Product metrics and goals
Repeat purchase rate
Also called Repeat customer rate, Returning customer rate
The share of orders, or customers, that come from people who have bought before. It's retention for a shop.
How it's worked out
Orders from returning customers ÷ all orders × 100, or customers with more than one order ÷ all customers × 100
Winning a customer once is expensive; selling to them again is cheap. A shop that brings people back can afford to spend more on winning them.
Say which version you mean: share of orders or share of customers give different numbers.
In practice
2,000 of 5,000 orders came from returning customers: a repeat order share of 40%.
Common mistake
Comparing it across products bought at different rhythms. A coffee shop and a sofa shop shouldn't have the same target.