Purchase Frequency Over Time

Purchase Frequency Over Time shows how many orders each customer placed, on average, in each period. It tells you whether your customers are ordering more often.

The Purchase Frequency Over Time report, with a line chart and a table with one row for each period

How It’s Calculated

The chart draws Avg Orders per Customer for each period. With a comparison on, a second line shows the Prior Period.

The table has one row per period. The columns are:

Orders: the number of orders placed in the period.
Customers: the number of different customers who placed them.
Avg Orders per Customer: Orders divided by Customers, to 2 decimal places.

The length of the date range sets how long a period is:

3 days or less: one row per hour
Up to 93 days: one row per day
Longer: one row per month

Each period only counts customers who ordered in it, so a period with orders has an average of at least 1, and a period with no orders shows 0. The average goes above 1 only when the same customer orders more than once inside one period. With daily rows it stays close to 1, because few customers order twice in a day.

Use a range longer than 93 days to get monthly rows.

This report looks at one period at a time. Purchase Frequency shows how many orders customers placed across the whole date range.

What Counts

Orders count on the day they were placed, in your store’s time zone.
Orders with no customer attached aren’t counted, as orders or as customers.
Orders that were canceled, or whose payment was voided or expired, don’t count.
Sales Channel, Segment and Filters narrow the report down.
There’s no totals row, because an average across periods isn’t the sum of its rows.

What Good Looks Like

A rising line means customers are buying more often within a period. The right level depends on what you sell, and how often your products need replacing.

Compare your store with itself. Set Compare to 1 year ago to cancel out the season.

What to Do About It

A falling line: customers are buying less often. Check Cohort Retention to see whether they stop coming back, and Time Between Orders to see how long they wait.
A flat line: try a reminder or a replenishment offer before the usual gap between orders ends.
A rising line from a promotion: check Sales by Discount Code to see what it cost.

Where to Find It

Purchase Frequency Over Time: open Reports and look under Customers.
Purchase Frequency: how many customers placed 1 order, 2 orders and more.
Time Between Orders: how many days customers wait between orders.