It is crucial to measure the KPIs that are relevant to your business’ performance and health, especially if you have just started e-commerce. Analyzing the various KPIs will allow you to make critical adjustments in your execution to reach your strategic goals. You need to have useful KPIs in order to be able to achieve any business goal.
Many e-businesses are unsure about how to use this powerful tool and what they should measure.
This blog will present 53 Key Performance Indicators, (KPIs), that new e-commerce store owners can use to improve their stores.
What are the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)?
KPIs are Key Performance Indicators. These are quantifiable measures that indicate whether a company is moving toward its goals.
This demonstrates your e-commerce’s performance. An entrepreneur can track several KPIs (e.g. sales, marketing, customer service) to see where they are at the moment and what they need in order to reach their goals.
Entrepreneurs can use a variety of KPIs to measure their e-commerce business growth. The performance indicator may vary depending on the store. It could be the number or source of visitors to the site each day, search engine optimization, or traffic source.
These e-commerce KPIs should not only be quantitative and qualitative, but also allow you to forecast the future and reveal your past.
The following are the major categories that can be divided into e-commerce KPIs:
- Performance indicators to sales
- Marketing performance indicators
- KPIs for customer service
- KPIs for measuring store performance
Why are Key Performance Indicators important?
KPIs can be a useful tool to track your business’ progress. It is hard to track progress over time without KPIs. Your beliefs or preference would drive your decisions.
You can use the KPI data from your account to create strategy plans that drive more online sales and to understand and spot potential problems in your business.
KPIs are essential for many reasons.
- The health of their store can be monitored by the owners
Shop owners can track their company’s performance by using a few KPIs for each of the four categories: customer satisfaction, human resource, revenue, and business process.
Businesses can assess KPIs to determine the effectiveness of their work and make the necessary adjustments to reach the goals.
- Companies can track their progress over time
Every enterprise sets a target at the start of each year. They use KPIs to determine if they achieve their quarterly goal.
They track key indicators such as revenue and gross margin to ensure that they are making progress towards their long-term goal. They will know how many percentages they have achieved and what areas need improvement. Analyzing KPIs will answer all these questions.
- Companies make changes to address problems and take advantage of opportunities
Companies can adjust their approach to reduce errors and speed up their progress towards achieving their goal by assessing KPIs according to the timeline. To keep track of their projects, they can add the KPIs to their dashboard. This will allow them to determine if they are on the right path or if there are any opportunities to move faster.
53 Key Performance Indicators to help e-commerce beginners
E-commerce KPIs can be variable. Not all online stores need to track all KPIs. Your business’s specific needs will determine the right KPIs.
These 53 key performance indicators are common for all ecommerce sites, particularly beginners. Store owners can make informed decisions about how to improve their store based on actual and real data by regularly monitoring and measuring KPIs.
Marketing KPIs
1. Traffic to websites
Website traffic refers to the number of people who visit our online shop. This is one the most important key performance indicators. This is a key performance indicator that shows how likely you are to convert more visitors to your customers.
An e-commerce shop should strive to increase website traffic. This not only increases sales but also raises brand awareness. People will be able to recall your store, tell their friends about it, or return to you later to buy something.
2. Rate of bounce
The bounce-rate indicator indicates how many visitors leave the website after they arrive from a search engine, or other websites. A high bounce rate means that most shoppers cannot find what they are looking for in your estore.
Relevancy is one factor that can lead to a high bounce rate. Your site may be found by search engines using a keyword. If they don’t find what they are looking for on the first page, they may leave.
3. Time on the site
This KPI shows you how long your audience spends on your site. A higher time spent on your website means that they are more engaged with you. You want to see more time on landing pages and blog content than you do on the checkout page.
4. Time to buy
Time to buy is the time it takes for your visitors to become your actual customers. Some people visit your website and make a purchase immediately, while others visit the site several times or more before making a purchase.
It all depends on what type of e-commerce site you run. High time to purchase might not be an issue for you. You may not be able to sell expensive items immediately. People need time to do research before making a decision.
5. New visitors vs returning visitors
The number of visitors to your site for the first time is called new site visitors. Returning visitors indicate how many people have visited your site in the past.
This indicator is important for store owners as it helps them to build long-lasting relationships with customers. You can increase your ecommerce website’s revenue by knowing what your repeat visitor KPI is and how you can improve it.
6. Pageviews per visit
This KPI is the average number of pages a user views on your site each visit. Higher engagement is usually correlated with more pages viewed. If it takes users too long to find the products that they want, then you should re-evaluate the design of the site.
