9 Best eCommerce Metrics Important metrics that eCommerce owners should track and improve

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

$

Customer Acquisition Cost

100.00

$

Return on Ad Spend

$
$

Return on Ad Spend

100x

Average Order Value (AOV)

$

Average Order Value

50.00

$

Average Gross Profit Margin

$

Average Gross Profit Margin

20.00

%

Website Conversion Rate

Website Conversion Rate

125.00

%

Repeat Customers %

Repeat Customers

20.00

%

Cart Abandonment Rate

Cart Abandonment Rate

80.00

%

Return & Refund rate

$
$

Return & refund rate

100

Customer Lifetime Value

$

Customer Lifetime Value

600.00

$

What are eCommerce metrics and which ones should you track?

Metrics for eCommerce are used to track how well your Shopify, WooCommerce or other store performs sales-wise. You need to have a look at daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly reports to also see sales patterns and how your store is growing (or not).

There are also different fields of metrics to track like:

  • Sales
  • Marketing
  • Customer service
  • Manufacturing
  • Project management

For example, you can measure the conversion rate to improve sales and see how different campaign perform.

Whatever you can measure, you can improve.

What are the KPI metrics in eCommerce?

If you're using Shopify or any other platform, site speed can also be part of your eCommerce metrics and KPIs report.

KPI aka Key Performance Indicators are metrics that you track with the intention of measuring and improving. It's suggested to just focus on a few important metrics. Optimize them using conversion rate optimization or growth hacking strategies through a/b testing. If the data shows that a new version is an improvement, you implement it and gain value.

In eCommerce, there are 3 main KPIs but you can measure hundreds (if they make sense):

  • Average Order Value (AOV)
  • Conversion Rate (CR)
  • Lifetime Customer Value (LCV)

Measuring and improving these KPIs metrics will show how your eCommerce business is doing. Is it losing money or is it profitable?

What are examples of key eCommerce KPI metrics?

There can be hundreds of metrics you can get from analytics and data but these below have the most impact on your e-commerce business and its bottom line:

  • Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
  • Return on Ad Spend
  • Average Order Value (AOV)
  • Average Gross Profit Margin
  • Website Conversion Rate
  • Repeat Customers %
  • Cart Abandonment Rate
  • Return & Refund Rate
  • Customer Lifetime Value

You can also use an eCommerce metrics dashboard via a service like Databox to visually display live metrics on an LCD TV for anyone at the office to see.

Some other metrics to have an eye on:

  • Fraud order sales rate
  • Site speed metric
  • Retention period
  • Average daily sales

The formula is the number of sales / number of visitors x 100.

Use the conversion rate calculator at the top for easy calculation. 2% conversion rate is a general average eCommerce conversion, but through a conversion rate optimization program, you can get it to 4% or even up to 7%. It's not easy to achieve such high conversion metrics, but it's possible.

Using eCommerce analytics to increase conversion and product sales rate

Ecommerce metrics with google analytics is one of the most used, solid, complex and free analytics tools out there. The “Enhanced eCommerce” feature allows you to gather extra data for each sale and measure the sales impact of your campaigns (Google Adwords) and traffic (SEO).

Ways to increase your average order value

The fastest way to increase your AOV is to add these to your eCommerce store:

  • Cross-Sells
  • Up-Sells
  • Product Bundles

You can do this easily and cheaply by adding plugins to your Shopify or Woocommerce platform. If you have a custom e-commerce platform, you will need to use a designer for UX/UI and a developer to make it work

Abandonment cart can also increase AOV is used to push better products or bundles with a special offer.

Funnel metrics to see your customers dropoff location

Google Analytics has an option to create goals which help to see the customer journey and the dropoff rate (in %). The graphic will show exactly at which step the dropoff is higher so you can increase it.

Dropoff usually happens on cart and checkout pages so make sure those numbers are high (50-70%). If it's 30%, fixing that page and figuring out what the problem is, can easily double your sales.

Cart & checkout pages are also perfect for conversion rate optimization as each successful a/b test will increase all e-commerce store sales.

GDPR, cookie law and tracking your customer

Don't forget, that tracking your users via Google Analytics requires their consent for cookies and GDPR so if your store is in Europe, you need the Cookie Consent features. Get them through plugins or apps for your Shopify or WooCommerce platform.