Cohort Repurchase Rate
Cohort Repurchase Rate shows what share of the customers you won each month ordered again within 30 days, 60 days and up to 3 years of their first order.
How It’s Calculated
Each row is a cohort: the customers whose first order was in that month. Customers is the size of the cohort. The columns are time since each customer’s first order: 30D, 60D, 90D, 180D, 1Y, 2Y and 3Y.
Each cell is the share of the cohort who placed another order within that time. For example, 25% under 90D means 1 in 4 of those customers ordered again within 90 days of their first order.
- The windows add up: everyone counted under 30D is also counted under 90D, so a row never goes down from left to right.
- A repurchase is any later order placed at least 24 hours after the first. An order less than 24 hours after the first doesn’t count, even on the next day.
- Time is counted in whole days, so 30D includes an order placed 30 days and 23 hours after the first.
- Each customer counts once per window, however many times they ordered.
- Orders that were canceled, or whose payment was voided or expired, don’t count. Neither do orders with no customer.
- Months follow your store’s time zone.
A blank cell means the cohort is too young to have reached that window. A cohort only gets a 90D value once 90 days have passed since the first day of its month. Customers who joined late in that month have had less time to come back, so the newest filled cell in each column can read low.
The date range picks which cohorts you see. Trailing 1 year is the default. Trailing 2 months shows one row per day instead of one per month.
With a Sales Channel or Filters set, only matching orders count, and a customer’s first order is their first matching one. For example, with the Sales Channel set to your online store, a customer whose first order was in person joins the cohort of their first online order.
Summary Cards and Charts
- Total Customers: the customers in every cohort shown.
- 30-Day Repurchase Rate, 90-Day Repurchase Rate and 1-Year Repurchase Rate: the rate across all cohorts old enough to have reached that window, weighted by cohort size. A brand-new cohort never pulls them down.
The Weighted Avg row under the grid gives the same average for every column.
The chart has 2 views. Curve draws the average rate against time since the first order. By Cohort draws the 30-day, 90-day and 1-year rates for each cohort, so you can see whether newer cohorts come back faster.
What Good Looks Like
What’s healthy depends on how often your product needs replacing. If it runs out every month, the rate climbs early, in the first 30–90 days. If it lasts for years, the rate climbs slowly, and later.
Compare your store with itself over time, not with another store.
Across a sample of 17 stores using By the Numbers, the share of customers who had ever placed 2 or more orders ranged from 6% to 72%.
Look at where the curve flattens. By then, most customers who will come back at all have done so. A good sign is newer cohorts showing higher 30D and 90D rates than older ones.
What to Do About It
- Time your follow-ups to the curve. If most second orders come between 30 and 60 days, send your replenishment or “come back” message just before day 30.
- Raise the 30-day rate with a post-purchase flow: a thank-you, product tips, and an offer on the next order.
- See which products people rebuy. Set Filters to a product. Each cohort is then the customers who first bought it that month, and the cells show how many bought it again.
- Act on customers who didn’t return. The Defecting group on Customer Loyalty is the one-time customers whose order was 31–180 days ago, by default. Sync it to your email platform for a win-back campaign.
Where to Find It
- Cohort Repurchase Rate: open Reports and look under Customers.
- Cohort Retention: how many of each cohort ordered in each calendar month after their first.
- Customer Loyalty: customers grouped by how recently and how often they buy.