7. Average session duration
This indicator shows how long a user spends on your site in a single visit. This indicator is similar to the Time on the site indicator and store owners would like to have a large number of this section. You can convert more visitors to customers if you allow for more time between visits.
8. Source of traffic
This KPI will tell you where your visitors are coming from and how they found your website. This KPI will give you information about the most popular channels for driving traffic. These could include organic search, paid advertising, and social media. It helps you to focus on the channel that brings more traffic to your website.
9. Mobile site traffic
Mobile site traffic is the number of people who visit your e-commerce website via their mobile devices. Optimizing mobile traffic is essential.
10. Monitoring Daypart
Daypart monitoring indicators can be checked by store owners to see when their site is at its peak traffic. This will allow them to know the customer’s habits and offer the right promotion to increase sales.
11. Subscribe to the newsletter
This indicator displays how many people have subscribed to your newsletter. More subscribers means you can reach more people. A high number of subscribers is important for business doers so they can reach them in the future with email marketing.
Magento is one of the most used platforms. Having a Newsletter Popup Module will increase your subscribers.
12. Subscriber growth rate
This number will tell you how fast your subscribers are growing. This KPI combined with the total subscribers will give you an excellent insight into your marketing lead.
13. Subscribers who are not enrolled
Marketers don’t want to have unsubscribers. They want to keep it low and look for the reasons why this number is rising.
14. Email open rate
This rate indicates how many subscribers have opened your email marketing. This number should be low to ensure that the subject and content are correct or that the list is not full of irrelevant subscribers.
15. Click-through rates for emails
The email open rate indicator shows you the percentage of subscribers that opened the email. However, the click-through rate tells you how many people clicked on the link after opening the email. This is important because it will redirect recipients to your website even if they don’t click the link in the email.
Any business owner can ask how to use email marketing in order to increase email click-through rates.
16. Chat sessions
The number of chat sessions on a site that has a live chat tool shows how many people are able to communicate with the tool to request virtual assistance. A high number of chat sessions will bring you more visitors to your site.
17. Fans and social followers
A useful KPI that helps gauge customer loyalty and brand awareness is the number of fans and followers on social media.
18. Social media engagement
This indicator shows you how many people are interacting with your brand via social media.
19. Clicks
This is the number of clicks a link receives. This KPI can be measured in many places, including your website, social media and display ads.
20. Blog traffic
This KPI can be found by creating a filter view in your analytics software. It’s also useful to compare blog traffic with overall site traffic.
21. Average position
This shows the rank of your website in search engine results pages. The goal of most e-commerce stores is to be the first for targeted keywords. This KPI is something that store owners strive to attain.
22. Reviewers’ ratings on product quality and quantity
Customer reviews are social proof. They provide valuable feedback to your business. You can track product reviews to determine the best way to improve your product in customers’ eyes.
23. Rates for affiliate performance
Affiliate marketing is becoming more popular. This will increase sales and help to generate more revenue online. This KPI is useful if your site has participated in affiliate advertising. It will also help you to understand which channels have been most successful.
24. Customer retention rate
Customer retention refers to the percentage of customers who return to your site and make purchases. This simply means a company’s ability to retain customers over a certain time period.
KPIs for sales
25. Conversion rate
A crucial KPI for online shops is the conversion rate. A high conversion rate means that the store is able to convince many visitors to buy products, services, or take desired actions. Conversely, a low rate indicates that few people are ready to buy.
This percentage is calculated simply by adding the total number visitors to the total number conversions. The conversion rate of an e-commerce store can vary depending on many factors.
26. Shopping cart abandonment rate
Cart abandonment rate is the percentage of shoppers who add items and do not complete their checkout. You can reduce the abandonment cart if the rate is high. This number will determine how much revenue you have in your store.
This formula calculates the abandoned rates
The abandonment rate = Total number of transactions completed/ Total number shopping carts. * 100%
27. Selling price
The cost per unit of goods sold KPI indicates how much money your business spends to sell a product. This includes manufacturing, materials and labor costs.
Below is the formula:
Start Inventory + Purchases During the Year – Ending inventory (end of year)
28. Churn rate
The Churn Rate is the ratio between the number lost subscribers and the number gained subscribers.
The following formula can be used to calculate the churn rates:
Churn rate = The number of subscribers that have been lost and the number of new subscribers.
Because it’s more cost-effective for customers to keep their existing customers than to acquire a new one, store owners don’t want a high rate of churn. You can get to know your customers to find out why they have canceled your service and how you plan to reduce the churn rate. It can be done through a survey. You will then have a plan for improving the weak points.
