The critical step in turning your new customers into repeat customers

Your Shopify store's Repeat Purchase Rate is an important metric that shows how loyal your customers are.

An even more important metric is the Repeat Purchase Rate between the 1st and 2nd orders.

This measurement tells you how well your store is converting one-time customers into repeat customers. A 10% Repeat Purchase Rate here means only 10% of your new customers are coming back to place second orders.

A low value here will hamper all of your work on loyalty programs, customer campaigns, and will result in lower Customer Lifetime Values.

Industry figures put the average store's repeat purchase rate at around 27%. If you're store is showing lower than that between the 1st and 2nd orders then that's a great place to optimize. It's also an easier space to optimize than your overall Repeat Purchase Rate.

To improve it you can use all of the tactics for improving your Repeat Purchase Rate but since it's such a specific point in your customer lifecycle, you have even more options:

• New customer campaigns that welcome the customer to your store, customer service, and product.
• Product education campaigns to show how a customer can get the most value out of your product.
• Replenishment campaigns after a delay to warm them up to a second purchase. Using your customer purchase latency timing is perfect here.
• Fun, entertaining content to show that your store is more than just a transaction-minded store.
• Personalized outreach and contact about the first order like calling them 1-on-1.
• Including freebies or bonuses with their first order.

Remember, customers at this point have purchased once but they haven't made their second purchase.