53 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for E-commerce Beginners

Measuring the right KPIs is vital to understand the performance and the health of your business, especially for newly established e-commerce. By analyzing the numerous KPIs, you can make crucial adjustments in the execution to achieve your strategic goals. Useful KPIs are essential metrics to make sure that you can accomplish any business objective.

However, many e-businesses are uncertain about what they should be measuring and how they can use this powerful tool.

In this blog, we will provide 53 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that newly born e-commerces store owners can apply to their shops.

Table of contents

• What are Key Performance Indicators?
• Why Key Performance Indicators are important?
• 53 Key Performance Indicators for e-commerce beginners
  • KPIs for marketing
  • KPIs for sales
  • KPIs for customer service
  • KPIs to measure store performance management
• Conclusion

What are the Key Performance Indicators?

KPIs stand for Key Performance Indicators. They are the quantifiable measurements that show whether or not a business is progressing toward its goals.

It demonstrates the performance of your e-commerce. The entrepreneur can monitor several KPIs, whether it be sales, marketing, or customer service, to analyze where they currently stand, and what they need to do to accomplish their target.

There are various examples of e-commerce KPIs that entrepreneurs measure to scale their businesses. Depending on each store, the performance indicator might be the number of unique visitors on the site daily, the traffic source, or search engine optimization.

The e-commerce KPIs are not only quantitative and qualitative measurement but also they should be able to predict the future or reveal the past of your business.

We can divide e-commerce KPIs into the following major categories:

• Performance indicators for sales
• Performance indicators for marketing
• KPIs for customer service
• KPIs to measure the store performance

Why Key Performance Indicators are important?

KPIs are a measurable tool that tells you more information about your business progress. Without KPIs, it is difficult to gauge progress over time. You would make decisions based on your preference or belief.

By taking the KPI data in your account, you will be able to make proper strategy plans to drive more online sales as well as understand and detect where there may be problems in your business.

There are several reasons why KPIs play an essential role.

• Store owners can monitor their company’s health

With few KPIs in each of four categories like customer satisfaction, human resources, revenue, and business processes, shop owners can monitor their company’s performance.

By assessing KPIs, which are considered as a scorecard for the company’s performance, businesses know the effectiveness of their work so that they can make appropriate adjustments to achieve the set goals.

• Companies are able to measure progress over time

Each enterprise often set their target at the beginning of the year and use KPIs to measure if they can accomplish their goal each quarter.

By tracking key result indicators like revenue, gross margin, etc., they make sure whether their progress towards the long-term target. How many percentages that they achieve and how much left which need to be improved. All these questions will be answered by analyzing the KPIs.

• Businesses make adjustments to solve problems or tackle opportunities

By assessing KPIs by the timeline, companies can readjust their way of doing things to limit errors that may slow down their process to achieve the goal. They can put the KPIs in their dashboard to keep their projects on track to see if they are in the right way or they have any opportunities to go quicker in their process.

53 Key Performance Indicators for e-commerce beginners

E-commerce KPI is variable, and not every online store needs to track all KPIs. The right KPIs depend on your business-specific needs.

53 Key Performance Indicators below are typically common for all e-commerce, especially beginners. By monitoring and measuring the KPIs regularly, store owners can have decision making for improvement base on real and actual data.

KPIs for marketing

1. Website traffic

Website traffic is the number of viewers who visit our online store. This is one of the most prominent key performance indicators. The more traffic the site gets, the more chance you have to convert those visitors into your customers.

Increasing website traffic is a critical goal for an e-commerce shop. It does not only help increase purchases but also enhance the general brand awareness. People will remember your store and mention it to their friends or come back to purchase something later.

2. Bounce rate

The bounce rate indicator shows the percentage of visitors who leave the website after arriving on it from some sources like a search engine or another website. A high bounce rate indicates that a majority of shoppers are not able to find what they need in your e-store.

One factor that may cause a high bounce rate is relevancy. The keyword on the search engine may lead web users to your site. Then, they will leave if it doesn’t not what they are looking for on the first page they arrive.

Read more: What is a Good Bounce Rate?

3. Time on the site

This KPI tells you how much time the audience is spending on your website. Generally, more time spent means they have had a deeper engagement with your brand. Usually, you want to see more time spent on blog content and landing pages and less time spent through the checkout process.

4. Time to purchase

Time to purchase means that how long it takes for visitors to change into your actual customers. While some people may visit your site and immediately make a purchase, others may visit two, three, or even more times before they have the decision making to purchase.

Depending on the kind of e-commerce store you are operating, high time to purchase may not be a problem for you. If you sell high-cost items, you probably will not see the immediate purchase as people need time to compare different research until their final choice.

5. New visitors vs returning visitors

New site visitors mean the number of viewers who go to your site the first time, while returning visitors indicators shows how many people who have been to your site before.

Store owners want to have a high number of this indicator because the more repeat and new visits, the better chance they have to establish a long-lasting relationship with customers. Knowing what your repeat visit KPI looks like, and finding a way to boost it, can help you grow your e-commerce website’s revenue significantly.

6. Pageviews per visit

This KPI refers to the average number of pages that a user will view on your site during each visit. More pages to view usually mean more engagement. However, if it is taking user too many clicks to find the products they are looking for, you need to recheck the design of your site.

7. Average session duration

The indicator means that the average amount of time a person spends on your site during a single visit. It is the same as Time on the site indicator, and store owners want to have a high number of this section. More time for each visit can bring more chances to convert visitors to real customers.

8. Traffic source

This KPI tells you where visitors are coming from or how they found your site. It will provide information about which channels are driving the most traffic, such as organic search, paid ads, or social media. So it helps you focus on the channel that drives more traffic to your site.

