Understanding Filters in Lifetimely: First Order, Any Order, and All Orders

Lifetimely offers powerful filters to help you analyze customer behavior and lifetime value (LTV). However, understanding how these filters work can sometimes be confusing, particularly when it comes to the First Order, Any Order, and All Orders filters. This guide explains how these filters behave and what you need to know to use them effectively in your reports.

Filter Definitions:

1. First Order:
   • This filter only includes customers whose very first order in your store matches the criteria you’ve set (e.g., a specific SKU or product category).
   • If a customer's first order doesn’t match the filter, that customer will be excluded from the report entirely. No other orders from that customer will be considered.
   • Important: This filter works at the customer level. If the first order doesn’t match, the customer is excluded from the cohort.
2. Any Order:
   • This filter includes customers who have ever made an order matching the criteria.
   • If a customer has placed an order that matches the criteria at any point in their purchase history, they will be included in the report, regardless of whether the first order matches.
   • The focus is on identifying customers who have ever purchased a specific product or category.
3. All Orders:
   • This filter works differently from the other two and can sometimes cause confusion. It filters out orders that don’t match the specified criteria, but it includes all subsequent matching orders.
   • For example, if a customer made multiple orders, but only their second and third orders matched the filter criteria, those orders would be included, but the first order would be filtered out.
   • This filter was not part of the original set of Lifetimely filters, and its behavior can be less intuitive for some users.

Why Filtering on Customers is Crucial for Accurate LTV:

In Lifetimely, we group customers into cohorts based on their behavior. This is why filtering on the First Order or Any Order produces similar results—because we’re focusing on customer behavior across their lifecycle.

• If we were to filter at the order level instead of the customer level, the First Order filter could cause more confusion. For example, if a customer's first order didn’t match the criteria, that order would be filtered out, and another order would take its place as the “first order.” However, that wouldn’t really be their first order, leading to inaccuracies when analyzing LTV and other metrics.
• Filtering at the customer level ensures that lifetime values, repurchase rates, and other statistics remain accurate by not excluding customers who don’t match the first-order criteria.

The Anomaly of the "All Orders" Filter:

Unlike the other filters, All Orders can sometimes yield unexpected results. Since it filters based on orders rather than customers, it can hide certain orders from the report while including others. For example, the All Orders filter might exclude a customer's first purchase but include their subsequent purchases if those match the criteria.

This filter wasn’t part of Lifetimely’s original set of filters and can sometimes produce results that aren’t intuitive. We recommend using this filter carefully and primarily relying on the First Order or Any Order filters for most LTV analysis.