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What are the Top eCommerce Metrics?
You don’t need to track every eCommerce metric to improve shopping experiences and achieve a positive return on investment (ROI).
Knowing what you want to study is key in deciding which metrics to focus on. Do you want to see how your site gets discovered online or what touchpoints customers use to find you? Or do you want to know how to improve engagement on your site once they are there?
Different goals will necessitate studying different kinds of metrics. These are the primary ones for each area of focus:
1. Engagement Metrics
These metrics highlight user interaction with your site. They help determine whether you attract the right audience and if there are areas within your site that have poor user experience.
These include:
Returning Visitors
This metric tracks visitors who come back to your website after their first visit. You can track this inside GA4. To do this, go to Reports > Retention, and you can see new vs. returning visitors.
Returning visitors can show you products and site features that users like the most. The metric also helps you determine how to improve the user experience to attract more repeat business.
According to Dashthis, it’s best to aim for at least 30% of returning visitors. At this rate, you have a decent balance of first-time and repeat visitors, so you have a good chance of creating a loyal customer base.
Some ways to increase the number of returning customers include:
- Using retargeting ads;
- Personalized email marketing;
- Using push notifications;
- Running a loyalty program;
- Regularly publishing engaging content;
- Attracting and engaging social media followers.
Time on Site and Page
Time on site measures the average duration a user spends on your site per session. Meanwhile, the time on page is the average duration a visitor spends on a page per session. Often, the longer visitors stay, the more likely they find your content enjoyable or informative.
The time visitors spend on your pages tells you whether your content is relevant to the traffic you attract. Since it measures user engagement, time on the site may impact ranking and visibility.
You can use GA4 to track these metrics.
So, what does a good on-page time look like?
A good session duration depends on your industry and content quantity. Nevertheless, aim for at least 50-60 seconds per page and at least two minutes per session.
Some ways to increase session duration include:
- Improve readability.
- Add more information to your product descriptions.
- Add product reviews.
- Add more photos.
- Add interactive elements, like a video, or 3D model.
- Include exit intent popups.
- Add relevant internal links.
- Make your website fast and mobile-responsive.
- Optimize navigation by adding breadcrumbs, a search bar, and more.
Pages per Visit
This metric helps you establish your content’s appeal. It’s also crucial in assessing your ability to achieve goals like increasing your page views or purchases.
You can assess this metric using tools like Similarweb, HubSpot Analytics, and Google Analytics.
Aim for at least 1.7 pages per visit. If you have less than that, use the solutions mentioned above to boost your session durations and improve this metric.
Bounce Rate
The higher your bounce rate, the more likely your landing pages aren’t intuitive and the less likely it is that the visitors will convert.
This metric also indicates how much of your advertising efforts you waste and how many potential leads you lose. Additionally, there’s some evidence to suggest that poor bounce rate may affect organic rankings as it suggests the relevance of your content to users.
Some top tools to check your bounce rate are: Google Analytics, Similarweb, and Rank Ranger.
Aim for less than 40% bounce rate.
If you exceed that, verify that your content sticks to the search intent and that your pages follow user-friendliness best practices.
2. Discovery Metrics
These provide insights about how customers find your online store. They include:
Search Rankings
The higher your search rankings, the better your visibility and the more likely users will click on your content. Visibility is directly tied to how big your pool of audience is, so that directly impacts your revenue.
You can assess your rankings using tools like Semrush, Serpple, and Rank Tracker.
But, how can you tell that your rankings are good?
A good keyword ranking is within the top 10.
Some of the ways to improve search ranking include:
- Optimize your technical elements
- Searching for and using the right keywords
- Optimize your Google local business listings
Impressions and Reach
While impressions track the total times your content reaches viewers, reach is the number of unique viewers who see it. Reach tells you if your visibility is expanding to new audiences or not. Meanwhile, impressions can help you gauge how often your content is shown to potential searchers.
Some of the top tools to determine these metrics are Google Search Console, Similarweb, and Semrush.
That being said, high reach and impressions are only good if they induce high CTR. Otherwise all that visibility leads to nothing concrete.
It’s important to assess reach against impressions to balance your marketing efforts. Too much or too little of either is often bad.
For instance, high impressions with minimal reach mean fewer users see your content. On the other hand, if impressions are high but you are reaching the same pool of audience again and again — you don’t get discovered by new potential customers.
A good impression-to-reach ratio is 10:2 or higher. Impression to reach ratio is a calculation that compares the number of unique users who have viewed content or an ad to the total number of times that content was displayed. And Reach is the number of ad impressions divided by the ad frequency. Below this point, you’ll need to widen your target audience.
