KPIs are helping you to control your company and to plan and reach targets. Without the right KPIs, you can’t measure precise growth and performance. All my freelancing clients are eCommerce businesses, thus, I created based on that experience a list of 69 KPIs. This list is to inspire you on what you want to measure for your business yourself.
KPIs for online stores
Some of the KPIs you can directly read from the shop system. Some you can get from other 3rd Party tools while some KPIs are a bit more difficult to properly collect.
One important tip beforehand: Even if some KPIs seem logical and it is actually clear what is meant, it is absolutely necessary to document a definition. Every company may have its own nuances. And not every new colleague understands the same thing about certain KPIs.
Example turnover: Before or after taxes? With or without shipping costs? Returns? Vouchers? Cancellations?
Sales KPIs
1. Revenue
2. Number of Transactions
3. Basket Value
4. Conversion rate
5. Time to buy
6. Transactions per customer
7. Profit margin
8. Share between registered customers and guest customers
9. Share between Payment methods
10. Share between shipping methods
11. Cart abandonment rate
12. Checkout abandonment rate
Voucher redemptions can influence various other KPIs. For example, vouchers increase the conversion rate. To avoid making the wrong decisions due to such distortions, the following two KPIs should be monitored.
13. Number or Transactions with vouchers
14. Value of voucher redemption
Discounts and sale phases in the store can also have a significant impact on KPIs, and of course they should. However, to avoid misinterpretation of the data here as well, the following two key figures should be observed for discounts and sales.
15. Number of products with sale discount in the shopping cart
16. Value of the sale discount in the shopping cart
Return KPIs
Depending on the industry of the online store, returns can cause incredible costs. And conversely, this also means that many costs can be saved here. Optimizations to the following key figures are immediately reflected in the company’s profit and even increase customer satisfaction, which can lead to even more orders.
17. Rate of returns
18. Return rate per category and product
19. Return value
20. Reasons for returns
Cancellation KPIs
Cancellations are generally orders that are canceled or at least reduced by the store operator. While returns are made from the customer. The entire order is thus cancelled or only individual products are removed. This can have different reasons such as lack of stock, rejection in payment services or suspected fraud.
21. Cancellation rate (on product basis)
22. Cancellation rate (on order basis)
23. Number of fully-cancelled orders
24. Number of partially cancelled orders
25. Cancellation value
26. Reasons for cancellation
Product KPIs
27. Products in stock
28. Value of goods in stock
29. Products with sale discount in the store
30. Total number of product ratings
31. Average product rating
Website KPIs
This is about the more classic KPIs of a website. These are all available in Google Analytics.
32. Page views
33. Sessions
34. Bounce rate
35. Visit duration
36. Page views per session
37. Visits by country and region
The following key figures should be considered primarily in relation to the technical development of the store.
38. Hits by device type (desktop, tablet, mobile)
39. Hits by browser (Firefox, Chrome, Safari)
40. JavaScript errors in the browser console
41. Number of requests with errors (400 and 500 HTML errors)
42. Loading time of the website
Measuring load times is actually worth a separate post. I’ll have to get to work on that. Besides different ways to measure what and how, it would be especially important to measure permanently, so that differences after deployments can be recognized.
Marketing KPIs
Depending on the number of different marketing channels, various other metrics can be listed here. But the most important ones would be the following:
43. Touchpoints to purchase
44. Marketing costs per conversion
45. Visitors with direct entry
46. Visitors from blogs
47. Visitors through organic search queries
48. Visitors from Adwords
For affiliate advertisers, the following KPIs could be used:
49. Number of affiliate partners
50. Revenue from affiliate partners
51. Commission payouts to affiliate partners
If actively running a newsletter list, these newsletter KPIs are also interesting:
52. Newsletter subscribers
53. Newsletter subscribers
54. Newsletter open rate
55. Newsletter unsubscribed
Social-Media KPIs
Depending on which social media networks are predominantly used, further key figures can be defined here. These key figures should help in particular to increase the reach in the networks and to improve the quality of the content.
56. Facebook fans
57. Likes and comments per Facebook post
58. Twitter followers
59. Reach per tweet
60. Instagram followers
61. Likes per Instagram post
62. Pinterest followers
Customer Service KPIs
KPIs about customer service are important because customer service is also a major cost factor. If you manage to reduce the number of customer inquiries through good usability and a lot of information in the store, you save costs without reducing customer satisfaction.
63. Number of customer inquiries (mail / phone / chat)
64. Number of customer inquiries per customer (mail / phone / chat)
65. Response time per customer request (mail / phone / chat)
66. Inquiry type (information / return / complaint / etc.)
Review and Recommendation KPIs
Store ratings are often used as a trust signal and can thus increase conversion. Providers such as Trusted Shops award store seals for this purpose. In-house rating systems can collect good and constructive feedback from customers. Key figures can also be read from these systems.
67. Number of store ratings
68. Average store ratings
69. Average store ratings at Trusted Shops or other external providers
In the end, it is up to you to decide which key figures you want to use. However, KPIs should not be changed constantly. This prevents comparability with the past. KPIs should therefore be well thought out so that they make sense and the reliability of the measurement is guaranteed.
Conclusion
The list of KPIs I’ve provided here is a great place to start if you are looking for some ideas on how to measure your eCommerce business. These metrics can help you pinpoint areas where you need improvement and take the right steps towards success.
Once you measured the relevant KPIs you can monitor them using a dashboard. My favorite is Datastudio. Check out my other articles about Google Datastudio.
If this post has given you an idea or two, feel free to let me know which ones were most helpful in the comments below!