30. Average order value
The average order value answers the question about how much customers spend on one order. Below is the formula for calculating this KPI.
Average Order Value = Total Revenue/Number of Orders
You can use some useful strategies to increase the average order value, such as creating product bundles, offering personalized product recommendations or discounts.
31. Competitive pricing
To have a price strategy that works, it is important to know the price of your competitors and compare it to yours. You can price match if your price is comparable to your competitor’s.
You can also track the average retail price in order to determine the impact of reducing costs or implementing a promotion to increase sales.
32. Customer lifetime value
This means that a customer is valued for their contribution to your company over the course of their lives. Loyal customers bring long-term, sustainable profits to your company. Customer lifetime worth is a key indicator that encourages companies to concentrate on the long-term health and well-being of their customers.
Shop owners can use customer lifetime value to plan future marketing strategies and improve customer loyalty. Selling a product to an existing customer is much easier than selling it to a new customer.
33. Sales
A merchant can track their sales by a certain period, such as a week, month, or year. Their management system will determine the timeline. Your store will run smoothly if you have the right sales strategy.
34. Gross profit
This KPI is calculated when the total cost for goods sold is subtracted from the total sales.
Gross profit = Total sales minus total cost of goods sold
35. Revenue per visitor
This gives you an average amount of how much someone spends on a single visit.
36. Stock levels
This KPI shows how many stocks you have in your store, and how long it has been sitting before being sold.
37. Cost of Customer Acquisition
This indicator will let you know how much you spend to acquire a customer. This indicator can be measured by analyzing how much you spend on marketing and breaking down each client.
38. Recurring Purchase Rate
Business owners can use repeat purchase rates to gauge customer loyalty and plan their sales strategies. This is the rate at which customers return to your site to purchase more.
39. Buy Frequency
This measure shows how many orders customers placed in a given time period.
Purchase Frequency = Total Orders / Total Customers
KPIs for customer service
40. Score of customer satisfaction
This KPI measures how satisfied customers are with your product or services. Improved customer service can help a company win loyal customers and increase brand awareness.
41. Customer complaints:
This shows how many clients are unhappy with your product/service. This number should be kept as low as possible for every store owner. This indicator can help you to assess the performance of customer service and take the appropriate action to improve it.
42. Average resolution time
This indicates the time it takes for customer support to resolve a particular issue. It begins at the time the customer first contacted customer support about the issue. To make customers happier, companies tend to lower this number.
43. Customer feedback
The survey can provide customer feedback. This is an important indicator that gives you valuable information from customers. You can improve customer service by analyzing the data.
44. First response time
This KPI indicates the average time it takes for a customer to receive a response from customer service regarding their query.
45. Issues active
Active issues refers to the number of current issues a company has. It is important to monitor the number of active issues in your helpdesk system. Problems that are quickly resolved will not have an impact on the number of active problems. This means you are receiving more customer service inquiries than usual. This should be investigated by the company.
46. Refund rate
Your refund or return amount should not exceed 20%. This indicates that your products and services are not meeting customer expectations. Before you refund, it is a good idea to conduct a survey. This will allow you to understand your customers’ expectations and help you improve your products and services later.
47. Resolved problems
How customer service handles a problem is reflected in the number of issues that have been resolved at any given time. The number of resolved issues is associated with a specific service agent, which can help the company determine where further training would be helpful.
48. Net Promoter
This score measures how customers recommend your products and services to others. This score also gives insight into customer loyalty and relationships.
KPIs for measuring store performance management
49. Hours worked
To determine the difference between actual and estimated hours, companies want to verify the hours worked KPI. This will make it easier to predict future resources.
50. Budget
This KPI shows how much money you have allocated to your project. This KPI allows you to make adjustments to your plan and execute it if necessary.
51. Cost variance
This is the difference between your predicted cost and total real cost. This number allows you to take a deeper look at your finances to determine where you should save and where you should spend more.
52. Return on investment (ROI).
The return on investment is the difference between the investment’s gain and loss. The better the situation, the higher the number. This shows all expenses and earnings associated with a project.
The return on investment formula can be found here
ROI = (Net Profit/Cost of Investment) * 100%
53. Cost performance index (CPI).
CPI is a measure of how efficiently a resource is being used. The earning value is used to calculate the CPI. This divides the actual costs.
CPI = Earned Valu/Actual Costs
Conclusion
Using Key Performance Indicators to measure the performance of an organization is a crucial concept that many companies today use. KPIs allow business owners to evaluate the effectiveness of their current processes and take corrective actions. It is almost impossible to translate company objectives into daily operations without KPI metrics.
