Measure the time it takes customers to make a second purchase after their first, and use it as an early signal of retention and value. Shorter lags often indicate stronger product‑market fit and healthier cohorts.
The first‑to‑second purchase lag measures the time between a customer’s first order and their ______.
next order
refund request
ad impression
checkout page view
A practical way to summarize lag is to report the median and selected percentiles because lags are typically ______.
left‑skewed
normally distributed
right‑skewed
uniform
Customers without a second order during the analysis window are best treated as ______ observations.
winsorized
left‑truncated
right‑censored
fully observed
Segmenting lag by acquisition month and plotting the share returning within 7, 14, and 30 days is an example of a ______ view.
cohort
synthetic control
case‑control
cross‑sectional
When calculating lag, which timestamp pair do you use?
subscription renewal date and sign‑up date
first order time and second order time
first session time and any order time
campaign click time and first order time
If returns or cancellations void the second order, the correct handling for lag is to ______.
exclude or recompute using the next valid purchase
keep the original second order date
double the lag
set lag to zero
Shorter early‑repeat lag generally correlates with higher long‑term ______ at the cohort level.
retention
bot traffic
page speed
discount rate
To compare lag across geographies with different weekends/holidays, you should normalize using ______ calendars when possible.
local
ISO week exclusively
retailer fiscal
UTC only
A common dashboard choice is to bucket lag into 0–7, 8–14, and 15+ days. These are examples of ______.
latency bands
affinity clusters
lift curves
gini bands
One caveat with first‑to‑second lag is that deep discounting can shorten lags while harming ______.
pixel deduplication
server uptime
contribution margin
inventory count
Starter
You’ve grasped the basics of first‑to‑second purchase latency—review how it’s calculated and why right‑censoring matters.
Solid
Nice work—start segmenting lag by cohort and track 7/14/30‑day bands to catch early retention shifts.
Expert!
Outstanding—use lag with hazard/retention curves and margin checks to turn faster repeats into profitable growth.
