What is a counter of people who recently started buying a product?

A counter of people who recently started buying a product is something you can add to your eCommerce store to show visitors how many customers have been checking out your product(s).

These are the visitors who are more likely to have the intent to buy something as they’re checking out products. This can be done on your product detail pages or even on your collections page(s).

Why should you use a counter to show people who recently started buying a product?

This skill is essential to your eCommerce site as it helps to add urgency and social proof. If a customer notices you only have a few of the items they’re looking at in stock, their chances of buying increase.

If they see that other people are purchasing or in the process of buying, then they’re likely to make a quick decision and make a purchase as well. They won’t want to miss out (FOMO, right?), and they’ll purchase the item now rather than waiting or thinking about it.

This is a tactic used in brick-and-mortar stores too. They may only put a few items out to make it look like stock is low. They may also have images of celebrities wearing the items as well to show that others have bought the product(s).

How to add a counter of people who recently started buying a product?

When you are on your dashboard, you’ll want to click on the ‘+’ button. This will open a box that shows you all of the possible skills you can add to your eCommerce site. Find the one called “Show Low Stock + Viewer Counter in Product Detail’.

How to edit and customize the skill

Now comes the fun part-customizing your counter of people who recently bought a product to look and act the way you want it to! The skill is divided into four tabs including

  • what to show
  • where to show
  • when to show it
  • why tab (for A/B testing)

What to show

This tab lets you choose what content to show to your customers. The first tab ‘Content’ allows you to enable/disable the inventory counter, the viewer counter, the add to cart counter and the order count.

The order counting tracks actual items purchased and also has the minimum order count and the ability to set a lookback period. If the minimum is set then the message only shows when there have been that number of recent purchases within the lookback period that is set.

So if it is a minimum 1 order count and 2 days look-back period the skill displays the number of purchases (1 or more) that happened in the past 2 days.

product detail order count

The add to cart counting option is similar to order counting. You can set the minimum order count and also the lookback period here. This will show anytime customers add items to their cart, regardless of if they end up buying or not.

Inventory lets you enable an “only x left” message that turns on when the stock level of a product falls below the level you specified. You can also set the default stock message here; the automatic one is “Limited Stock! 🔥”.

show a counter of who is viewing your product shopify

The ‘Design’ tab allows you to edit the appearance of the skill. You can choose pre-designed themes or pick your colours, font size, and so on here. For those store owners with CSS background or those who have developers, they can add their custom CSS or change the templates to work more specifically for their needs.

Where to show

This tab lets you decide where to display the content in your Shopify pages. You can choose the page or pages for the order counter to show on. The default is to show on all store sections, but you can show them only on certain parts of your store if you’d like.

where to show promo bar menu

The ‘Location on page” selector allows you to choose where the order counter will show, but by default, it shows on all store sections. You can select the URL to appear, but by default, it’ll take your site URL. Clicking the “Choose Location” button will show a pop-up explaining how to use the selector. Hover your mouse on your site and click to choose an element.

When to show

This tab lets you decide when to show your counter of people who recently bought a product. You can set specific triggers and conditions on when to show it. You can have it trigger as soon as a page loads, and limit to only once per hour per shopper if you’d like.

Or maybe you only want to show the skill during the week – you can do that here too. You can also set a schedule to run the viewer skill so that it starts or ends on a specific date, and you don’t have to worry about it.

Simply enable the schedule and set your dates and times for the skill to start and finish.

when to show promo bar menu

Why (A/B testing)



why menu bar for promo bar


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