6 eCommerce Metrics and KPIs That Actually Help You Sell More

With over 7.9 million total online shops worldwide, the eCommerce industry is highly competitive. To stand out from other eTailers, a data-driven strategy that uses the right online business metrics is key. This article will identify eCommerce metrics that you can use to gather consumer behavior insights and optimize your eCommerce business performance.

eCommerce metrics vs. KPIs

eCommerce metrics you need (to get sales to surge)

If you can measure it, it’s most likely a metric, but what metrics matter for you? In the eCommerce sphere, a metric should be directly tied to something you do, sell, or buy online.

Website traffic and average customer orders can give you a high-level picture of where you stand. But, in order to sharpen your marketing plan and drive more sales, you need to focus on other, more specific eCommerce business metrics. Prime examples include:

• Customer loyalty
• Cross shopping
• Conversion rate
• Time on page
• Bounce rate

These more in-depth metrics can give you actionable information so that you can actually improve your store (and hit your KPIs). This brings us to…

Hitting your eCommerce KPIs – Why it matters

KPI, short for key performance indicators, is a business term used everywhere, not just in online stores.

Picture this: You’re a sneakers eCommerce website and you want to increase traffic to your website. The metrics that matter here are page views. So, what’s the KPI? That’s the amount of growth you expect to see, i.e. increase traffic by 100% by the end of the year. If you track this metric each week and discover you’re losing traffic, it’s time to pivot your strategy and keep your business growing.

A set of KPIs are often generated for reports you might show your shareholders and stakeholders your progress. If you need to be accountable for your numbers, you can use KPIs to show where you are at for the day, week, quarter, or year.

Pro-tip: Use Research Intelligence to see key metrics, like bounce rate and visits, for leading online retailers

Checking the data – How much is enough?

Your industry and the size of your business will influence how often you track metrics and KPIs. A fledgling startup may not have enough sales to warrant hourly reports, but a Fortune 500 company might.

The short answer is that if data can change significantly enough within a time period missing that change could cause you to lose the opportunity, that’s a time period you need to pay attention to.

The best eCommerce marketing metrics to propel growth

While your business may already have unique indicators that it uses to measure performance, we’ll look at those that are recognized as the most actionable and powerful to power eCommerce sales.

After checking out top eCommerce metrics, be sure to benchmark your own performance against competitors to see where you can improve and expand your existing customer base.

1. Conversion rate – Scoring more sales

You managed to get a customer or prospect to your product page, but now what?

Did they buy or sign up for an offer? Did they make it through the checkout process? Performing a complete conversion analysis can help answer these questions.

If your target audience completed a goal that you intended for them to do, this is a conversion. These goals can include actions like filling out a lead generation form, completing a purchase, adding an item to their shopping cart, and can opt-in for your newsletter.

The number of completed goals per number of visitors is the conversion rate.

eCommerce conversion rate

The ratio of transactions to sessions is used often for eCommerce. For example, a ratio of one transaction to every ten sessions would be expressed as an eCommerce conversion rate of 10%.

How can you improve conversion rates?

In order to improve your conversation rate (and score more sales),  you need to know what it is to start.

Digging into other metrics can help you pinpoint exactly where customers are dropping off and sharpen your strategy to keep them converting.  Maybe, the payment page has a bug or there is something near the end of the journey that is stopping your customers. If you can see where users are exiting and track their behavior the barriers will become clear.

Constant tracking can help you identify any issue or opportunity in almost real time.

To help improve your metrics, consider conversion rate optimization (CRO) tactics and check out our tips on conversion funnel optimization.

2. Average order value – Unlocking your full purchase potential

This metric tells you the average value of each order. It goes without saying, but you want this number to rise.

Now, for you mathematicians: Take every order for a given time period and add the dollar amount up. Then, divide by the number of orders. This will be your average order value.

How can you grow your AOV?

Many ways to increase your AOV involve incentivizing customers to buy more, like:

• Strategic fulfillment: Incentivize customers to buy more. Offer free shipping for a minimum order amount above your AOV (but that’s high enough to take the cost of shipping into account.)
• Offer bonus gifts: Consider bonus gifts for the more money spent in a single order.
• Promise a better experience: eCommerce UI is often overlooked, so ensure your shopper experience is second to none.
• Brand loyalty programs: Build brand loyalty by giving your customers a gift after they spend a designated amount.
• List product bundles: Bundle complementary products together which you can afford to offer at a discount.

