What do the columns in the LTV table mean?
What Returning %, Lifetime Value, Payback Period, AOV, Customers and Orders show for each channel in the LTV table, and how each is worked out.
How to read the table
Each row is a channel. Attribution is how TrueROAS decides which ad or channel gets the credit for a sale. Every customer counts in one channel only, the channel that got the credit for their first order in the past 12 months, and all of that customer's orders in that period count in the same row. How the channel is picked is explained in How does the LTV page decide which channel a customer belongs to?, and which orders the numbers include in Which orders does the LTV table count?.
Rows are sorted by the channel's total revenue, highest first. The table has no revenue column, and clicking a column header does not sort it.
Hover over a column header with an info icon to read what the column means and how it is worked out.
Amounts show your store's currency sign. Numbers under 100 show up to two decimals, and larger numbers are rounded to whole numbers. When Round money to whole numbers is on for the store, amounts show without decimals.
The columns
| Column | What it shows | Tooltip |
|---|---|---|
| Channel | The channel's name with its icon. Long names are cut off. Hover over a name for about a second to read it in full, in lower case. | None |
| Returning % | The share of the channel's customers who placed more than one order in the past 12 months. | The percentage of customers who have made more than one purchase. with (Returning Customers / Total Customers) * 100 |
| Lifetime Value | The revenue of the channel's customers in the past 12 months, divided by the number of customers. | The average total revenue generated per customer. with Total Revenue / Total Customers |
| Payback Period | For the channel's customers with more than one order, the average number of days between their first and their last order in the past 12 months. Customers with one order are left out, and a channel without returning customers shows 0 days. | The average time it takes for a returning customer to make their next purchase after the first one. with Average(Last Order Date - First Order Date) |
| AOV | Average order value, the channel's revenue divided by its number of orders. | The average amount spent each time a customer places an order. with Total Revenue / Total Orders |
| Customers | The number of different customers in the channel. | The total number of unique customers for this channel. with Count(Unique Customer IDs) |
| Orders | The number of orders in the channel in the past 12 months. | The total number of orders for this channel. with Count(All Orders) |
What Payback Period measures
Payback Period does not use your ad spend or your costs, so it does not tell you when a customer has paid back what it cost to win them. It only measures the time between a customer's orders.
It runs from a customer's first order to their last one, so for a customer with three orders it is the time until the third order, not until the second.
The rows under Other source
Sources that TrueROAS does not group into a channel are added up in the Other source row. To see them one by one:
- Click the arrow next to Other source. A row opens for each source, under the name the source was recorded with, for example a UTM source that TrueROAS does not recognize. These rows are indented, their numbers are grey, and they have the same columns.
- The sources are sorted by revenue, highest first, and the first 10 show. When there are more, click the button such as Show more (12 remaining) to add 5 more each time.
- Click the arrow again to fold them away.
Good to know
- Lifetime value here is the value over the past 12 months, not over a customer's whole life. A customer who first bought last week has had less time to come back than one who first bought 11 months ago, so a channel that brought in many new customers lately can show a lower Lifetime Value and Returning %.
- The table has no total row. On stores that are not connected through the TrueROAS Shopify app, the totals are in the cards above it, listed in What is the LTV page and what can I do there?.
- The Returning Rate card in Shopify Store Metrics is Shopify's own number for the last 30 days, not the Returning % of this table. See What do the Shopify Store Metrics on the LTV page show?.
- The table shows no ad spend, ROAS, profit or customer acquisition cost.
- Before you click Load Data, and when there is nothing to count, the table reads No data available. See Why is my LTV page empty or still loading?.
- Everyone on the store sees the same table, with one exception explained in Which orders does the LTV table count?.
- You cannot sort, filter or export the table, or pick another period.
- On a phone, the table is replaced by one card per channel. See How do I use the LTV page on my phone?.