Repeat customer rate is the simple, honest gauge of whether customers come back. It strips away the noise of acquisition campaigns and looks at the underlying relationship: of the people who bought from you, what share bought again? For Shopify stores, the average sits around 25–30%. Top-quartile stores hit 40%+. Subscription-led stores can run 70%+ because the subscription itself guarantees repeat purchases.
The formula
Repeat customer rate = (customers with 2+ purchases) ÷ (total customers in the period).
- Choose your time window deliberately — usually 12 months for ecommerce, since that captures most repeat-purchase windows for consumables.
- Exclude customers whose first purchase was in the last 30 days from the denominator if you want a fair comparison — they have not had time to repeat.
- Track separately by acquisition channel — channels often produce dramatically different repeat rates.
Why subscription multiplies repeat customer rate
A one-off ecommerce store has to convert each customer to a repeat purchase manually — through email, retargeting, reorder reminders, loyalty. A subscription store automates the repeat: cycle 2 is a billing event, not a marketing campaign. That is why the same product sold as a subscription typically achieves 3–5x the repeat customer rate of the same product sold one-off.
What a healthy repeat rate looks like
- Consumable products (one-off): 30–50% repeat rate within 12 months is healthy.
- Consumable products (subscription): 70–90% repeat rate is normal once you account for subscribers.
- Curation or novelty: 15–30% repeat one-off; subscription pulls it up to 60%+ but with higher early churn.
- Apparel and accessories: 20–35% within 12 months.
- Beauty and personal care: 35–55%.
How to lift repeat customer rate
- Add a subscription option to your top consumable products. The single highest-impact lever.
- Build a 30-day post-purchase email sequence that includes a second-purchase prompt.
- Use reorder reminders based on average consumption rate.
- Offer a loyalty program with a meaningful incentive at the 2nd or 3rd order.
See also repeat customer and customer retention.