What is repeat purchase rate?

Repeat purchase rate is the percentage of your customers who have placed two or more orders.

How to calculate it

Repeat purchase rate = customers with 2+ orders ÷ all customers × 100

Always state the period. "Customers who first bought in 2025, and how many have bought again since" is a clearer measure than an all-time figure, because brand-new customers haven't had time to come back.

WooCommerce has no built-in repeat purchase rate. You can work it out from the Customers report (WooCommerce › Customers): use the advanced filters to show customers with an orders count of 2 or more, note the total, then compare it with the unfiltered total. Guest buyers appear in the report too, though a guest who orders twice with different emails can look like two people.

A worked example

Say your Customers report lists 2,400 customers, and filtering for 2 or more orders leaves 600.

• Repeat purchase rate: 600 ÷ 2,400 × 100 = 25%

If you run the same check six months later and it's 28%, more of your customers are coming back.

Why it matters

Winning a new customer usually costs more than selling again to an existing one, so repeat purchase rate says a lot about how healthy the business is. It feeds straight into customer lifetime value. Askshelf reports your all-time repeat purchase rate with its customer retention lookup, and its lapsed-customer lookup counts customers with a given number of orders who haven't ordered since a date. The guide on calculating repeat purchase rate has the full method, and new vs returning customers shows the related split. See also lapsed customer.