The other week I was creating Repeat Customer Metric Reviews for three clients. This reminded me of an important time in every customer's life cycle.
The step between a customer's first and second order.
This happens between a new customer's first completed order and a second they haven't made yet, and it's a critical critical for two reasons.
- It's the phase with the highest number of customers.
By definition, every one of your customers go into this phase. How they exit is another story.
- Once they enter, there are two potential behaviors: they buy again, or defect and shop elsewhere.
If they buy again you get repeat purchases, a large improvement to their lifetime value, a chance to have a customer for life, and a whole bunch of benefits.
If they defect, you'll probably never get another order from them. With some luck you'll still have made a profit on their only order, especially when you account for acquisition costs.
All three stores I was reviewing could benefit from some optimization in this phase.
If you want to see how your store is doing at this key step, Repeat Customer Insights breaks it out very clearly. You can even see it in the screenshots on the App Store (compare the 2nd order metrics to the 3rd).
Is one flavor better at keeping customers?
Compare how your variants perform to find the ones that keep customers buying over and over again.