3. Acquisition Metrics
These metrics show how effective your marketing efforts are at acquiring new customers.
These include:
Click Through Rate (CTR)
CTR shows you the percentage of people who clicked on your web pages in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) as opposed to the total number of times it appeared in the SERPs. As such, it can help you determine the effectiveness of your ad and SEO campaigns.
The more people click you receive, the more likely users get to know your offers and the higher the likelihood of conversions.
Tools like Crazy Egg and Google Analytics can show you your CTR.
Now, how can you tell that you have a good CTR?
While the average PPC CTR is 2.35%, WebFX states a good CTR is 10%. And for organic search, Databox recommends 2%. Still, a decent CTR varies based on factors like your industry and ad platform.
For instance, here’s how CTR varies on the search and display network across industries:
Aim for a CTR higher than your industry’s average.
A comprehensive conversion rate optimization (CRO) campaign can help you improve your CTR, among other metrics. A CRO strategy also helps boost your conversion rate.
Page Load Time
Users who can’t easily find your products and services will likely seek alternatives elsewhere. Studies show 14% of customers start shopping elsewhere and 40% leave your site if it loads slowly. Slow loading also results in poor user experiences, which may lower your rankings and, subsequently, visibility, CTR, and conversions.
You can track page load time with tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and GTMetrix, which also tell you exactly how to improve areas of your website to improve its speed.
The key load time metrics to assess include:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): The duration between the time your page first loads up to when a user can see the largest images and text blocks on it;
- First Input Delay (FID): A measure of the time it takes a browser to respond to a user’s first interaction with your website.
Semrush recommends an LCP of 2.5 seconds or less and an FID of at most 100 milliseconds.
Google loves fast page load times as part of their Core Web Vitals because users prefer faster sites. According to Google, it is also a ranking factor.
“Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed—that’s why we’ve decided to take site speed into account in our search ranking.”
Some ways to improve speed include:
- Code minification;
- Optimizing images;
- Reducing redirects;
- Using browser caching;
- Using a Content Delivery Network.
Cost Per Lead (CPL)
This metric enables you to establish the success of your marketing campaign based on the number of leads you’re getting at a given cost. Keeping expenses constant, the more leads you make, the better.
You only need to care about CPL for paid ads, as organic leads typically cost nothing. You can calculate CPL using our Vizion’s PPC ROI calculator.
Although the average CPL in 2024 is $66.69, rates can vary per industry and PPC platform. A good CPL is usually lower than your industry’s average
Here are some ways to lower your CPL:
- A/B testing elements and using the one with the best returns;
- Assessing your customer data and refining your target audience;
- Swapping expensive, high-traffic keywords with specific, affordable ones.
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV/CLV) and Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Your CLV indicates how well your brand fosters customer loyalty. This information allows you to refine your targeting efforts to focus on customers with a high CLV potential, maximizing earning opportunities. Meanwhile, CAC lets you determine the most valuable customers and ROI.
You can estimate CLV with tools like WebFX CLV calculator, while Google Analytics data can help you calculate CAC.
CLV isn’t a stand-alone metric; you should measure it against your CAC. Your CLV-to-CAC ratio allows you to see how much it costs to grow your customers. It also enables you to identify your top customers and their demographics.
Aim to make at least $3 (CLV) for every dollar you use to acquire customers.
You can improve this ratio by:
- Conducting a CRO;
- Assessing sales and marketing data to identify high-value customers to target;
- Prioritizing organic channels as they often have more high-quality leads than paid channels.
4. Conversion Metrics
These metrics measure how well you convert visitors into shoppers.
These include:
Sales Conversion Rate
This rate measures the percentage of deals that result in purchases compared to all available opportunities. Your sales conversion rate can help you establish whether your purchasing funnel has issues. So you can determine where to improve and increase the chances of converting leads to paying customers.
You can calculate this rate using this formula:
Aim for a 10% sales conversion rate or higher.
If lower than that, some ways to improve include:
- Ensuring that your service/product pages have a clear value proposition;
- Focusing on customers that fit your ideal profile best;
- Anticipate and reassure customer objections using testimonials and case studies of the benefits of your offers.
Average Order Value (AOV)
This metric helps you speculate your ROI and identify opportunities to upsell and cross-sell. AOV can also help you concentrate resources like customer support on the most profitable customers.
You can determine the average order value by dividing your revenue by your sale count.
Based on recent data, eCommerce AOV in May 2024 was around $128.
