LTV Calculator
See what each customer is really worth over their lifetime, how that stacks up against what you spend to win them, and the one retention lever that moves it most. Free, instant, no signup.
Your numbers
Pull these from your Shopify customer reports or analytics.
// your numbers stay in your browser. nothing is sent or stored.
Most of your customers buy once and never come back. The single biggest lever on lifetime value is a reliable second order.
See where yours leaks. Run the X-ray →What’s a good LTV:CAC ratio?
There’s no magic dollar figure for lifetime value, because a $40 LTV is great if a customer costs you $10 and terrible if they cost you $35. The number that actually matters is the ratio: what a customer is worth against what you paid to get them. 3:1 is the floor most ecommerce brands aim for.
Your store, at 2.8:1, sits in the below-target band.
Average repeat purchase rate by store type
Lifetime value lives or dies on whether customers come back, and that swings hard by what you sell. Across ecommerce the repeat purchase rate averages around 28%, but the average hides a lot. Use these as directional ranges, not targets.
| Store type | Repeat rate | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Consumables & supplements | 35–45% | Runs out, gets reordered, easy to put on subscription. |
| Food & beverage | 30–45% | Habitual and frequent, low consideration each time. |
| Health, beauty & skincare | 30–40% | Routine-driven, replenished, strong reviews culture. |
| Apparel & fashion | 25–32% | Repeat, but spaced out and taste-driven. |
| Home & general goods | 12–25% | Occasional need, long gaps between purchases. |
| Electronics | 10–20% | Long product life, infrequent upgrades. |
| Luxury & furniture | under 15% | High price, rare purchase, little natural repeat. |
A healthy-looking repeat rate can still hide a leak
Here’s the trap. A store can show a perfectly decent returning-customer rate on the Shopify dashboard and still be losing the large majority of its customers. A small loyal core, the people placing 20 or 30 orders, quietly props up the average while most buyers purchase once and disappear.
We worked with a fragrance brand whose returning-customer rate looked great, yet they were losing 93 to 95% of customers underneath it. The fix was never traffic or ads. It was a reason to come back.
LTV is the number that makes this visible, because it forces you to split the loyal few from the silent majority who bought once and drifted off. Shopify, retention benchmarks →
How customer lifetime value is calculated
The headline number
LTV is what an average customer spends across their whole relationship with you. $65 an order, 1.3 orders a year, for 2.5 years, is about $211 in revenue. Multiply by your margin for the version that actually hits the bank.
The number that decides things
On its own, LTV is just a figure. Against CAC it becomes a decision: if a customer is worth $127 in profit and costs $45 to acquire, that’s 2.8:1, and you know whether you can afford to spend more to grow.
You lift LTV in three places, and traffic isn’t one of them.
More traffic is the easy thing to point at, because it’s what you’re used to doing. But lifetime value moves when customers buy more often, stay longer, or spend more each time. Retention is usually the fastest and cheapest of the three.
Earn the second order
The jump from one order to two is the hardest and the most valuable. A post-purchase flow, a genuine reason to return, and the right timing do more for LTV than any new campaign.
Stay front of mind
Subscriptions, replenishment reminders and triggered win-backs keep the habit from breaking. Most churn is quiet. Someone gets busy, life gets in the way, and they simply forget you.
Make each order worth more
Bundles, a value ladder and a higher-margin hero product mean a loyal customer compounds over time, instead of costing you margin every time you discount to bring them back.
Customer lifetime value on Shopify, specifically
Shopify won’t hand you a single LTV figure, but it gives you the parts. The Customers reports show your repeat customer rate, orders per customer and average order value, and a typical Shopify store sees a repeat rate near 27%. Pull those three numbers, drop them into the calculator above, and you have your LTV.
The trap most Shopify stores fall into is being built for one purchase. A standard product page, add to cart, a thank-you email, and nothing after. No subscribe-and-save defaulted sensibly, no replenishment reminder, no reason to come back. That’s a one-and-done store, and it’s the single biggest thing holding LTV down. The Store X-ray shows you where your purchase loop breaks.
Why your LTV is lower than it should be
A low lifetime value almost always traces back to retention, not acquisition. Here are the usual culprits, in the order we tend to find them.
Most customers buy once
You acquire well, but nothing brings people back, so you keep paying to replace customers you already won. It’s the most expensive way to run a store.
Nothing brings them back
No replenishment reminder, no subscription, no useful follow-up. The habit never forms, so the second order never comes.
Acquired on the wrong thing
A deep discount or a loss-leader pulls in buyers who were only ever there for the deal. They were never going to stay, so they don’t.
Customers drift off quietly
Life gets in the way, the habit breaks, and without a reason to return they just fade. You rarely see it happen, which is why LTV is how you catch it.
Discounting erodes the value
Every promo trims what a loyal customer is actually worth. Even good retention doesn’t add up if each order barely clears its costs.
LTV is half the equation. Want to see what each visitor is worth before they even buy? Run the Conversion Rate Calculator next.
Lifetime value, answered
How do I calculate customer lifetime value?
Multiply your average order value by how many times a customer buys in a year, then by how many years they stay. For example, $65 × 1.8 orders × 2.5 years is about $293 in revenue per customer. Multiply by your gross margin for the profit version.
What is a good LTV:CAC ratio?
3:1 is the usual floor: a customer should be worth at least three times what you paid to acquire them. 4:1 to 5:1 is healthy. Above 5:1 can actually mean you’re under-investing in growth and leaving demand on the table.
What is a good customer lifetime value?
There’s no universal dollar figure. It depends on your margins and your acquisition cost. Judge it against CAC using the LTV:CAC ratio rather than chasing a single number.
What’s the difference between LTV and CLV?
Nothing. Lifetime value and customer lifetime value are the same metric. People just abbreviate it differently.
How do I increase customer lifetime value?
Three levers: get customers buying more often, keep them for longer, or raise the value of each order. Retention usually moves the number the fastest and the cheapest.
What is a good repeat purchase rate?
Across ecommerce it averages around 25–30%. Above 30% is strong. Consumables and beauty run higher, furniture and electronics run lower, so judge it by category.
Should I use revenue or profit to calculate LTV?
Profit, using your gross or contribution margin, is the more honest version, especially for the LTV:CAC ratio. Revenue LTV flatters a low-margin store.
How does LTV relate to conversion rate?
They’re two halves of the same maths. Conversion is what a visitor is worth on the first visit. LTV is what they’re worth over the whole relationship. Run the Conversion Rate Calculator for the first half.
A number is a start. A diagnosis is the fix.
The calculator shows you what a customer is worth. The Store X-ray shows you exactly where your purchase loop is leaking, in about forty seconds.