At a glance
Customers in the database whose lifetime spend is £0 (have an account but no purchase). The dormant-account count; reveals signup-without-conversion friction or stale list inflation.
| What it counts | COUNT(customers WHERE numberOfOrders = 0 OR amountSpent.amount = 0). Denominator is total customer base; ratio surfaced as percentage. |
| VAT / tax treatment | Not applicable, count metric. |
| Shipping | Not applicable. |
| Discounts | Not applicable. |
| Refunds | A customer with one order fully refunded shows as zero spend (gross spend was non-zero, but Shopify’s amountSpent is net). |
| Cancelled / voided orders | Cancelled-pre-payment customers show as zero spend; consistent. |
| Currency | Not applicable. |
| Channels / sources | Customer-level state regardless of order channel. POS-walk-in customers with email-capture but no completed purchase appear here. |
| Time window | RT (real-time, computed from latest customer-state snapshot). |
| Alert trigger | >20% of base triggers zero_spend sentiment key. |
| Roles | owner, marketing |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Shopify data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A US activewear DTC brand on Shopify, ~32,000 customer base. Snapshot 12 May 26.| Cohort | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Customers with at least one order ever | 21,400 | 66.9% |
| Customers with zero spend (account-only) | 10,600 | 33.1% |
| Total customers | 32,000 | 100% |
33.1%, 13.1 ppt above the 20% threshold. Six things to notice:
- The alert is firing. 33% zero-spend is well above healthy norms. For a DTC apparel brand, target 10-25% zero-spend (room-for-acquisition without bloating list).
- The cohort is recoverable. 10,600 customers have an account but never bought; they signed up because of email-discount, contest entry, account-creation prompt, or download-gate. Most are recoverable with a welcome flow that converts to first purchase.
- Marketing-spend trap. If you pay Klaviyo or another email tool per active profile, 10k zero-spenders are dead weight. List-pruning saves cost and improves deliverability metrics.
- Recovery campaign opportunity. A reactivation campaign (welcome-discount + showcase products + social proof) targeting zero-spenders typically converts 2-5%. 10,600 customers × 3% = 318 incremental customers from a single campaign.
- Imported customer artifact. If you migrated from Mailchimp or another platform recently, many zero-spenders may be email-only subscribers, not Shopify customers in the conversion sense. Consider whether they should be tagged differently.
- The “zero spend” definition matters. A customer who bought £100 and refunded £100 shows as zero spend. Pair with order-history to differentiate “never bought” from “bought and fully refunded”.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Zero Spend is the dormant-account count. Companions:| Card | Why pair it with Zero Spend |
|---|---|
| Customer Count | Denominator. |
| Unverified Emails | Subset overlap; zero-spenders often haven’t opted in to marketing either. |
| New Customers | Inverse cousin; new customers convert from zero-spend to spend in 7-30 days post-signup. |
| Repeat Customer Rate | Customers convert from zero-spend (signup) → first-time → repeat over time. |
| Customer Trend | Aggregate growth; zero-spend share trend reveals signup-vs-conversion gaps. |
| Email Health | Aggregate email health; zero-spenders often have unhealthy email profiles. |
| Churn Risk | Different cohort; zero-spenders are pre-conversion, not at-risk. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Shopify Admin:Shopify Admin → Customers filtered by Number of orders is 0 OR Total spent is 0The most direct equivalent. Sum the matching count and divide by total customer count. Other Shopify Admin views:
- Customer segments: build a segment for “no purchases yet” customers.
- Apps like Klaviyo, Hubspot, Reactivate: their dashboards expose dormant cohorts and reactivation tools.
| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Customer linking | Either | Identity-resolution edge cases sometimes resolve in Shopify and not in our index. |
| Refund treatment | Either | A customer with all orders refunded shows as zero-spend in some Shopify views; behaviour depends on amountSpent field. |
| Sync lag | Either, transient | Customer-state updates lag 5-30 min during heavy edits. |
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
klaviyo.kl_inactive_subscribers (when connected) | Should overlap meaningfully | Klaviyo measures email-engagement-inactive; Shopify measures purchase-inactive. Different definitions; intersect for the highest-priority reactivation cohort. |
hubspot.hb_unconverted_leads | Indirect | CRM cousin for B2B-leaning brands. |
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
Why is my zero-spend rate so high? Three usual causes:- Email-capture popup-driven signups: customers signed up for the WELCOME10 code, never converted. Common; 60-80% of popup signups never buy.
- Account-creation gating: requiring account creation to access certain pages or features creates accounts without purchase intent.
- Email-list import: customers imported from Mailchimp / Klaviyo / past CRM with no purchase history.
- Acquisition-heavy DTC: 25-40%. Heavy popup-driven signups. The reactivation challenge is real.
- Subscription brands: 5-15%. Customers usually buy on first visit (subscription is the buy).
- Marketplace-cross-listed brands: 30-50%. Many email-only signups for offers.
- Hybrid retail with POS email-capture: 30-45%. In-store email captures often don’t convert online.
- Try reactivation campaign first: target with a strong offer (e.g. 25% off first order, free gift with purchase). Conversion typically 2-5%.
- Wait 6-12 months: if no conversion after multiple campaigns, the customer is unlikely to buy.
- Tier-based pruning: keep recent zero-spenders (<6 months); prune old (>12 months) without engagement.
- Welcome-flow review: confirm the welcome flow (1-3 emails) is firing for all signups. Optimise the discount code, social proof, hero products.
- Reactivation campaign: target zero-spenders aged 30-180 days with a stronger offer.
- Pruning policy: define when to prune (e.g. >12 months no purchase + no email engagement); execute quarterly.
- Signup-source tagging: use Shopify customer tags to identify popup vs other sources; lifetime conversion may differ by source.
- Cost monitoring: track per-active-customer marketing tool spend; rising zero-spend share inflates this.
- Conversion measurement: post-reactivation campaign, watch how many zero-spenders converted; refine offer based on results.