These are our top 7 eCommerce website metrics we think you should track, keep an eye on and why! These are all metrics (just a fancy name for numbers) that can indicate if there is a problem with something on your website. When these numbers are working well they can increase your sites revenue – when they are performing poorly they can be early indicators of a problem on your site.
Conversion Rate
What It Is
The percentage of sessions that result in an order, out of the total number of visits to your site for the same period.
Why It Matters
The higher you can nudge your site’s conversion rate, the more sales you make for the same volume of website traffic.
What It Shows
There is a golden rule in eCommerce that 3% is the website conversion rate you should aim for. Use this rule of thumb with a caution. This is VERY much an average and industry measure. Your sites conversion rate depends on so many things. We take the approach that you want YOUR websites conversion rate to be as high as possible. Anything you do to try and increase sales on your website you want to test and see if your websites conversion rate goes up. If it does awesome keep the change - if it goes down you might need to reconsider the change you made. A decreasing conversion rate indicates something is going wrong in the sales process of your website.
Average Order Value
What It Is
Your total sales value, including shipping and taxes, divided by your total number of sales in the same period.
Why It Matters
If you can increase your average order value, your stores revenue increase without having to send more traffic.
What It Shows
If your average order value increases you have a healthy upsell setup on your website. If your average order value decreases something is going wrong with your site or your site upsells. You need to investigate this!
Abandoned Cart Rate
What It Is
The number of people that have added something to their cart but not checked out or purchased.
Why It Matters
The lower your abandoned cart rate the better. The lower this number the more people have purchased/checkout as soon as they have added something to cart.
What It Shows
If your abandonded cart rate increases something might be happening in your checkout process and you need to investigate this. You want to reduce clicks, confursion and any barriers to checkout you can. When you reduce these barriers your abandonded cart rate should decrease.
Returning Customer Rate
What It Is
The percentage of customers that have placed more than one order on your store out of all customers that placed an order withing the same date range.
Why It Matters
It is one indicator of a great customer experience if people come back, and it is much cheaper to nurture existing customers than to go out and get new ones.
What It Shows
If your returning customer rate is decreasing it shows something is going wrong with your customer service, advertising or email flows and needs to be investigated. If it is increasing it's time to celebrate you are doing things right so do more of it!
Sessions
What It Is
Sessions are the number of visits your site has had during that period. Think of this as the number of pairs of eyeballs that have seen your site in that period.
Why It Matters
This metric is one you want to watch over time. Normally the more sessions, the better because you make more sales.
What It Shows
An increase in sessions can mean you have started running ads (or increased your ad budget or your ads are working harder) or your organic SEO work is paying off. Keep doing what you are doing. If it starts decreasing and you haven't made any changes you might need to investigate your SEO, or your advertising might need to be investicated if you haven't changed anything or if you have changed something consider reversing those changes.
Average Session Duration
What It Is
The average amount of time a visitor spends on your website.
Why It Matters
Normally the longer a website visitor spends on your website the more they are exploring ie: looking at all your awesome products and the more inclined they are to buy.
What It Shows
Normally if this increases you are making positive changes - so keep going. If this decreases there might be something broken on your website or no clear path on what you want the customer to do next so investigation is needed!
Sessions By Device
What It Is
The number of sessions by all site visitors and the device type they viewed your site on.
Why It Matters
It will give you insights into what device type you need to optimise your website for.
What It Shows
If you get a sudden drop off on a specific traffic source like mobile devices this can indicate that you have an issue with usability on mobile devices which you should investigate.