Anything that can get customers to spend more in a single shopping session should be assessed to see how you can up the order value.

3. Bounce rate – Keep ‘em engaged

Do you remember the last time you saw a flashy news headline and clicked on it? How long did you spend on that article page?

If it wasn’t very engaging (or, worse yet, misleading), you probably hit the “back” button and started your search for information over again. This action reflects a poor bounce rate – the time you spent on the website before giving up and doing something else.

Why is bounce rate a key eCommerce metric?

Not only can bounce rate indicate that you should be doing more to engage customers, but it is also used by search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo, to measure the quality of your site.

A high bounce rate may tell search engines that you’re not offering what you promise, and your rankings can go down as a result. Providing a better customer experience should be priority one to improve bounce rate and eventually improve session duration.

Improvements to bounce rates and click-through rates will also trickle down to your eCommerce SEO goals.

Pro-tip: Use Marketing Intelligence to check the average bounce rates for top competitors and benchmark against this metric to see where you stand.

4. Customer lifetime value (CLV) – The complete picture

How much does a single customer spend with you in their lifetime? This total revenue number is their customer lifetime value, an important KPI to help you know what a customer is worth.

Ensuring repeat customers through loyalty programs can help drive customer retention rates (CRR) up, generating higher CLV.

However, you’ll also want to compare these key eCommerce metrics to customer acquisition costs, if you’re getting a good return on your customer investment.

5. Customer acquisition cost (CAC)  – The breakdown

Your spending to attract new customers goes into calculating your customer acquisition cost (CAC). If your CAC is higher than what each customer spends, you may find yourself losing ground quickly.

Costs that need to be accounted for in CAC include marketing, staff training, web hosting, email marketing, and customer service hours for potential customers.

To get this into balance, you can get your customers to buy more. You can also spend less per customer through organic marketing methods, such as referral or affiliate marketing. You can also use low-cost or even free services to build and engage your email list. If you’re already tracking subscribers and sales, this is an easier one of the eCommerce performance metrics to calculate.

Pro tip: Use Research Intelligence to monitor top-performing marketing channels to optimize your return on investment (ROI). 

6. Website traffic – Getting attention

There are dozens of tools being used by marketers to measure, track, and analyze website traffic. Google Analytics can monitor traffic to just your eCommerce website. Tools like Similarweb can help you analyze traffic to your competitors.

Since website traffic can be so nuanced, it has its own set of metrics worth knowing including 1) page views (measures the total number of hits or visits to the site) 2) unique visitors (count of the people who visit your site, usually measured by unique IP address).

No matter which one you choose, you should have a plan for what to do with that data. Web traffic can tell you:

• Engagement rate
• Time of day users visit
• Time on site
• Which pages they are landing on
• Visitor flow

You can even drill down to how your clients find you, such as through social media or search.

For someone just getting started, however, simply knowing your traffic from month to month can be essential in predicting future business and planning inventory around seasonal trends such as holiday shopping.

First-time eCommerce site owners can use that data and build from there, making traffic one of the key eCommerce metrics available.

More eCommerce metrics you shouldn’t ignore

Here are some more popular eCommerce performance metrics for eCommerce brands to track and measure:

• Shopping cart abandonment rate: The percentage of visitors who put merchandise in their shopping cart but leave without finishing an order at your eCommerce store.
• Refund and return rate: Measurement of orders that are reversed due to returns or refunds. This is a sign of customer satisfaction.
• Net promoter score: The likelihood that a customer would make a referral to a friend or recommend your business to others. NPS is usually collected in a customer satisfaction survey or email.
• Repeat customers rate: The number of customers who are returning and not brand new. This is a sign of customer loyalty.

Pro-tip: Use Shopper Intelligence customer loyalty data to determine purchase frequency for brands and categories on Amazon.

The bottom line is that almost anything can be measured these days so honing in on the most important metrics is key to boosting your business’s performance. Define what key eCommerce metrics are relevant to your business, and go from there. You can also check out our guide to eCommerce terms to see what other businesses are tracking.

Get more data to boost your eCommerce performance

Knowing what key eCommerce performance metrics to collect is just step one. Now, go out and collect it! Use tools like Similarweb Shopper, Research, and Marketing intelligence solutions to get the most accurate data to benchmark your eCommerce site against your competition. This can tell you if you’re leading the market or just barely getting by and can become part of a solid plan for growth and market dominance.