Customer Lifetime Value Calculator for online shops
Work out what a customer is worth from your averages or your orders file, with repeat rate and cohorts.
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- Runs in your browser
- No sign-up
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How it works
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Choose your averages and type your numbers, or choose your orders file and open or paste an orders export. Press Try an example to see a sample tea shop.
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Check the columns the tool picked for the order number, customer, date and total, and leave the box ticked to skip cancelled and refunded orders.
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Read the lifetime value, the repeat rate and the cohort table, then use the one-more-order-a-year line to see what repeat buyers are worth to you.
About the Customer Lifetime Value Calculator
Find out what a customer is worth to your shop over the time they keep buying. Enter your averages: order value, orders a year, gross margin, how long customers keep buying (or the share who buy again each year) and, if you know it, what it costs to win a customer. Or open your orders export from Shopify, WooCommerce or a spreadsheet to work out your repeat purchase rate, orders per customer, average order value, days between orders, a monthly cohort table and your top customers. Every formula is our measure and is shown in plain words. It runs in your browser: your orders file is not uploaded or saved.
How we work it out
These are our measures, not a marketplace's or an accounting standard. Lifetime value on margin is the order value without GST, times your gross margin, times orders a year, times the years a customer keeps buying. If you give the share of customers who buy again each year instead of years, the expected years are 1 ÷ (1 − that share), with the share capped at 95%. The months to earn back the cost of winning a customer are that cost ÷ the margin a customer brings in each month, and the value to cost ratio is lifetime value ÷ that cost.
Reading an orders export
Shopify's order export has the order number in Name, the customer's email in Email, the date in Created at, the total in Total and the payment state in Financial Status, and puts the extra items of an order on extra rows, so the tool counts each order number once. WooCommerce's Orders report in Analytics downloads as a CSV with the date, order number, status, customer name and net sales; it names customers rather than giving emails, so two customers with the same name count as one. The repeat purchase rate is the share of customers with two or more orders, and the cohort table groups customers by the month of their first order.
What this tool cannot do
It cannot see your Shopify, WooCommerce or marketplace accounts; it reads only the file you open. A short export makes the repeat rate look low, because recent customers have had little time to come back, and a customer who checks out with a new email counts as a new customer. If your file has no customer email, phone or ID, it cannot tell repeat buyers apart. Cash on delivery orders refused at the door bring in no money, so leave them out with the status filter. It does not forecast: the averages give a simple estimate to compare ideas, not a promise.
Frequently asked questions
What is customer lifetime value?
It is the money a customer brings in over all the time they keep buying from you. This tool works it out on margin, so it shows what is left after the product and other costs of each order, not just sales: order value without GST × gross margin × orders a year × years they keep buying. It is our measure and a simple estimate, useful for deciding how much you can spend to win and keep customers.
What is a good repeat purchase rate?
We do not give a benchmark, because it depends on what you sell and how often people need it: a shop selling tea will see people come back sooner than one selling furniture. Compare your own rate month by month in the cohort table, and see whether changes such as a follow-up message or a better product page move it.
Which orders export can I use?
Shopify's order export works as it is: the tool reads Name, Email, Created at, Total and Financial Status. From WooCommerce, download the Orders report in Analytics as a CSV. Any spreadsheet with an order number, a customer email, phone or name, a date and a total also works; pick the columns yourself if the tool does not find them.
Why does cash on delivery matter for lifetime value?
An order that is refused or returned at the door brings in no money but still costs shipping both ways. Leave those orders out (keep the status box ticked if your file has a status column) so the value is based on orders that were paid for. Our COD and RTO Cost Calculator shows what returns to origin cost you each month.
Is my customers' data safe?
Your orders file is read in your browser and is not uploaded or saved; it is gone when you close the page. Emails and phone numbers are masked in the top customers list on screen. Only your own settings, such as the margin, are kept in this browser for your next visit.
Sources and checks
Rules last checked
It works out every figure from your own averages or orders file and applies no outside rules; the Shopify and WooCommerce column names it knows only help it find your columns.
Scores, limits and suggestions marked "our checklist", "our measure" or "our suggestion" are ours, not Google's or the platform's. How our tools work
More e-commerce tools
All 30 e-commerce tools- Online Shop Launch Checklist Tick off GST, legal pages, product pages, payments, delivery and Google before your shop opens.
- Order Update and COD Confirmation Templates Messages for every order step, from COD confirmation to refund, for WhatsApp, SMS or email.
- Returns and RTO Reason Analyzer Group return and RTO reasons into themes by product, month and state, and see what to fix first.
- COD Pincode Risk Analyzer Find the PIN codes where cash on delivery loses money to RTO, and which ones to make prepaid-only.
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