The adage goes “What gets measured gets done”. Set your eCommerce team up for success in 2017 by making sure you’re measuring the right stuff! Click here to get our list of eCommerce KPIs for retailers that go beyond average conversion rate, or continue reading below to learn more.
Where there once was little or slow data to work from, retailers are now drowning in data. The sources are varied and sometimes poorly understood, so it is incumbent on the eCommerce Manager, or the member of your team that can tell you about the health of your business, to consolidate the numbers and present a holistic view of your business.
Unfortunately, tools like Google Analytics create a false sense of security that the metrics presented are the most important measures for your business. GA dominates the Fortune 500, but all of those companies do different things, have different needs, and therefore depend on different metrics to measure their health.
Seth Godin might have put it best: Is maximizing the convenient number actually going to produce the impact and the outcome you wanted? If not, please read on.
In the data age, gathering Information from Data is still two steps removed from an actual prescriptive Action that will bring about a new outcome.
This post highlights the key eCommerce KPIs for retailers I measure in our businesses that guides strategic planning and monitors the overall health of the business.
I will follow up in a separate post about the actions that these metrics urge. Please ping me on Twitter @mbertulli or by email hello@demacmedia.com with your questions in the meantime.
The 25 Critical eCommerce KPIs You Need To Measure!
Our 25 eCommerce KPIs are broken into 5 categories. You may already be reporting numbers from one or more of these categories.
To get the full list in one easy to use downloadable click here, or continue reading below.
A note: I do not advocate for specific thresholds for each of these metrics – after all, even for a simple metric like conversion rate, a site that sells luxury coats will have a lower eCommerce conversion rate than one that sells baby toys AND THAT’S OK.
What I will advocate for is ensuring this data is reported consistently and benchmarked against itself over time.
| BASICS: The Easy Stuff. You should be getting these out of Google Analytics or the equivalent with minor setup. | Ema | |
|---|---|---|
| Metric | AKA | Variations |
| Unique Visitors | Uniques | Weekly, WoW Monthly, MoM |
| Avg Conversion Rate | CR | By Device Type, By New vs Returning, Daily, Monthly, MoM |
| Avg Order Value | AOV | Monthly, MoM |
| Quantity of Product Reviews | Monthly, MoM | |
| Gross Merchandise Sales | By Channel, Weekly WoW, Monthly, MoM | |
| Cart Abandonment Rate | Daily | |
| Checkout Abandonment Rate | Daily |
| EMAIL: Email is dead! Long live email! Email continues to be a primary channel for driving sales. | ||
|---|---|---|
| Metric | AKA | Variations |
| Number of Subscribers | Subs | Weekly, WoW |
| Open Rates | Monthly, MoM | |
| Click Through Rate | CTR | Monthly, MoM |
| LOGISTICS: Monitoring how your products get into the hands of your customers. Your fulfillment centre can report this. | ||
|---|---|---|
| Metric | AKA | Variations |
| Days to Ship | Weekly | |
| Returns as % of Sales | Return Rate | Weekly |
| Average Carrier Cost to Ship | Monthly, MoM |
| CUSTOMER SERVICE: Leading indicators for customer happiness, and ultimately loyalty. Your customer service team will be all too happy to report this! | ||
|---|---|---|
| Metric | AKA | Variation |
| # of Email tickets | Daily, against previous week’s trend Monthly, MoM | |
| # of Live Chat requests | Daily, against previous week’s trend Monthly, MoM |
| ADVANCED: This is the good stuff. It may require tapping into multiple data sources to compile this information, but the business impact will be well worth it. | ||
|---|---|---|
| Metrics | AKA | Variations |
| # Net-New Customers | Monthly, MoM | |
| # Repeat Customers | Monthly, MoM | |
| Customer Lifetime Value | CLV | 30 days 90 days 1 year Lifetime |
| Top 10 Product Categories by Contribution Margin | Quarterly | |
| Top 10 Products by Contribution Margin | Quarterly | |
| Product Affinity | Affinity analysis/ Basket analysis | Monthly |
| Product View Relationships | Monthly | |
| Shipping Carrier SLA Index | Monthly | |
| Time to Purchase | Monthly | |
| Site Search Usage | Monthly | |
| Site Search Conversion Rate | Monthly |
There are a number of tools that can report various sources of data into one eCommerce Dashboard for consistency and ease of understanding. My suggestion would be to let the first few cycles of running these numbers be painful in Excel/ Numbers/ Sheets and operationalize them with Gecko Boards or Grafana over time.
eCommerce Managers, I hope this makes your life a little easier and lead you to have better conversations about the health and growth opportunities in your business.
If there are other eCommerce KPIs you depend on in your business, please share!
Download my list of critical eCommerce Key Performance Indicators by filling in the form below and start with the basics to build your eCommerce dashboard.
The post Beyond Average Conversion Rate: 25 eCommerce KPIs to Measure in 2017! appeared first on Demac Media.