Do new customers come back to buy again?
№ 052 · Repeat purchase rate cohort
Definition
MetricShare of a monthly acquisition cohort placing a second order within the window
Unit% of cohort customers with 2+ orders
Triangular grid showing % of buyer cohort placing at least one additional order by month N. Build from order data: count buyers with second order per signup cohort per month-since-signup. Newer cohorts repeating earlier means activation working. Example: Jan 25 cohort 42% repeat by M5; Mar 26 cohort 22% repeat by M2.
Benchmarks
| Bottom 30% | Median | Top 30% |
|---|---|---|
| 10% to 18% at 12 months | 25% to 30% at 12 months | 38% to 48% at 12 months |
Non-subscription online retail and DTC, blended verticals, 365-day window measured from first order, 2023 to 2026 data. Definition used: customers with two or more orders divided by total unique customers acquired in the cohort. · Two source families disagree by roughly 10 points and the gap is definitional, not real. The Metrilo and Rivo family reports 28.2% from DTC-brand panels using a 365-day window. The Bluecore family reports 16.5% from a 100+ retailer sample using a narrower measurement window and a retailer-weighted denominator that includes large low-frequency catalogues. BS and Co lands at 18.8% on 156,110 customers. Read the top30 band against the DTC-panel definition; against the Bluecore definition the equivalent top band is roughly 22% to 28%. Cohort views also run below the blended store number for young brands, because a blended figure includes mature cohorts that have had years to repeat.
| Category | Bottom 30% | Median | Top 30% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grocery and food delivery | 50% | 65% | 70%+ |
| Health, beauty and cosmetics | 15% | 26% | 35% to 45% |
| Supplements and consumables | 18% | 29% | 40% to 55% |
| Apparel and fashion | 13% | 24% | 32% to 40% |
| Sporting goods and outdoor | 12% | 21% | 30%+ |
| Electronics | 9% | 18% | 26% |
| Luxury and jewelry | 5% | 10% | 18% |
When it looks bad
The heatmap is dark only in the month-0 column and every row fades to near-white by month 2, and newer cohort rows are no lighter or darker than rows from a year ago, so nothing the team shipped has changed behaviour.
Cohorts from Mar through Aug all sit at 6% to 8% second-order rate by day 90 and 14% by day 365, against a category median of 24% for apparel. Meanwhile the blended store-level number reads 22% because three-year-old cohorts are still buying.
What to do about it
- Rebuild the post-purchase flow around the 15 to 35 day median window, with the repeat prompt at day 30 to 45 rather than a single order confirmation. Practitioner data on DTC brands puts the lift at 8 to 15 percentage points versus confirmation-only programmes.
- Push the reorder of the same product rather than a cross-sell. 77% of second orders are the same product as the first (BS and Co, n=156,110), so catalogue-wide recommendation blocks are working against the dominant behaviour.
- Raise shopper identification rate before adding more flows. Retailers with ID rates above 40% saw repeat purchase rates 53% higher than average, while those below 10% ran 33% lower (Bluecore, 100+ retailers), because an unidentified buyer cannot be sequenced at all.
- Split the cohort heatmap by first-product-purchased and shift acquisition budget toward the entry SKUs whose cohorts repeat. In most catalogues the spread between the best and worst entry product is larger than the spread between channels.
Sources
- Metrilo Average retention (repeat purchase) rate of 28.2%, meaning 28% of customers place more than one order metrilo.com ↗
- Bluecore Average repeat purchase rate 16.5%; 74% of customers across all categories buy once and never return bluecore.com ↗
- BS and Co 18.8% of customers placed a second order within 365 days; of those who did, roughly half returned within 30 days and 77% repurchased the same product bsandco.us ↗
- Rivo Average ecommerce repeat purchase rate 28.2%, with a category range from 9.9% (luxury) to 65.2% (grocery) rivo.io ↗
- MobiLoud Most sources put the average at 25% to 30%, Shopify stores around 27%; below 20% flagged as underperforming, 30% to 40% as outperforming mobiloud.com ↗
- Bluecore Repeat buyers drove 53% of BFCM orders against 34.8% new and 12% reactivated; enterprise apparel saw 46.58% of sales from repeat buyers, mid-market apparel 27.23% bluecore.com ↗
- Retention Side Second-to-third purchase conversion runs 35% to 55% and third-to-fourth 55% to 75%, so first-to-second is the binding constraint retentionside.com ↗