Multiple business owners have no idea what eCommerce metrics are essential for tracking business growth and are constantly looking at incorrect parameters on their dashboards. Understanding key eCommerce metrics is critical to help you run your business well.
Multiple factors play a pivotal role in ensuring the success of an ecommerce enterprise. Right from the number of visitors to the actual number of conversions, you need to analyze the entire journey of the shoppers for gaining accurate insights.
Without the proper expertise, it becomes difficult to look, find, & explore the suitable parameters especially with so many metrics and data. For example, few businessmen measure the lifetime value (LTV) of customers. Many don’t know that it is an excellent ecommerce search metric to follow since it doesn’t offer anything concrete about other relevant information like transactions or gross profit.
You need to ensure you’re tracking everything from scratch to grow your business profitably & keep your customers happy in the process.
Here are the Most Crucial eCommerce Metrics that Every Business Should be Tracking:
Website Traffic- The Most Fundamental eCommerce Metric
As your website is among your most valuable assets, you’ll want to monitor its traffic regularly. Traffic refers to how many users visit your web app or website and is generally measured by the number of visitors or page views.
The more people that come to your site, especially repeat visitors, the more popular you’ll be—and if they keep coming back over time, they’re probably pretty interested in what you have to offer.
Source: Statista- Global eCommerce Sessions
It’s not only or all about volume. Each visitor brings value based on how much money they spend and whether they keep coming back again and again.
Tips to Enhance Website Traffic:
- Optimize the website for sales
- Target your audience on social media platforms
- Focus on content marketing
- Utilize search engine optimization effectively
- Leverage influencers marketing
Sales Conversion Rate- The eCommerce Metric Defining your Effectiveness
How often a customer purchases a product or service after clicking on an online advertisement or visiting your page defines your sales conversion rate. It is ultimately calculated by dividing total sales by the total number of visitors. This rate can also be applied to individual products, allowing you to see which products are converting at optimal speeds.
It’s essential to analyze how much money your customers are spending and whether or not that translates into profitability. A good e-commerce conversion rate benchmark stands at 2-3%.
Tips to Enhance Sales Conversion Rate:
- Focus on convertible leads
- Create catchy headlines
- Integrate live-chats
- Experiment with CTAs
- Work on follow up campaign
Email Opt-in Rate- The eCommerce Metric Consolidating your Marketing Strategy
How many people are choosing to subscribe to your email list overall? This metric is important because you can use email marketing to drive traffic back to your site and boost sales. For example, if you hold an opt-in email rate of 20%, that means one out of every five visitors is signing up for your emails.
To increase sales, monitor how many of those subscribers buy something or click on links in your emails; i.e., do they buy within 24 hours of receiving a promotional email? If so, congratulations! You have an effective email strategy on your hands!
Caution: You don’t want a high opt-in rate if that number doesn’t translate into increased conversion rates.
Tips to Enhance Email Opt-in Rate:
- Create credible designs of newsletters
- Experiment with different designs
- Leverage pop-ups
- Set a conversational tone
- Integrate videos for good impressions
Average Order Value- The eCommerce Metric defining your Growth
As you might guess, your average order value is undoubtedly one of the most important metrics to watch. To calculate it, take your total revenue for a given period and divide it by your number of orders. For example, if you made $1 million in sales over three months and had 500 orders in that time, your average order value would be $20 per order.
Note: While running an ecommerce store, focus on enhancing your conversion rate. It should be a high priority that customers make purchases more often. It ultimately increases your average order value & client lifetime value (we will be discussing in the next point).
Try incorporating product recommendations into site searches. It helps with conversion rate, average order value, and CLV (customer lifetime value).
