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Product Stickiness: which products customers buy again
Stickiness measures how often the same customer comes back to buy the same product. Nexus compares each product with the rest of your own catalog, not with an outside benchmark. To open it, go to Insights > Products > Product Stickiness.
Problem and intended user
The retention marketer (the person who runs email and repeat-purchase campaigns) needs to know which products customers reorder. The ecommerce manager (the person who runs the store) needs the same answer to decide which products suit a refill offer, a subscription or a loyalty push. Without it, you can send reorder messages for products that people buy once, and miss the products that already bring buyers back.
Current workflow
Without Nexus, you export orders from Shopify admin reports into a spreadsheet. You group the lines by customer and product, then count the customers who bought the same product more than once. You divide by the customers who bought it at all, and you repeat this for every product. You then compare each result with your own average by hand.
Prerequisites
- Your order history must be imported. Until it is, the tab explains what it will show once the import ends.
- Your store needs repeat purchases. A store with no repeat buyers has every product marked Transactional.
- To recompute on demand, you need enough credits. Credits and top-ups explains how credits work. The Billing page shows the current cost and your balance.
How Nexus works
Nexus reads your order history and applies fixed rules. For each product, it measures the share of its customers who bought it again. It then compares that rate with the average of the products on the chart. Every category is therefore relative to your store. The KEY INSIGHT text at the bottom is written by AI. If the AI step fails, Nexus shows a simpler text built from the numbers.
Nexus can refresh stickiness on its own, about once a week. Use Compute Stickiness to recompute now.
Filter by minimum orders
The Min. orders slider hides products with fewer orders than the value you set. The slider starts at 15 when at least one product has 15 orders. Otherwise it starts at 1. Raise it to remove products with too little data. Lower it to see more of the catalog.
INFO
The average and the threshold change when you change Min. orders. The categories change with them.
Recompute stickiness
WARNING
Compute Stickiness uses credits. A credit badge next to the button shows the estimated cost before you start. Nexus can ask you to confirm first.
To recompute now, for example after a large order import:
- Open Insights > Products > Product Stickiness.
- Check the credit badge next to Compute Stickiness.
- Select Compute Stickiness. Confirm if Nexus asks.
- Wait while the button shows progress. You can leave the tab. The job keeps running, and a Computing stickiness… chip shows in the bottom-right corner of the page.
When the job ends, the chart and table reload with the new results. The recompute depends on your order history already being imported.
Exact output
The page opens with a summary card. It counts the products with a repeat rate of 50% or more and lists the top three. This card uses its own fixed bar. It does not use the four categories below, so its count can differ from the table.
The chart
Under the card, a line gives the number of products, the Avg repeat rate and the Anomaly threshold. The scatter chart plots each product:
- The horizontal axis is Customers, on a log scale.
- The vertical axis is Repeat rate %.
- A dashed line marks the average. A second dashed line marks the anomaly threshold.
Hover a dot to see the Repeat rate, Customers, Avg predicted revenue, Orders/cust. and AOV of that product. Avg predicted revenue is Nexus's model estimate of what a buyer will spend over their lifetime. It is revenue, not profit.
The four categories
The anomaly threshold is a repeat rate well above the average of the products on the chart. The header line prints its value.
| Category | Rule |
|---|---|
| Highly Sticky | Repeat rate at or above the anomaly threshold, on enough customers to rely on. |
| Moderately Sticky | Repeat rate clearly above the average, on a larger number of customers. |
| Low Stickiness | Repeat rate at or above the anomaly threshold, but on too few customers. The name does not mean a low repeat rate. The signal is real but too thin to rely on. |
| Transactional | No meaningful repeat signal. The table shows a dash. |
Select the info icon next to What these mean under the chart, or next to Category in the table, for the same rules in the app.
The table
Below the chart, a table lists the products. It shows Repeat %, Customers, Orders, Avg predicted revenue, AOV, Revenue and Category. When the tab loads every product, the flagged products come first, then the others, each group by repeat rate. A dash in Avg predicted revenue means there are too few buyers for a reliable average.
Click a product name to open its Product detail. On a very large catalog, the tab loads only the products with the highest repeat rates, and the table lists them by repeat rate. The average, the anomaly threshold and the categories are then based on those products only.
A KEY INSIGHT box at the bottom sums up the result in a few lines and may add a recommendation.
What to do with it
| What you see | Decision or action | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| A Highly Sticky product | Use it in reorder reminders, refill offers or loyalty campaigns. You send these from your email tool, outside Nexus. | retention marketer |
| A Moderately Sticky product | Test a reorder message on it, then watch the result. | retention marketer |
| A Low Stickiness product | Wait for more customers before you act. The signal is too thin to rely on. | ecommerce manager |
| A Transactional product (a dash in Category) | Do not plan repeat campaigns around it. Look at other ways to grow its sales, such as bundles. | ecommerce manager |
| A Highly Sticky product that few ads promote | Consider promoting it to bring in new buyers who may return. The ads run outside Nexus, in Meta Ads Manager or Google Ads. | media buyer (the person who runs your paid ads) |
| The credit badge next to Compute Stickiness | Decide whether to recompute now, or wait. | ecommerce manager |
Expected value and measurement
Stickiness can help you aim repeat-purchase effort at the products that already bring buyers back. It can also help you avoid effort on products that sell once.
To check the effect:
- After you run a reorder campaign for a product, return to Insights > Products > Product Stickiness after the next recompute. Compare its Repeat % with the value before the campaign.
- For the customers behind it, see Insights > Customers > Repurchase Signals.
- For ads that promote a sticky product, compare their results in Performance > Ad performance.
Warning: a short window, a sale or a change in traffic can move the repeat rate on its own. Nexus cannot isolate the effect of one campaign from these changes.
Limitations and exceptions
- Every category is relative to your own catalog. A Highly Sticky product here is not a claim about other stores.
- Avg predicted revenue is a model estimate. A dash in that column or in the tooltip means there are too few buyers for a reliable average.
- The KEY INSIGHT text is written by AI and can be wrong. Check it against the table.
- If you have no data yet, the tab shows "No stickiness data yet" and a Compute Stickiness button. The empty state says stickiness appears once your store has enough repeat-purchase history. The first analysis can arrive on its own once Nexus has imported your order history. The empty state also mentions a Refresh Data control. Use Compute Stickiness on this tab.
- While a first analysis runs, the tab shows "Analyzing repeat-purchase behaviour". Wait for it to finish.
- If your balance is too low for Compute Stickiness, Nexus offers a top-up instead of starting the job.
- In Demo Mode, Compute Stickiness is simulated. It does not recompute anything.