A good AOV rate depends on your products, services, and season. Use your industry’s AOV as a benchmark.
Some ways to improve AOV include:
- Upsales;
- Cross-sales;
- Free shipping above a given order amount;
- Discounts on volume and bundle purchases.
5. Retention Metrics
These offer a detailed view of customer loyalty. Besides CLV, others include:
Cart Abandonment Rate
This metric is crucial as it tells you the effectiveness of convincing leads to complete purchases. It can help you identify issues with your cart page layout, user-friendliness, and other technical concerns.
Some top tools to check cart abandonment are Kissmetrics and Google Analytics.
You’ll want to stay below the average cart abandonment rate, which, according to Baymard Institute, is 70.19%.
You can lower cart abandonment through checkout optimization. Also, retarget such users through email marketing.
Churn Rate
This metric assesses the rate at which customers abandon your business. You should care about your churn rate, as customer acquisition is often pricier than retention. By lowering your churn rate, you save on acquisition costs. So, you can focus on improving customer loyalty to boost repeat business.
Some top churn prediction and prevention tools include ChurnZero and Qualtrics CustomerXM.
According to Forbes, the acceptable monthly and yearly churn rates for established businesses are 1% and 7% or less, respectively. Startups should strive to stay under 15% ( their upper average limit).
You can improve the churn rate by:
- Improving customer service;
- Refining products to suit customer needs better;
- Inform users on why they should continue doing business with you through relevant content.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
This metric helps determine whether users are happy and whether you have a loyal customer base. Understanding customers and getting feedback enables you to establish their behaviors and pain points so you can refine your products and campaigns to suit them.
You can calculate this score using the following formula:
A good eCommerce NPS is anything over zero, though 20+ is great, 50+ is amazing, and 80+ is top-tier.
Some of the ways to boost NPS include:
- Have quick response times.
- Address customer needs adequately.
- Avoid transferring customers amongst multiple help agents.
6. Analytics for Scaling Growth
These metrics give you an overview of your business growth.
Besides AOV, other key metrics for scaling growth include:
Unique Visitors
Assessing unique visitors is crucial as they help you gauge the overall growth of the business. This metric can help you determine user behavior and your popularity.
You can check unique visitors with tools like Google Analytics.
A good unique visitor rate is between 70-80%, as this offers a decent customer base for high conversions.
If yours is below 50%, use search engine optimization, social media, and paid ads to attract new visitors.
Number of Transactions and Revenue
Analyzing your income and the number of transactions you get over given periods allows you to forecast demand and prepare for upcoming months. This data is also crucial in identifying whether your campaign achieves your marketing goals.
You can assess the number of transactions and revenue using tools like Google Analytics.
When examining revenue, the profit margin can help determine whether your business is running smoothly. A good profit margin is 45.25%, according to Amasty. Still, Shopify considers 20% as high, 10% as average, and 5% as low.
A good number of transactions depends on your business’ success, industry, products, services, and season. This metric requires you to assess it against others, such as revenue. For instance, your total sales may drop, but the AOV rises, boosting revenue.
Still, you’ll want the number of transactions to increase as your business grows.
An unsatisfactory number of transactions or income calls for a CRO.
7. Advocacy Metrics
These highlight how satisfied customers contribute to your business’ growth. They include word-of-mouth referrals and social media shares.
Advocacy metrics matter because they tell you whether you need to improve your ability to attract referrals. Considering referrals is crucial as they are more likely to close bigger deals. They also do so faster than regular first-time shoppers because they trust your business from the get-go.
You can easily determine your social shares across different platforms. On the other hand, you can measure word-of-mouth by running surveys on the likelihood that a customer will recommend your product. You can also ask new customers how they heard about you.
Some ways to improve advocacy include:
- Including referral perks;
- Having quality offers and customer support;
- Requesting for referrals after delivering;
- Being active and posting engaging content on socials.
eCommerce Analytics Strategy: Best Practices
Here are some best practices when assessing eCommerce analytics:
- Set clear goals: Establishing your goals allows you to evaluate whether your metrics match them. It helps you focus your optimization efforts toward achieving them.
- Use various tools: No analytics tool can help you analyze all the key metrics, and reports may vary. For a holistic approach, it’s best to combine different tools.
- Regularly review your data: Regular assessments can help you establish trends, which you can use for forecasting. They also ensure you keep track of any changes and adjust them before serious losses occur.
- Act on insights: The whole point of eCommerce analytics is identifying your top slacking areas. Then, you need to address them to improve your shopping experience, rankings, and revenue.
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