Shopify Customer Retention: Measure Churn in Shopify Reports

Shopify customer retention is the share of your customers who buy again, and for a store without subscriptions, churn means a customer who has not bought again within the time you would normally expect. Shopify gives you the numbers in its customer reports (New vs returning customers, Returning customers, One-time customers, RFM customer analysis), and segments let you act on the customers who are slipping away. You do not need an AI churn tool to start: Shopify already predicts spend tiers and scores customers by recency, frequency and spend.

Facts come from the Shopify Help Center page on customer reports and on customer segmentation, read on October 23, 2026, and from Shopify’s segment query reference.

Retention and churn for a store without subscriptions

A subscription business knows the day a customer cancels. A normal store never gets that signal; the customer simply stops ordering. So define a repeat window for your products: the time in which a satisfied customer would usually order again. A coffee store might set it in weeks, a store selling running shoes in months. Look at your own data for it: in the Returning customers report, compare first and most recent order dates for customers who did come back.

Then:

• Retention rate for a period = customers who ordered in the previous period and ordered again in this one, divided by customers in the previous period.
• Churned customer = a customer whose last order is older than your repeat window.

How to calculate churn rate

The classic formula for a period:

Churn rate = (customers at the start - customers at the end who were also there at the start) / customers at the start

Worked example for one quarter, using a 90-day window: 400 customers ordered in the previous quarter. Of them, 120 ordered again this quarter. Retention is 120 / 400 = 30%, churn is 280 / 400 = 70%.

A second version, used on Shopify’s own blog, adds the new customers you won in the period: churn = (customers at start + new customers - customers at end) / customers at start. Pick one, write it down, and always use the same one, or your trend will jump for reasons that have nothing to do with customers.

High churn in a store without subscriptions is normal for products bought once (a sofa, a wedding dress). Compare your own store over time rather than with someone else’s number.

Find the numbers in Shopify

Go to Analytics > Reports and filter the Category to Customers:

Two quirks to know. Customer reports can miss the last 12 hours of activity (the New vs returning customers report is the exception, up to date within seconds). And the data is based on each customer’s entire order history, not only the selected dates: a November customer who orders again in December already shows as returning in a November-only report.

RFM scores are relative to your own store: a 5 means the top 20% of your customers on that dimension. Groups such as At risk (no recent purchase but a strong history) and Previously loyal are where churn shows first. You can ask Sidekick about these directly, for example “Which RFM group has my highest average order value?”

Build an at-risk segment

A segment turns the report into a list that updates itself. In Customers > Segments, segments are written in Shopify’s segment query language. Two filters do most of the work:

• last_order_date < -90d: customers whose last order was more than 90 days ago (use your own repeat window).
• number_of_orders = 1: one-time buyers.

Combine them: number_of_orders = 1 AND last_order_date < -60d lists first-time buyers who did not return within 60 days. Use the segment as the audience of a Shopify Messaging campaign, or give it a discount. Shopify’s cohort report even suggests building segments from strong cohorts with first_order_date.

If you want an automation to react when a customer crosses your window, our guide to the last order date in Shopify Flow explains what Flow can and cannot check.

Five retention moves that use what Shopify already has

1. A post-purchase email with care instructions or how to use the product, sent a few days after delivery. It brings the store back to mind before the repeat window starts.
2. A second-order offer to the one-time buyers segment, sent before they reach your churn window, not after.
3. Store credit as a thank-you for good customers. Credit is spent only in your store and works on the online store, POS and Shop for customers on new customer accounts.
4. A loyalty program if your products are bought often; see our overview of the Shopify loyalty program options.
5. A monthly look at the cohort report, to see whether customers acquired in a given month come back more or less often than earlier ones. Our Shopify cohort analysis guide explains how to read it.

Retention is one of the customer topics in our running a store hub.

Frequently asked questions

What is a good customer retention rate for a Shopify store? It depends on what you sell and how often people need it, so there is no single benchmark. Track your own retention by quarter with the same formula and judge changes against your store’s earlier quarters.

Does Shopify show churn rate? Shopify does not report a churn rate by name, but the New vs returning customers, Returning customers, One-time customers and cohort reports give you the numbers to calculate it, and RFM analysis flags customers at risk.

What is predicted spend tier in Shopify? It is Shopify’s prediction of how much each customer is likely to spend, grouped into tiers. You can see it in the Predicted spend tier report and use it to build customer segments for high-value customers.