E-commerce Loyalty Engine
A custom Shopify application that converts cash refunds into store credit and provides merchants with a dynamic rules engine.
Technologies used:
15 Dec 2025
United Kingdom
The Vision & Challenge
For direct-to-consumer brands, customer acquisition is only half the equation. A successful UK-based e-commerce business operating on Shopify understood that long-term growth depended on retention. Standard loyalty applications on the market offered a rigid, one-size-fits-all approach that failed to meet their specific operational needs.
The company faced two primary points of friction. First, every product return resulted in a direct cash refund, representing both a financial loss and a missed opportunity to retain that customer. Second, their promotional campaigns were broad and untargeted, unable to reward specific buying behaviors or incentivize high-value customer segments effectively.
They required a system built around their business logic. We were engaged to design and build a custom loyalty application that integrated directly with their Shopify store. The objective was to create a platform that reduces cash outflow from returns, rewards nuanced customer behavior, and gives their marketing team precise control over the entire rewards lifecycle.
Project challenges
- Existing loyalty platforms lacked the flexibility to create complex, conditional rules for earning and redeeming points.
- The standard refund process resulted in direct cash outflows and lost opportunities to retain customers who returned products.
- A new system needed to process years of historical order data to accurately assign loyalty points to the existing customer base without manual entry.
Solutions
- We built a custom rules engine with a dedicated admin panel, allowing the merchant to define and modify reward logic without developer support.
- An integration with Shopify's refund API was developed to intercept cash refunds, converting them into a store-credit prize pool that never expires.
- We developed a data processing module to perform a one-time migration of historical purchase data, mapping past orders to the new points system.
Technologies used
We are concerned about the security and performance of our customers. That's why we always keep updating and use best technologies in our products
Front-end
JavaScript
ReactJS
HTML5
CSS3
Back-end
PHP
Laravel
DevOps
Linux
Docker
Github CI
Database
MySQL
Merchant Rules Engine
The core of the application is a control panel that gives the client's marketing team direct control over the loyalty program. Merchants can set granular rules for how customers earn points, define specific triggers for rewards, and launch targeted promotions for product categories or customer segments. This removes the dependency on developers for campaign management, allowing the business to react quickly to market trends.
Refund to Credit Ledger
To reduce cash outflows, we designed a system that intercepts the standard Shopify refund process. When a return is processed, the monetary value is automatically converted into a non-expiring store credit and deposited into the customer's prize pool. This keeps revenue within the business and provides a strong incentive for customers to make another purchase, turning a potential loss into a future sale.