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Metrics type: Supporting Metrics • Category: Ecommerce Platform

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At a glance

The count of customers in the database who have never placed a paying order, despite having a customer record (account created, signed up to newsletter, captured at popup, registered for a wishlist). On BigCommerce, customer records can be created through multiple paths: account registration, guest-checkout, newsletter signup, abandoned-cart capture, B2B Edition account creation. Many of these paths create a customer record without ever generating an order. Zero-spend customers are not necessarily a problem; they’re an opportunity inventory. The question is conversion: how many of them will eventually buy, and what’s the right re-engagement strategy?

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Calculation

Calculated automatically from your BigCommerce data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

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Worked example

A US apparel brand on BigCommerce, snapshot 13 May 26. Customer base of 28,400 records. What’s interesting:
  1. Popup signup zero-spend at 85% is normal. Newsletter capture customers convert at 12-20% within 90 days; the 85% who haven’t converted are still warm prospects. Don’t write them off; nurture with email content.
  2. Abandoned cart capture at 68% zero-spend means recovery campaigns are recovering ~32% of carts. This is healthy (industry benchmark is 25-40%). The 68% who didn’t convert are difficult; they bounced for a reason (price, shipping cost, indecision).
  3. B2B Edition at 70% zero-spend is structural. B2B sales cycles are long; quote-request to first-order can take 30-90 days. Most zero-spend B2B accounts will eventually convert if nurtured.
  4. Account registration at 19.6% zero-spend suggests a healthy account-create-to-purchase flow. The 1,800 zero-spend registered are typically: registered during checkout abandonment, or registered for wishlist / saved cart.
  5. Total zero-spend at 24.4% of base is below the 30% alert threshold. Healthy. The composition tells the story: nurture popup-capture and B2B; the rest is normal noise.
Action playbook this card surfaces:
  1. Trigger nurture flows by acquisition source. Popup-signup customers need different content than abandoned-cart customers; use Klaviyo or Mailchimp segmentation.
  2. Set up a 90-day-no-purchase re-engagement campaign. Customers approaching 90 days without ordering get a one-time discount or content offer.
  3. Audit B2B Edition pipeline regularly. Long zero-spend tails on B2B are normal but warrant CRM attention; assign account managers, schedule outreach, qualify intent.
  4. Don’t aggressively cull zero-spend records. A customer who hasn’t bought in 12 months but opens emails has value; segment, don’t delete.
  5. Pair with BC New Customers to understand acquisition pace; high zero-spend rate combined with high acquisition pace = healthy pipeline; low pace = stale list.
  6. Cross-reference Email Health to confirm zero-spend customers are reachable; unverified or bounced addresses contribute to zero-spend without being recoverable.

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Sibling cards merchants should reference together

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Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look in BigCommerce’s own dashboard: BC doesn’t expose a zero-spend rollup natively. The closest tools:
  • Customer list filter: BC Control Panel → Customers → View Customers, filter by “Number of orders = 0”. This is the directly-comparable view.
  • Customer export: Settings → Data Solutions → Export → Customers, with order-count column. Pivot in spreadsheet.
  • Klaviyo / Mailchimp segments: The email marketing tool typically has a “Never purchased” segment that overlaps closely with this card.
Why our number may legitimately differ from the vendor’s: Cross-connector reconciliation (when both connectors are connected for this merchant):

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Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Should I delete zero-spend customers? Generally no. Zero-spend customers may convert later (popup-signup customers convert at 12-20% within 90 days; abandoned-cart customers at 25-40%). Segment, don’t delete. The exception: customers with bounced emails AND zero spend AND >12 months inactive can be safely removed. Why is my zero-spend rate so high? Three usual causes: (1) heavy popup-signup capture (which structurally inflates zero-spend), (2) abandoned cart capture (most of these don’t convert), (3) B2B Edition signups (long sales cycle). All are normal in the right proportions. Above 50% blended is unusual; investigate the customer-creation flows. Can I trigger a re-engagement campaign automatically? Yes via Klaviyo or BC’s email automation. Common pattern: “If customer is registered for 30+ days with zero orders, send Welcome Series Part 2 with a 10% discount”. Conversion rates are typically 8-15% on this flow. My popup-signup zero-spend rate is 90%, is the popup not working? 85-95% is industry-normal for popup signups. Email capture is high-volume / low-conversion; the 5-15% who eventually buy are the ROI of the popup. Don’t optimise for zero-spend rate; optimise for popup-signup-to-purchase conversion within a window. Should B2B Edition customers be excluded from this card? Often yes for analytical purposes (B2B sales cycles distort the data), but include them for total-customer-pipeline view. Use channel filter: “show zero-spend for DTC channels only”. Why is my POS customer count showing zero-spend? POS data integrity issue. The POS sale was processed but the customer record’s order_count didn’t increment (a known BC POS bug in some configurations). Audit Settings → POS → Customer Linking; ensure POS sales are linked to BC customer records. My zero-spend % dropped 8pp this month, what changed? Possible reasons: (1) customer cleanup (you removed inactive customers from the database), (2) successful nurture campaign converting popup-signup customers, (3) Black-Friday-like event where zero-spend customers all bought at once. Check BC New Customers and Customer Trend for correlation. Are abandoned-cart customers in this card? Yes if they have a customer record (email captured) but no purchase. Abandoned cart capture creates the customer record; if they don’t recover the cart, they show as zero-spend. Why does this card not show recent newsletter subscribers from yesterday? Sync lag of 15-30 minutes on customer record updates. Yesterday’s subscribers should be in by today; if not, check Settings → Integrations for sync errors. Does this respect customer-group filters? Yes via Ask Viq: “zero-spend customers in customer_group_id 5 over last 90 days”. Useful for B2B-specific analysis. Should I treat zero-spend as a marketing-budget priority? Depends on quantity and quality. If you have 10,000 zero-spend warm prospects, a 0.05/emailnurturecampaigncosts0.05/email nurture campaign costs 500 and converts 1,000 customers at the long-term LTV. The right denominator for ROI is acquisition cost saved, not direct conversion. My Klaviyo “never purchased” count is much higher than this card, why? Klaviyo aggregates from many sources beyond BC (popup, signup forms, integrations, custom imports); BC only counts customer records in the BC database. Klaviyo’s count > BC’s by definition; the difference is non-BC-sourced subscribers. Can I see customer-record age for zero-spend? Yes via Ask Viq: “show zero-spend customers grouped by record age”. Useful for separating “warm” (created in last 30 days) from “cold” (created >12 months ago). Should I run a “we miss you” campaign at 90 days? Yes. The 90-day no-purchase mark is the standard tipping point; conversion rate from re-engagement is highest at 60-90 days, drops sharply after 180 days. Set this up as a Klaviyo / Mailchimp automation triggered by BC customer record age.

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Customers with Zero Spend is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across BigCommerce and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.