Repeat purchase rate is the share of customers who come back and place a second order within a set window. A good one isn't a number you borrow from an industry report. It's your own rate rising cohort over cohort, with second orders arriving when your product runs out and mostly at full price.
That's a less satisfying answer than a benchmark, but it's the useful one. A refillable skincare product and a once-a-year durable live in different worlds, and comparing them tells you nothing. This post covers how to calculate the rate, how to read your own, and what moves it. It's one of the core metrics in our guide to ecommerce KPIs that decide whether a store can grow.
What is repeat purchase rate?
Repeat purchase rate measures how many first-time customers go on to buy again. It's the clearest single signal of whether your product earns a second order on its own merit. To run your own numbers, use our customer retention rate calculator.
There are two common versions, and mixing them up causes most of the confusion:
- Snapshot rate: of all customers who ordered in a period, the share who had ordered before. Shopify's returning customer rate works roughly this way.
- Cohort rate: of the customers who placed a first order in a period, the share who placed a second order within a set window afterwards.
The snapshot version is easy to pull and easy to misread. It rises when new customer acquisition slows, which can look like a retention win when it's really a growth problem. The cohort version is slower to build, but it tells you whether something you changed actually worked.
How to calculate repeat purchase rate
Repeat purchase rate = customers with a second order in the window ÷ customers whose first order fell in the period
Example, hypothetical round numbers: 1,000 customers placed their first order in the first quarter. Within 180 days of their first order, 200 of them ordered again. The 180-day repeat purchase rate for that cohort is 20%.
Three rules make the number trustworthy:
- Always state the window. A 90-day rate and a 12-month rate measure different things. Quote one without the other and nobody knows what it means.
- Give every customer the full window. Customers who joined last month haven't had 180 days to come back yet. Leave them out of the 180-day rate until they have.
- Exclude cancelled and fully refunded orders. A second order that was returned isn't a repeat purchase.
Pick a window that matches your product
Match the window to how long your product lasts. If a jar runs out in about a month, a 90-day window shows you two or three chances to reorder. If customers replace your product once a year, anything shorter than 12 months will make a healthy brand look broken.
If you don't know your usage cycle, look at your existing repeat customers. The typical gap between their first and second order is a good starting point for the window.
What does a good repeat purchase rate look like?
We don't quote industry benchmarks for this, and we'd be wary of anyone who does without telling you the category, window and method behind the figure. The rate is driven mostly by how often people need your product, which no benchmark controls for.
Instead, a good repeat purchase rate passes three tests:
- It's rising across cohorts. Customers you won this quarter come back more than customers you won a year ago. That's the trend that matters.
- Second orders arrive near the usage cycle. If most reorders land around the time the product runs out, customers are coming back because they need it, not because you pushed them.
- Repeat orders happen at full price. A high rate built on discount codes is a margin problem in disguise.
A rate that's flat but passes the last two tests is healthier than one that's climbing because every email carries a code.
How to read your own repeat purchase rate
The rate becomes useful when you split it. These four cuts are where we start, because each one points to a different decision.
By first-order month. Your cohort trend. If newer cohorts are falling behind, look at what changed in your marketing, product or offers around that time.
By first product purchased. Often the most revealing cut. Some products create repeat customers and others create one-time buyers. That changes which products you should lead with in ads and on your homepage.
By acquisition channel. Customers from some channels come back far more than others. A channel that looks expensive on the first order can be the cheapest once repeat orders are counted.
By first-order discount. Compare customers who paid full price with those who used a code. If discount-acquired customers rarely return, your welcome offer may be buying one-time shoppers.
Then check time to second order. Plot how many days pass between first and second orders. A clear peak tells you your real usage cycle, and when any reminder should land.
What moves repeat purchase rate?
Most of what moves the rate happens before the second order is ever asked for. These are the levers, roughly in the order we'd look at them.
The first experience
The first order sets the ceiling. If the product doesn't match its photos, arrives late or disappoints at unboxing, no follow-up recovers that customer. Fix fulfilment, packaging and product-page accuracy before you write a single retention email.
Expectations about results
For products that work over time, like supplements or skincare, customers who expect results after one order often quit before the product has a chance. Saying early that results build over weeks or months gives the second order a reason to exist. It's also why multi-month bundles make sense in those categories.
Something worth coming back for
A customer can only reorder what you sell. Refills, sizes, new variants and products that naturally follow the first one give returning customers somewhere to go. A single-product store with a long usage cycle has a hard ceiling here, and that's a catalogue decision, not a marketing one.
How subscription is offered
Subscriptions lift repeat orders, but forcing them can cost you first orders. Many first-time buyers want to try before they commit, and hiding the one-time option can push them away, especially at a premium price.
The opposing view is reasonable too: a strong retention strategy can justify a subscription-only model. We've argued for showing the one-time option and lost that debate to a client whose own retention data said otherwise. Decide with your data, not with a rule.
Timing of contact
Reminders should land just before the product runs out, based on your time-to-second-order data. Sending more emails is rarely the fix. Sending them at the right moment usually is.
What doesn't move it, or moves it the wrong way
Stacking discounts. They can lift the rate while cutting the profit from every repeat order. Customers learn to wait.
More email volume. More sends without better timing mostly grows your unsubscribe list.
Chasing the snapshot rate. If you slow acquisition, the snapshot rate goes up on its own. That's not retention; it's arithmetic.
Why repeat purchase rate is a profit metric
Every repeat order is one you didn't pay to acquire. That makes repeat customers the cheapest revenue a store has, as long as they're buying at a healthy margin. It's why the rate deserves a place next to conversion rate and average order value, and why it shows up in our explainer on why growing stores often make less money.
It's also only one part of a wider system. Our list of ecommerce customer retention strategies covers the rest.
Where to start
Build the cohort view first, with a window that matches your product. Then split it by first product and channel before changing anything. The split usually tells you where to look.
If you'd rather have a second pair of eyes on the pages that shape that first experience, The Teardown is a hand-built review of your homepage, best-selling product page and cart drawer, with findings ranked in the order to fix them.