The National Retail Federation predicts that online is going to be the major driver of growth for retail in the next years to come. No surprises here: consumers spend more and more time on mobile discovering and comparing products -- a perfect opportunity for businesses to capture buyer’s intent in the “micro-moments.”
Yet as retail is undergoing this massive shift, many stores are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy -- and the competition gets tougher for the young disruptors. To grow business and increase sales, e-commerce marketers need to ensure they are tracking web conversions and measuring the right KPIs.
Here are 44 essential metrics every e-commerce business should be measuring.
Business Health Metrics
Customer acquisition cost (CAC) |
Calculate how much it costs you to acquire a customer |
Average order value |
Calculate how much revenue each order brings to your business |
Customer lifetime value (LTV) |
Predict how much money a customer will bring over the entire future relationship with your business |
Percentage of returning customers |
Calculate the percentage of people who come back and buy more after making the initial purchase |
Sales conversion rate |
Calculate the percentage of visitors who become your customers |
Revenue generated from marketing campaigns (marketing ROI) |
Calculate how much revenue is generated for all marketing activity |
Website and App Metrics
Site availability |
Determine if you can access a website by going to its URL and view the site’s content as expected |
YoY traffic changes |
Compare the number of visitors for one period to the same period the previous year |
Time on site |
Measure how much time visitors spend on your website |
Number of pages visited |
Measure how many pages a visitor views per session |
Number of app downloads |
Calculate how many people downloaded your app from Apple’s App Store or Google Play |
Sales conversion rate |
Calculate the percentage of website visitors who become your customers |
Average order value |
Calculate how much revenue each order brings to your business |
Orders by session |
Measure how many orders each session (visit) brings to your business |
Shopping cart abandonment rate |
Calculate the ratio of the number of abandoned shopping carts to the number of initiated transactions |
Customer Experience Metrics
Website loading time |
Measure how long it takes for your website pages to load |
App daily active users (DAU) |
How many people use your app daily |
Pageviews per user |
Measure how easy it is to navigate your website |
Page abandonment |
Measure how many visitors leave a page before completing the desired action |
New users/repeat users by pages |
Measure how many new visitors your website pages get versus the number of repeat visitors |
Bounce rate |
Calculate the percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing just one page |
Loyalty Metrics
Customer lifetime value (CLV) |
Predict how much profit a customer will bring over the entire relationship with your business |
Net promoter score (NPS Score) |
Measure the willingness of your customers to recommend your company’s products or services to others |
Repeat purchase rate |
See the percentage of your current customers that come back to shop again |
Paid Search Advertising Metrics
Spend |
Calculate how much money was spent on advertising for a given date range |
Clicks |
Measure many times users click on your ad and get to the landing page |
Impressions |
Measure how many times users saw your ad |
Click-through rate (CTR) |
Calculate the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions |
Average cost per click (CPC) |
Measure how much on average you were charged for a click (calculated by dividing the total cost of your clicks by the total number of clicks) |
Conversions |
Measure how many times a click turned into a business result (a sign-up, a sale, or any other action taken by the user) |
Conversion rate |
Calculate the number of conversions divided by the number of clicks |
Cost per conversion |
Measure how much you pay for a conversion |
Social Media Advertising Metrics
Spend |
Calculate how much money was spent on advertising for a given date range |
Network referrals |
Track which social networks are driving most traffic |
Social media conversions |
Measure conversion by social networks to understand which ones bring the most valuable shoppers |
Clicks |
Measure many times users click on your ad and get to the landing page |
Frequency |
Understand when to set a frequency cap to prevent your audience from getting fatigued |
Relevance score |
See how well your current ads are performing and whether you should make any changes |
Email Metrics
Open rate |
Calculate the percentage of email recipients who open a given email |
Clickthrough rate |
Calculate the percentage of email recipients who clicked on links in a given email |
Conversion rate |
Calculate how many people completed the desired action |
Bounce rate |
Measure the percentage of your emails that could not be delivered to the recipient’s inbox |
List growth rate |
Calculate the rate at which your email list is growing |
Email forwarding rate |
Calculate the percentage of people who clicked on a “forward to a friend” button |
Ready to create a performance dashboard for your e-commerce business? At AdStage, we’ve built Universal Data API to help e-commerce brands pull in ad performance data, automate paid search and paid social campaigns, and map customer data back to campaigns so you can see the ROI and scale your business faster.
Try AdStage Free for 14 Days -- no credit card required