What four and a half years of web orders actually say
Every WooCommerce order from January 2022 to August 2026, gathered for the AA 3.0 rebuild. The curated views in the sidebar are the cuts we judged most insightful; Solly can answer everything else.
A small repeat core is quietly carrying the shop, and the site does nothing to feed it
Just over a quarter of buyers (26.5%) ever place a second order, yet that minority accounts for 65% of all revenue. A repeat buyer is worth £144 over the window against £28 for a one-time buyer, roughly five times as much. Meanwhile the economics of each new customer have worsened every single year: first-order value has slid from £33.83 in 2022 to £26.17 in 2026, and 2026 revenue is flattening even though order volume keeps rising.
The data also shows the second order is winnable, and when: half of all second orders arrive within six months, a quarter within eight weeks. And it shows which first purchases create repeat customers. Everyday products someone runs out of (citrus oils, rose water, room sprays, a diffuser that needs refilling) convert to a second order at roughly double the rate of Christmas gift purchases. None of this is currently acted on anywhere: there is no post-purchase flow aimed at the second order, and the products that create loyal customers get no special treatment in merchandising or advertising. That is the clearest commercial lever the new site and Klaviyo can pull.
Sources and caveats: WooCommerce Analytics exports pulled read-only on 10 August 2026, window 1 January 2022 to 10 August 2026. Revenue means net sales (ex VAT, ex shipping) on completed or processing orders. Repeat and gateway figures match orders to customers by display name (the only link the export provides) and are approximations. Channel data begins February 2025. Full provenance in the repo's docs/DATA-SOURCES.md.
01Growth carried the shop to 2025. It has stopped.
Net revenue more than doubled from £47k (2022) to £110k (2025). The 12-month running total peaked around the turn of 2026 and has drifted sideways since: more orders, smaller baskets, the same money. Growth is now a volume story hiding a value problem.
02The 2026 stall is a basket problem, not a demand problem
Average order value has fallen from £35.49 in 2022 to £30.79 in 2026, and the fall is steepest exactly where it hurts: the first order a new customer places. Returning customers still spend a third more per order, but even their baskets shrank this year. Price per item has barely moved, so this is fewer items per basket, not cheaper items.
Cross-sell was the old site's weakest muscle. Abbie and the new product pages are the direct answer to this chart.
03The repeat economy in numbers
7,733 people bought at least once in the window. Most bought exactly once. The ones who came back are where the money lives, and the top 10% of buyers alone account for 48% of all customer spend.
Repeat figures match orders to customers by display name, the only link WooCommerce's export provides, so they are honest approximations rather than exact counts. Shared names overstate repeats slightly; misspelt names understate them.
04Gateway products: the first purchase predicts the second
Take every customer's first order and ask what was in it. Some products mark the start of a habit; others mark a gift bought once and never again. Buyers whose first order contained a consumable everyday product return at roughly twice the rate of buyers who arrived for Christmas lines. The 26.5% average is the dashed line; each bar is one first-order product.
The pattern reads clean: refillables and daily-use items (citrus oils, rose water, room sprays, the diffuser) breed second orders; seasonal gifting (Noel, Frosted Forest, gift kits, the Aroma-Stream) mostly does not. Worth building into how the new site merchandises to first-time visitors, and into which products paid traffic lands on.
05What actually sells, and how the mix is shifting
905 distinct products sold in the window. The Relaxation room spray is the runaway unit-volume champion. Underneath, the mix is moving: pure Essential Oils' share of estimated revenue has fallen from 36% to 28% while Essential Blends climbed from 10% to 15%. Customers increasingly buy the outcome, not the ingredient.
06Channels: Google Ads buys volume, Direct carries value
Order attribution only exists from February 2025, so this is an 18-month view. Google Ads is the biggest single source of orders but delivers the smallest baskets of the major channels; Direct and referral traffic spend a quarter more per order. And a new channel has appeared from nothing: ChatGPT referrals, 100% new customers, growing every quarter since mid-2025.
07Autumn pays for summer, and the discount habit runs deep
November is the dependable peak and June the trough. September tops the three-year average, but that lead is flattered by one exceptional month: September 2024, the 30th birthday promotion, which remains the best month ever recorded. Worth remembering with the new site launching on the birthday this September. Meanwhile 71% of all orders carry a coupon. Free shipping on its own accompanies the healthiest baskets; the monthly discount codes increasingly attract the smallest ones, with the average discounted order falling from £54 in 2023 to £34 in 2026.