The short answer
The average repeat purchase rate across e-commerce sits around 20–30% over a 12-month window. But that number is almost useless on its own. A food & beverage brand at 25% is underperforming. A furniture store at 15% is doing fine. Category determines what "good" means more than any single benchmark ever could.
A repeat purchase rate is the percentage of customers who bought from you more than once within a given time window. The time window matters just as much as the number. A 30% rate over 12 months and a 30% rate over 90 days are entirely different stories.
The formula (and why it trips people up)
Repeat Purchase Rate = (Customers with 2+ orders ÷ Total customers) × 100
Sounds simple. The problem is that there are two ways to calculate it, and they produce wildly different numbers from the same data.
Customer-level (standard)
Count the customers who ordered more than once, divide by total unique customers. This is what most tools — including our free retention report — use. If you have 1,000 customers and 220 placed two or more orders, your repeat rate is 22%.
Order-level (inflated)
Divide repeat orders by total orders. Because repeat customers often place three, four, five orders, this method produces a much higher number — sometimes double the customer-level rate. A store with a 22% customer-level rate might show 40–50% on an order-level basis.
Many benchmarking articles don't specify which formula they used. If you see a "good" rate of 40–50%, they're probably using the order-level formula. Always check the denominator before comparing your number to any external benchmark.
Benchmarks by vertical (12-month, customer-level)
These are the ranges we see across real Shopify stores. They use the customer-level formula over a rolling 12-month window — the same way our tool calculates it.
| Category | Typical repeat rate | What drives it |
|---|---|---|
| Food & beverage | 35–45% | Consumable, short reorder cycle, habit-forming |
| Supplements & vitamins | 35–45% | Subscription-friendly, monthly reorder cadence |
| Beauty & skincare | 30–40% | Replenishment cycle, brand loyalty |
| Pet supplies | 28–35% | Recurring need, emotional loyalty |
| Health & wellness | 28–35% | Ongoing routines, consumable products |
| Apparel (mid-market) | 20–30% | Seasonal buying, brand affinity |
| Home goods & decor | 12–20% | Occasional need, higher price points |
| Electronics & gadgets | 10–18% | Long replacement cycles, fewer SKUs |
| Jewellery & accessories | 9–13% | Gift-driven, high AOV, infrequent purchase |
| Furniture | 8–15% | Multi-year purchase cycle |
The spread is enormous. A consumable brand at 25% should be worried. A jewelry brand at 13% is above average for its category. This is why a single "good" number doesn't exist.
Why the "average" misleads Shopify merchants
Most articles cite 20–30% as the target for all stores. This is like saying a healthy body temperature is 37°C without mentioning that a few degrees in either direction means something very different.
Three things make direct comparison dangerous:
- Product type: Consumables naturally repeat. Durables don't. A coffee brand and a desk lamp brand have nothing in common when it comes to repeat purchase behavior.
- Price point: Higher AOV products tend to have lower repeat rates. A $15 moisturizer repeats faster than a $200 jacket.
- Store age: Newer stores haven't had enough time for customers to come back. A 6-month-old store with a 12% repeat rate might be doing great — you just can't tell yet.
The numbers that actually matter
Instead of obsessing over where you sit against an industry average, track these three things:
1. Your own trend, cohort by cohort
Are the customers you acquired in March more likely to return than the ones from January? If the trendline goes up, your retention efforts are working. If it's flat or declining, something changed — and that's the signal to investigate, not an average published by some SaaS company.
2. Median days to second order
This tells you when the second purchase happens. If half your repeat buyers return within 45 days, that's your window. Email campaigns, retargeting, and nudges should fire before that window closes — not after.
Across DTC brands, 50% of repeat purchases happen within the first 30 days. By day 90, 76% of people who will ever come back already have. If a customer hasn't returned after 90 days, the odds drop sharply.
3. Drop-off by order number
The biggest gap is always between Order 1 and Order 2. Once someone buys a second time, the probability of a third purchase jumps by around 45%. And after the third, the fourth becomes 54% more likely. All your retention energy should focus on closing that first gap.
Second purchases are mostly reorders
One more thing the benchmarks don't tell you: 77% of second purchases are reorders of the same product, not cross-sells. The number is even higher for supplements (82–93%) and food & beverage (up to 91%).
This means your repeat rate is largely driven by whether people liked what they got the first time — not by how many other products you showed them afterward. Product quality and post-purchase experience do more for retention than any email flow.
How to check your own number
You don't need a paid app. Export your Shopify orders as a CSV (Admin → Orders → Export → All orders) and drop it into our free retention report. It runs entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded anywhere.
You'll see your repeat purchase rate, which order gap loses the most people, cohort-by-cohort retention, and how long it takes for second orders to happen. That's enough to know where you stand and what to fix first.