Tips to Enhance Average Order Value:
- Design free shipping with a minimum order value
- Deal in complimentary items
- Offer exciting group deals
- Design client loyalty programs
- Offer personalized experience
Customer Lifetime Value- The eCommerce Metric Highlighting your Loyal Client Base
Customer lifetime value is the total value clients provide to your business over their lifetime. In other words, it’s how much money you’ll make off an individual customer before they stop buying from you (either because they quit or pass away). This number is crucial because it helps determine pricing strategies, guiding your overall sales strategy.
If a particular client has a high CLV and purchases products frequently, you can use discounts and special offers. It increases their frequency—thereby enhancing your overall sales volume (and revenue).
Tips to Increase Customer Lifetime Value:
- Offer particular values to customers
- Provide regular updates
- Value client feedback
- Provide top quality products
- Create something different for the users
Customer Acquisition Cost- The eCommerce Metric Updating your Actual Revenue
Customer acquisition cost is among the most fundamental metrics on your dashboard because it measures how much revenue you’re generating from your current customers and whether you can afford more customers. Usually, it gets calculated in cost per acquisition (CPA) or cost per click (CPC) for online marketing campaigns.
Customers that aren’t profitable are a waste of your time and money. To determine whether customers are reasonable, you have to know how much it costs to acquire one – CAC – and how much they spend with you every month – LTV.
Formula for CAC= Sales & Marketing Expense / Number of New Customers
Tips to Reduce Customer Acquisition Cost:
- Focus on client retention
- Leverage AI in marketing
- Showcase USPs
- Retarget clients
- Boost the conversion rate
Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate- The eCommerce Metric Highlighting Areas of Improvement
The percentage of online shoppers who added an item to their cart but did not proceed with a purchase defines your cart abandonment rate. It is a valuable metric for monitoring site and product levels and is also known as order abandonment rate (OAR).
Analyzing & understanding why consumers do not add items to their shopping carts can reveal critical insights about current strategies and provide new ones.
Cart abandonment rate is typically found by looking at ecommerce conversion rates by category or type of product and calculating bounce rates on particular web pages or steps within checkout flows.
Tips to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate:
- Provide clear pricing policies
- Improve intuitive navigation
- Reduce page loading time
- Offer Secured Payment Gateways
- Provide guest checkout options
Do you Know: What is the role & responsibilities of eCommerce Development Companies in helping with Ecommerce Metrics?
Understanding key metrics is essential to provide an ROI if you want your enterprise to grow. It is why ecommerce development companies get involved in these things by giving data-related management services. It uo=litmately provides transaction-based analytics on how you can improve your ecommerce store.
An eCommerce development company can create an advanced dashboard that will help you generate weekly reports in no time. You will no longer be required to manage and track every parameter on your own, as an advanced dashboard will let you follow each of it with a matter of clicks and scrolls.
Moreover, if your website is slow and sluggish or lacks an impressive UI, it needs a quick makeover which again lies in the hands of dedicated eCommerce developers.
Wrapping Up
Different businesses have different goals and needs, so tracking a handful of essential metrics is an excellent idea. But, it’s just as necessary to determine which metrics are most important for your business. You may find that some numbers will shift throughout your company’s lifecycle—which is normal!
It all relies on what stage you’re in, so make sure you check in with these metrics from time to time and adjust as needed. Be careful not to try and keep track of too many numbers at once, though. If you start to feel overwhelmed by having too much data, take some time to simplify things.
FAQs
Question: What are some of the free eCommerce metrics tools?
Answer: The prominent free ecommerce metric tools include the following:
- Kissmetrics
- Mixpanel
- OWOX
- Glew
Question: Can we use Google Analytics for tracking sales?
Answer: Yes, we can use the Google Analytics tool for tracking sales.
Question: What are some of the top eCommerce companies for creating an advanced dashboard for metrics analysis?
Answer: There are tons of eCommerce development companies that you can rely upon for creating an advanced dashboard for eCommerce analysis. The top 3 includes the following:
- PixelCrayons
- Sidebench
- WillowTree Apps
Read More in this Blog – 10 Tips to Make Pro eCommerce Product Photography
