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As an eCommerce business owner trying to grow your online store and make more revenue, you should not only focus on customer acquisition but also on customer retention. In simpler words, don't only invest in attracting new customers and forget about your existing customers.
A successful eCommerce business focuses on both areas. This is when the repeat purchase rate comes; to measure your repeat customers vs. your new customers.
Table of contents:
- What is Repeat Purchase Rate?
- How to calculate Repeat Purchase Rate?
- What is a good repeat purchase rate for eCommerce?
- Why is Repeat Purchase Rate important?
- How to Increase Your Repeat Purchase Rate?
In this article, we will learn more about the repeat purchase rate, how to calculate it, why it is important to your eCommerce business, and how to improve it.
What is Repeat Purchase Rate?
The repeat purchase rate is a metric that calculates the percentage of customers who made more than one purchase to your overall number of customers. It shows the ratio of customers who completed at least 2 purchases in a certain time frame. The repeat purchase rate can also be called repeat customer and re-order rates.
The repeat purchase rate metric is directly connected to other metrics such as customer lifetime value "CLV", customer retention, and customer churn rate.
By measuring repeat purchase rate, you will learn how well your business is performing in areas like; customer experience, customer loyalty, and customer advocacy.
How to Calculate Repeat Purchase Rate?
- First, calculate the number of all customers who purchased the time frame you want to work on.
- Next, find out the number of repeat customers who made a purchase in the same time frame: customers whose purchase is their second or third purchase, etc.
- Lastly, divide the number of repeat customers by the number of all customers and multiply by 100.
Here is the repeat purchase rate formula:
(Number of customers with two or more purchases / Number total of customers) x 100
What is a Good Repeat Purchase Rate for eCommerce?
Repeat purchase rate varies from one eCommerce business to another based on what is sold. With seasonal items being sold, like in fashion stores for example, the repeat purchase rate is high.
The same goes for the food and beverage industry. Also, when a business offers a wide range of products, customers are more likely to be back to try the other products. However, with durable products that last for a long time, like electronics, the repeat purchase rate can be lower.
However, most studies found a good repeat purchase rate of 20-40%. The former vice president of growth at Facebook, Alex Schultz, says “If you can get 20–30% of your customers coming back every month and making a purchase from you, then you should do pretty well.”
And according to Shopify, 27% is the good average repeat purchase rate for first-time customers.
Why Is Repeat Purchase Rate Important?
1- Easier and Cheaper
Compared to customer acquisition, customer retention is way easier and cheaper to achieve. Customer acquisition requires a lot of money, time, and effort to plan and execute marketing campaigns and sales funnels. On the contrary, with repeat customers, it is much easier to plan how to re-target them, and it doesn't involve much money.
2- Cost-effective and better ROI
Related to the above point, repeat purchases are not just easier and cheaper to achieve but also cost-effective. Which means it is a better investment in the long run. Repeat customers' value keeps increasing over time. With every additional purchase they make, the more likely they will become loyal to your business for a long time.
3- Easy Up-sells and Cross-sells
With repeat customers, it is much easier to convince them at the checkout phase to add other products as a form of upselling and cross-selling than customers who are new to your business.
4- Business Advocacy
A repeat customer can turn into a loyal customer and later an advocate for your business. Nothing is more powerful than direct recommendations from family and friends.
How to Increase Your Repeat Purchase Rate?
1- Provide an excellent customer experience
Work on all aspects of your online store to ensure the best customer experience, starting from the appearance of your store, how products are categorized and filtered, and a seamless process of ordering and checkout. Provide customers with all info they might need to know through product descriptions, FAQs, and live support.
2- Offer high-quality shipping and fast delivery
After customers pay and place their order, you might still lose them, and they never order again if their items arrive in a bad status or super late or worse; get lost! Invest in a good shipping service that offers both quality and speed.
3- Allow Returns and Refunds
Yeah, you heard that right! When you offer a customer-friendly return and refund policy, even customers who weren't super happy with their first experience, can give your business another chance and try something else, knowing that they can get a refund or return it instead of being out of money for something that they didn't like.
4- Ask for customers feedback
Hear what your customers think and feel about your products and service by sending them surveys to measure their satisfaction and collect their feedback. Ask them what they love and what they wish to improve. Measure those points and never ignore your customers' input.
5- Set up a loyalty and reward program
Make your customers excited about making repeat purchases by starting a loyalty and reward program. Offer them excellent incentives and make it easy to collect and redeem points. A study by Invesp shows that 58% of consumers buy from brands whose loyalty program they belong to at least once a month. Also, 49% of consumers agreed they spend more after joining a loyalty program.
6- Utilize Email Automation
One of the best practices to increase repeat purchase rate is using email automation to keep in touch with your customers. Email marketing automation builds healthy customer communication and trust. Email automation is an easy way to nurture existing customers, and it doesn't require much effort from your marketing team.
7- Segment your customers
Related to the above; automation goes hand in hand with customer segmentation. Divide your customers into smaller groups based on the products they purchase and their age, location, and interests.
8- Use Personalization
Personalization is a step further from segmentation. Treat every customer as a unique individual and reshape their experience to match their specific needs and preferences. Show them personalized product recommendations and also send them personalized emails to make them feel special and encourage them to make their next purchase.
9- Use retargeting ads
retargeting is a very effective way of increasing your average repeat purchase rate. Understanding your customers' segments and their interests and preferences helps you retarget them with the right ads. Segment your customers based on how long it has been since their last purchase, and what they purchased or what they frequently view to retarget them with the right ad.
10- Automate whenever possible
Put everything on the auto-pilot whenever possible to save your time and marketing efforts. With the right automation tool, you can rely on AI to help you with customer segmentation, email automation, collecting data for personalization purposes, and targeted ads. Convertedin is a multi-channel automation software that helps you achieve all this and even more. Book your demo!
