Average customer metrics are mostly useless. The Customers tab gives you the segmented, cohorted view you need to actually understand who's buying and whether your store is a compounding asset.
RFM segmentation
RFM stands for Recency, Frequency, Monetary. Each customer gets a score on each dimension. We group them into 10 actionable segments:
- Champions, bought recently, buy often, spend a lot.
- Loyal, regular buyers, high lifetime value.
- Potential loyalists, bought recently, 1-2 orders.
- New, first order within the last N days.
- Promising, one order, early signs of loyalty.
- At risk, used to buy often, hasn't in a while.
- Can't lose them, high-value customers who haven't bought in a while.
- Hibernating, low frequency, low recent activity.
- About to sleep, declining activity.
- Lost, haven't bought in a very long time.
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Cohort analysis
The full cohort matrix lives under Reports → Cohort analysis. It groups customers by the month of their first order and tracks their spend over the months that follow, answering “are the customers I acquired in January still buying in August?” You can switch the metric (LTV, retention, orders, AOV), accumulate or view period-over-period, and split by order type. See Reports.
For a compounding brand, you want later cohorts to spend as much or more than earlier ones, sustained over time. If early cohorts show a long flat tail and later ones drop off fast, your customer quality is declining, usually a sign of aggressive ad-driven acquisition.
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Lifetime Value (LTV)
Computed as the average total_spent across all customers. Compare to your CAC (customer acquisition cost) to know whether you have a sustainable business:
- LTV < CAC, you're burning money on every customer. Fix immediately.
- LTV ≈ CAC, break-even. OK short-term, not scalable.
- LTV > 3× CAC, healthy for most DTC.
- LTV > 5× CAC, excellent, ready to scale ad spend.
Repeat-buyer rate (Returning %)
Percentage of customers who've placed 2+ orders. For most commodity DTC, this is 15-25%. For subscription-adjacent or refill-heavy brands, should be 40%+. Use it to benchmark your retention against the category.
Subscription detection
For stores using Recharge, Skio, Loop, or native Shopify Subscriptions, Ecom Forward auto-detects subscription orders by inspecting order tags and line-item properties. No configuration needed, if the tags are there, we detect.
For stores marked as subscription or hybrid (set on the Stores page), the Performance page also shows a subscription revenue strip: “Subscription revenue: €X (Y% of orders)”.
Top customers list
A ranked list of your customers, showing lifetime value by default. Useful for:
- Identifying VIPs who deserve personal outreach.
- Finding “whales” that distort average-based metrics.
- Exporting for CRM imports (email, shipment bundles, thank-you notes).
Sort it: click any column header, lifetime value, number of orders, first order date, or last order date, to sort by it, and click again to flip between highest-first and lowest-first. On a phone, use the sort dropdown above the table.
Filter it:the RFM segment tiles at the top (Champions, Loyal, New, At Risk, and the rest) are clickable, tap one to narrow the list to just that segment, and tap it again to clear. So you can, for example, click “At Risk” and then sort by last order date to find your most valuable customers who've gone quiet.
Multi-store view
The “All stores” selector aggregates customers across stores. If a customer exists on multiple stores (same email), they're deduplicated for LTV calculations, their lifetime spend sums across stores.