What Are Post-Purchase Flows?
Post-purchase flows are a powerful tool that allows you to engage customers after they make a purchase. You can use these flows to display personalized offers, recommend products, and foster customer loyalty. These interactions happen immediately after the purchase, enhancing the post-purchase experience and encouraging further conversions.
Benefits of Post-Purchase Flows
Increase conversions: Offer targeted recommendations or discounts to drive repeat purchases.
Upsell and cross-sell: Promote complementary or higher-value products that align with customers' recent purchases.
Boost customer loyalty: Provide personalized content or rewards to keep customers coming back.
Key Things to Know Before You Start:
Up to 40 Flows: You can create up to 40 post-purchase flows, and they can all be live simultaneously.
Flow Prioritization: Flows are evaluated from top to bottom. The first flow that matches the customer's criteria will be displayed.
Evaluation Sequence: Rebuy goes through flows in list order, starting at the top.
Rule Matching: A customer enters the first flow whose widget rules match their transaction.
Single Trigger: Only one flow can trigger per transaction.
Example:
Flow A - Does not match
Flow B - Does match and WILL respond (present the offer)
Flow C - Is not evaluated
Widget Setup: Ensure that you've set up and activated your post-purchase widgets within Shopify before starting.
Video tutorial
This step by step video will walk you through how to set up a post-purchase widget, post-purchase flow, and how to enable Rebuy as your post-purchase provider in Shopify.
Step 1: Create Your Post-Purchase Widget
Before building your post-purchase flows, you'll need to set up a widget to display your offers. Follow our guide to build a widget, and then proceed to the next steps below.
Step 2: Create a New Post-Purchase Flow
Navigate to the Post-Purchase Flows page in Rebuy.
Click "New Flow", and give it a name.
Once created, you’ll be taken to the flow workspace, where you can select the widget(s) to display.
Choose your preferred widget(s) from the dropdown menu and click Save.
Tip: You can create multiple flows and have them live at once, but make sure each flow is properly prioritized based on your goals.
Reminder, you can have up to 40 flows built and all of them can be live at once. The post-purchase flows will be prioritized from a top down approach. In layman's terms, it will act as a large data source ruleset. When activated, all the flows will be assessed from the top to the bottom, displaying the one that meets the criteria first.
Step 3: Activate Your Flow
To make your flow live:
Go back to the main Post-Purchase Flows page.
Toggle the flow to active.
Complete Step 3 in the guide to enable Rebuy as your post-purchase provider within Shopify.
Managing Multiple Flows
Once you’ve set up multiple flows, they will appear in two sections: Active Flows and Inactive Flows.
To activate an inactive flow, simply drag it into the active section or toggle it on.
You can rearrange the order of active flows by clicking and dragging, adjusting their priority.
If you haven't created multiple flows yet, simply follow the aforementioned steps again to build them according to your preferences.
Configuration Tips and Best Practices
Specificity Matters: Design rules within widgets precisely to avoid overlaps.
Testing: Test your flows by simulating transactions to confirm the correct flow is triggered.
Flow Sequencing: Regularly review and adjust the order of flows to align with shifting priorities or product campaigns.
Enabling Additional Flows
You can have up to 40 active flows at once. There are two ways to enable them:
Drag and Drop: Click and drag the flow from the "Inactive" section to the "Active" section.
Toggle: Simply toggle the flow to "Live" to activate it.
Adjusting Flow Priorities
You can easily adjust the priority of your active flows by clicking and dragging them. This allows you to control the order in which they’re evaluated.
The evaluation process works like a data source rule: all flows are considered at the same time, but only the first flow that matches the customer’s situation will be presented.If the items in the customer's order do not match the rules of one flow, Rebuy evaluates the next flow in sequence until a match is found.
Upsell and Downsell Post-Purchase Offers
This guide explains post-purchase checkout extensions, which let merchants add extra steps to the post-purchase experience. These extensions display multiple offers based on whether the customer accepts or declines the initial offer.
Testing Your Flows
Once you've created your flows, assigned widgets, and set them to active, it's time to test them.
Testing Steps:
Add Items to Cart: Go to your store and add items that should trigger the initial offer widget in one of your flows.
Open Developer Tools: Proceed to checkout and open your browser's developer tools:
Right-click on the page and select Inspect.
In the developer tools window, click on the Console tab.
(See image below for reference)
Review Flow Information: Look for a printout titled Rebuy Post-Purchase Flows and expand the table view.
In the table, you'll find:
The priority of your flows.
Each flow ID for easy identification.
A true/false value indicating whether your cart items match that flow.
The widget ID for the initial offer widget of each flow.
At the bottom, you’ll see which flow ID will be displayed. Use the printout to verify your flows are working correctly. If needed, adjust your rules to ensure the flows are triggered in the correct order.
Flows are read from top to bottom. The first flow to match is the flow the customer will see. In the image above, the cart items matched true on flow 9416 and flow 9719. Flow 9416 matched first, so that flow will be shown.
Third-party Tool Integration
When integrating Rebuy's post-purchase flows with third-party platforms like fulfillment systems, you may encounter some challenges.
Common Integration Challenges
A common issue occurs when third-party platforms retrieve order information before post-purchase workflows in Shopify fully update the order. This can cause post-purchase offers that customers accepted not to appear in the fulfillment system. If you're using a third-party fulfillment system with post-purchase flows:
Work with your fulfillment platform to monitor the
fulfillable_quantityfield or whatever they use to trigger the fulfillment for each order.Consider asking your fulfillment provider to set a delay in pulling data from Shopify to ensure accepted offers are part of the fetched data. This is a known limitation with Shopify's post-purchase workflow and fulfillment applications.
Viewing the Live Post-Purchase Offer
To view the live post-purchase offer, you must place a test order. This is because the post-purchase page is behind Shopify's paywall and can’t be accessed otherwise.
Two-Step Process to See the Post-Purchase Offer:
Step 1: Rebuy Requirement
Checkout with items that match a data source in your post-purchase flow.
Step 2: Shopify Requirement
The order must meet all of Shopify’s post-purchase limitations.
Advanced Features
A/B Testing Post-Purchase Flows
Rebuy allows you to A/B test your post-purchase flows. This helps identify the best-performing offers for maximum conversion rates. Learn more about A/B testing here.
FAQ
What is the Additional Analytic Event Delay?
By default, there's a 500ms delay to allow pixels to execute fully. This is useful for tracking purposes, especially when using pixel tracking for post-purchase analytics.
When will I see performance metrics?
Metrics like Total Visitors, Revenue, and Conversion will appear on the Active Flows page within 10-15 minutes after setting your flow live.