Measuring Which Products Drive Stickiness

Your products are the soul of your brand! When evaluating product performance, a powerful metric to look at is its impact on stickiness. Stickiness refers to the degree to which customers engage with your brand and products and how deeply they are integrated into their daily lives. Products with a high impact on stickiness establish strong user habits, become seamlessly integrated into consumers' routines, and foster customer loyalty.

Stickiness also indicates the ability of your products to meet consumer needs and maintain long-term engagement. Understanding your products' impact on stickiness is essential to developing effective retention strategies, as it reveals which products keep your customers coming back to your brand and making repeat purchases. Let's explore how RetentionX assesses the impact of your products on stickiness.
 

What is Stickiness?

Stickiness measures how effectively your products retain customers and encourage repeat purchases. Typically, you should distinguish between product stickiness and brand stickiness:

• Brand stickiness: This refers to how well a product keeps customers shopping with your brand, even when they buy different products the next time. It shows that the product helps build a strong overall connection to your brand.
   

• Product stickiness: This refers to how much a product becomes a part of your customers' lives. It tracks how often customers return to buy the same product, indicating that they really like and rely on it. While this may not be relevant at the product level for all industries, such as apparel and fashion, it certainly is at the category or brand level.
   

How RetentionX Measures Stickiness

Under Analyze → Product Overview you’ll find all metrics needed to understand product performance, including their impact on brand and product stickiness. Of course, you'll also find the same KPIs for at a variant, category and brand level.

Brand Stickiness
To understand the impact of your products on repeat purchases, RetentionX analyzes all orders that contain the product in question and checks what happened after the purchase, meaning whether the customer came back for another or stopped shopping at your store - no matter what order the product was in, whether it was the first, fifth, or any other.

The following two metrics are calculated based on this:

• Follow-Up Orders
  The number of orders including the product under consideration that led to another purchase - no matter which products have been shopped afterwards.

• Follow-Up Rate
  The percentage of orders including the product under consideration that led to another purchase - again, no matter which products have been shopped afterwards.
  

In the above example, the VITAMIN D3 + K2 has been part of 45,972 orders over time - some of these orders may even contain more than one item of the product. By mapping all customer journeys, we know that 19,430 of these orders resulted in a repeat purchase, meaning that customers shopped again at the store. In percentage terms, this means that 42% of all VITAMIN D3 + K2 orders made customers come back.

Although the PROBIOTIC + PREBIOTIC was part of far fewer orders, we can see that its impact on brand stickiness is the highest, as 58% of all orders that included this product resulted in an additional order.
 

Product Stickiness
To understand how your products affect repeat purchases of the same product, RetentionX analyzes all orders that contain the product in question and checks to see if the same product was purchased over and over again - again, regardless of the order in which the product was included, whether it was the first, fifth, or any other order.

The following two metrics are calculated based on this:

• Replenishment Orders
  The number of orders including the product under consideration that led to another purchase of the same product.

• Replenishment Rate
  Percentage of orders including the product under consideration that led to another purchase of the same product.

  Please note that it doesn't necessarily have to be the next order that contains the same product again.

  

We have already learned that the PROBIOTIC + PREBIOTIC has been part of 27,041 orders over time and that 58% of these orders resulted in a repeat purchase. After checking which products were purchased subsequently, we see that 13,823 of all PROBIOTIC + PREBIOTIC orders resulted in a repeat order of the same product - making 51% of all these orders brought your customers back to purchase PROBIOTIC + PREBIOTIC again.

Examples

Once you've identified the products that drive customer satisfaction and loyalty, it's time to give them visibility and place them where your audience can easily see them. Whether it's adding these products to organic social feeds, featuring them in newsletters, or merchandising them to be front and center on your store, you want to make sure your customers are discovering and buying products that drive stickiness. But first, let's take a look at some examples to get familiar with the math!

Sam
So far, Sam has placed three orders to try different products. She first ordered the VITAMIN D3 + K2, purchased the MAGNESIUM GLYCINATE in her second order, and chose the PROBIOTIC + PREBIOTIC in her most recent order.

If we were to calculate brand and product stickiness for the VITAMIN D3 + K2 using only her data, it would look like this:

• Orders: Orders including VITAMIN D3 + K2 = 1

Brand Stickiness 

• Follow-up Orders: Orders incl. VITAMIN D3 + K2 leading to another order = 1

• Follow-up Rate: Share of Orders incl. VITAMIN D3 + K2 leading to another order = 100%

Product Stickiness 

• Replenishment Orders: Follow-up Orders incl. VITAMIN D3 + K2 again = 0

• Replenishment Rate: Share of Follow-up Orders incl. VITAMIN D3 + K2 = 0%
   

Will
Will has also purchased three times so far, but has stuck with the MAGNESIUM GLYCINATE after purchasing it in his first order. Will seems to be satisfied with the product and has become loyal to it.

If we were to calculate brand and product stickiness for the MAGNESIUM GLYCINATE using only his data, it would look like this:

• Orders: Orders including MAGNESIUM GLYCINATE = 3

Brand Stickiness 

• Follow-up Orders: Orders incl. MAGNESIUM GLYCINATE leading to another order = 2

• Follow-up Rate: Share of Orders incl. MAGNESIUM GLYCINATE leading to another order = 66.67%

Product Stickiness 

• Replenishment Orders: Follow-up Orders incl. MAGNESIUM GLYCINATE again = 2

• Replenishment Rate: Share of Follow-up Orders incl. MAGNESIUM GLYCINATE = 66.67%

But let's say Will's journey was a little different and his second order was the VITAMIN D3 + K2 instead of the MAGNESIUM GLYCINATE.

If we were to calculate brand and product stickiness for the MAGNESIUM GLYCINATE using only his data, it would look like this:

• Orders: Orders including MAGNESIUM GLYCINATE = 2

Brand Stickiness 

• Follow-up Orders: Orders incl. MAGNESIUM GLYCINATE leading to another order = 1

• Follow-up Rate: Share of Orders incl. MAGNESIUM GLYCINATE leading to another order = 50%

Product Stickiness 

• Replenishment Orders: Follow-up Orders incl. MAGNESIUM GLYCINATE again = 1

• Replenishment Rate: Share of Follow-up Orders incl. MAGNESIUM GLYCINATE = 50%

Although MAGNESIUM GLYCINATE was not part of two subsequent orders, the first order that included MAGNESIUM GLYCINATE led to a later order that included the same product again.


Kennedy
Analyzing the impact of your products on brand and product stickiness will help you identify hidden champions, as well as "one-and-done" products that customers never buy from your store again. When we look at Kennedy, we see that she bought the PROBIOTIC + PREBIOTIC once, was not satisfied with the product, and never bought it or any other product again.

If we were to calculate brand and product stickiness for the PROBIOTIC + PREBIOTIC using only his data, it would look like this:

• Orders: Orders including PROBIOTIC + PREBIOTIC = 1

Brand Stickiness 

• Follow-up Orders: Orders incl. PROBIOTIC + PREBIOTIC leading to another order = 0

• Follow-up Rate: Share of Orders incl. PROBIOTIC + PREBIOTIC leading to another order = 0%

Product Stickiness 

• Replenishment Orders: Follow-up Orders incl. PROBIOTIC + PREBIOTIC again = 0

• Replenishment Rate: Share of Follow-up Orders incl. PROBIOTIC + PREBIOTIC = 0%

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