. Check for duplicates among your twenty biggest customers, and make sure each appears once.
3. Agree on tags, five at most.
4. Set up one lead source, usually the form you already have on the site.
5. Set up one automation, for example a message after a first order.
6. Decide who owns new leads and open tasks, and when they get reviewed.

Ecommerce CRM in StoreChart

StoreChart connects to WooCommerce and Shopify stores, and their customers and orders come into it. Here is each part:

• Customer record: in customer management each customer has contact details, tags, order history and charges.
• Customer list: order count, total spent and last order date, with search, a store filter and CSV export. When you run several stores, you see all customers in one list.
• Automations: WhatsApp automations can run a set time after an order and check conditions such as the customer's tags, number of orders and total spent. That lets you message only customers after their first order, or only customers with a particular tag.
• Leads: in the Leads module you work inquiries on a status board and convert a lead to a customer and an order.
• Tasks: in the Tasks module the team divides the work.

All the parts together make up the StoreChart CRM.

What's not included

To know in advance:

• The customer record has no activity timeline, and no button that opens a WhatsApp chat. In the WhatsApp inbox itself, a panel beside the chat shows the contact's orders and open leads.
• No email marketing.
• No lead scoring, and no importing leads from a file.