A loyalty program is a scheme that rewards customers for buying again, usually with points, member prices, free shipping or tiers that improve as they spend more. For an online store it's a retention tool. It only pays when the extra orders it brings in are worth more than the rewards it gives away.
A loyalty program is a scheme that rewards customers for buying again, usually with points, member prices, free shipping or tiers that improve as they spend more. For an online store it’s a retention tool. It only pays when the extra orders it brings in are worth more than the rewards it gives away.
How does a loyalty program work?
A customer joins, earns points or status with each order, and swaps them for a reward later. Google’s Merchant Center lists the 3 perk types most stores use: free shipping, redeemable points and member pricing.
Points make the next order cheaper, so they work best when the gap between orders is short. In a hypothetical setup of 1 point per $1 and $5 off for every 100 points, members get back 5% of what they spend. Tiers reward spend over time, such as free shipping after a set amount a year. Member prices give a lower price straight away to anyone signed in, which is the easiest to explain on a product page. Whichever you pick, the reward has to be visible before checkout, or shoppers forget they have it.
Which apps do stores use for points and tiers?
On Shopify, mostly apps. On 18 October 2026 we read 37 store homepages and found a points or tier program on 15, with Yotpo Loyalty on 6 and Rivo on 5.
LoyaltyLion, Okendo’s loyalty module and Smile.io turned up once each, and 2 stores linked a rewards page with no app visible in the page code. Another 3 loaded only Rise.ai, which handles gift cards and store credit rather than points, so we didn’t count them. We read raw page code, so apps that load later may be missed, and one false hit, a wishlist script from a loyalty vendor, was removed by hand.
Can Google show your rewards program?
Yes, through Merchant Center’s loyalty add-on, which is for stores that already run a program. It can show member prices and member shipping in free listings and Shopping ads in 13 countries, including the US and the UK.
Google’s loyalty program page adds 2 conditions that change how you set prices: member pricing appears in ads only when the member discount is at least 5% or 5 units of the currency, and a site-wide promotion with no conditions shows instead of the member price. Member prices go in the loyalty_program attribute, not in your normal price fields, and Google’s member pricing setup asks for the member price of both free and paid tiers there. A free tier anyone can join on the spot can be shown to every shopper; a paid or invite-only tier shows to known members.
Is a loyalty program worth it?
Only if it changes behavior. Take a hypothetical store with 2,000 customers and a typical order of $60 that gives 5% back in points: every redeemed order costs $3, and 1,000 orders a year from members cost $3,000.
That’s worth it if the program brings in more than $3,000 of margin from orders that wouldn’t have happened anyway. Before you launch, check your repeat purchase rate and purchase frequency, then measure members against non-members who joined at the same time, since your best customers would join first and buy anyway. Track the result in customer lifetime value. Plan for the points nobody spends, too: a reward people never redeem costs little but changes nothing, so if fewer than half of members ever redeem, the rewards are probably too far away. Our loyalty programs service designs and tests the rewards, and the CRO hub covers the rest.