Repeat purchase is where lifetime value is actually made. This guide is for anyone trying to raise customer value without raising acquisition spend. It covers the repeat rate, reorder timing, order frequency cohorts, and why one particular step matters more than all the others.
The first to second order step
Of every retention metric on the board, the proportion of customers who place a second order is the one worth the most attention.
The reason is that the drop off is not evenly distributed. Most customers who buy once never buy again, and most customers who buy twice go on to buy several more times. The second order is where the relationship either forms or does not.
That makes it the highest leverage number you have. A small improvement in the proportion reaching order two flows through every subsequent order and lifts the entire lifetime value curve. The same effort spent encouraging a fifth order from customers who already buy regularly moves far less.
Reorder timing
Reorder timing shows the distribution of gaps between orders, not just the average.
The average is misleading here, because the distribution usually has two humps rather than one: a group who reorder quickly because they consumed the product, and a group who reorder much later because they were replacing something. An average sits in the valley between them and describes almost nobody.
Read the distribution and find where your genuine reorder window sits. That window is the input to everything else. It tells you when a reminder is timely rather than premature, when a customer is genuinely late rather than simply unhurried, and how long a cohort needs to be observed before its retention figure means anything.
Order frequency cohorts
These group customers by how many orders they have placed, and show what each group is worth.
The pattern is consistent across most brands and still surprises people: a small proportion of customers with many orders account for a large share of revenue. Knowing the exact shape for your business tells you where to spend attention. If customers with four or more orders are a tenth of your base and half your revenue, protecting them is worth more than most acquisition.
It also tells you when the returns flatten. Beyond a certain order count, customers are loyal and further encouragement changes little. Effort is better spent moving people over the earlier steps.
What actually moves it
The interventions that raise repeat purchase are mostly not marketing.
Product consumption rate matters most and is largely fixed by what you sell. Delivery experience matters more than most brands measure, because a slow or damaged first delivery removes the second order without ever generating a complaint. Post purchase communication timed to the real reorder window matters, and timing it to an arbitrary two weeks does not.
Discounting the second order works and is expensive. It is worth doing when the lifetime value curve shows the customer is worth substantially more than the discount, and worth avoiding when it simply trains people to wait for a code.
What to look at first
Find your first to second order rate and your genuine reorder window. Those two numbers together tell you the size of the opportunity and when to act on it. Everything else in this section refines the picture, but those two decide whether there is anything worth refining.