9. Mobile site traffic

Mobile site traffic monitors the total number of visitors who use their mobile devices to access your e-commerce store. It is also vital to optimize mobile traffic.

10. Daypart monitoring

Store owners can check the Daypart monitoring indicator to have the information, when is the peak traffic times on their site. With this, they will know more about the habit of customers and can offer and run the promotion to increase sales accurately.

11. Newsletter subscribers

How many users have subscribed to the newsletter on your site have been displayed on this indicator. If you have more subscribers, it means that you can reach more consumers. Business doers want to have a high number of subscribers so that they can reach them with email marketing in the future.

If you are using Magento - one of the most popular platforms, having a newsletter popup module is inevitable to increase the number of subscribers.

12. Subscriber growth rate

This number tells you how quickly your subscribers’ list is growing. Combining this KPI with the total number of subscribers will give you a good insight into the marketing lead that you have.

13. Unsubscribers

No marketers want to have a high number of unsubscribers. They always want to keep this number low and try to find the reason if this number increases.

14. Email open rate

The rate shows how many percentages of subscribers who have opened your email marketing. If this number is low, it had better test the subject and content of the email, or clean the list for irrelevant subscribers.

15. Email click-through rate

While you get the percentage of subscribers who open the email by the email open rate indicator, the click-through rate tells you how many percent of those who clicked on a link after opening. This is more important than the open rate because, without clicking the link in the email, it will redirect the receivers to your site.

How to use email marketing to increase the email click-through rate is a general question of any business doers.

Related posts:

The Types of Emails Every B2C Company Needs

16. Chat sessions

If your site has the live chat tool, the number of chat sessions shows you how many audiences communicate to ask a virtual aide. The high number of chat sessions means more traffic on your site.

17. Social followers and fans

The number of followers and fans on social media is a useful KPI which helps you gauge customer loyalty and brand awareness.
You may want to read the blog How to do B2B marketing on social media - B2B social media marketing strategies to determine your own marketing strategy to attract more followers.

18. Social media engagement

This indicator tells you the number of people is interacting with your brand on social media.

19. Clicks

The total number of clicks that a link gets. You can measure this KPI in many sources such as on your site, social media, email, display ads, etc.

20. Blog traffic

You can find this KPI by creating a filtered view in your analytics tool. It is also helpful to compare blog traffic to overall site traffic.

Related post: What is a blog? Benefits of blogging for business

21. Average position

This demonstrates the position of your website on the search engine results page. The most e-commerce store has the goal to become the number one for the targeted keywords. So this KPI is important that many store owners want to achieve a high number.

Related posts:

15 SEO tools for Magento to help you boost rank on Google

12 ways to immediately optimize your SEO ranking

22. Number and quality of product reviews

Product reviews provide social proof and give you valuable feedback for your business from customers. By tracking the product reviews, you can take accurate action to make your product enhanced in consumers’ eyes.

23. Affiliate performance rates

Affiliate marketing has become more popular nowadays. It will help drive more sales and contribute to the online revenue. If your site has engaged in affiliate marketing, this KPI will help you understand which channels are most successful.

Related posts:

Why Affiliate Marketing is Important?

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Affiliate Program

24. Customer Retention Rate

Customer retention rate is the percentage of customers from a specific time who return to your website and buy. It simply defined as the ability of a company to retain its customers in a period of time.

KPIs for sales

25. Conversion rate

The conversion rate is an extremely vital KPI for all online stores. A high number indicates that the store can convince a lot of visitors to buy products or services or take some desired actions, while the low rate demonstrates that not many views are willing to purchase.

This percentage is calculated by dividing the total number of visitors by the total number of conversions. An e-commerce store’s conversion rate can vary based on a wide number of factors.

Related posts:

What is a good ecommerce conversion rate?

How to Calculate Conversion Rate on e-Commerce Websites?

26. Shopping cart abandonment rate

The cart abandonment rate refers to the percentage of shoppers who add items to their cart but do not complete their checkout. If the rate number is high, you can recheck the checkout process to reduce abandonment cart before they start to cause significant problems for your business. The lower this number, the more revenue in your store.

The following formula calculates the abandoned rate

The abandonment rate = (Total number of completed transactions/ Total number of shopping carts) * 100%

Related post: Magento 2 Abandoned Cart Email - Save your e-commerce

27. Cost of goods sold

The cost of goods sold KPI shows how much your business is spending to sell a product or service. It includes manufacturing, materials, and labor cost.

The formula is calculated below:

Beginning Inventory + Purchases during the year - Ending Inventory (end of the year)

28. Churn rate

Churn rate gives the percentage between the number of subscribers lost and the number of new subscribers.

You can calculate the churn rate with the following formula:

Churn rate = Number of subscribers lost/ Number of starting subscribers

Store owners do not want to have a high churn rate number because it is more cost-effective to retain a customer than try to have a new one. If you are going to lower the churn rate, you can ask your customers and understand the reason for motiving them to cancel your service. You can do it through a survey. After getting their feedback, you will have a plan to improve the weak points.

30. Average order value

The average order value answers the question of how much a customer typically spends on a single order. The formula to calculate this KPI is below.

Average Order Value = Total Revenue/ Number of Orders

To improve the average order number value indication, you can focus on some of the useful tactics like creating a product bundle, providing personalized product recommendations, or offering discounts.

31. Competitive pricing

Knowing the price of your competitor and comparing it to your own is necessary to have a suitable price strategy. If your price is not much different from your rival, you can consider a price-matching plan.

Moreover, you can keep tracking the average retail price to measure the impact of cutting costs or implement a promotion to get more sales.

32. Customer lifetime value

It means that the value of a customer who contributes to your company throughout their life. Loyal customers are people who bring long-term and sustainable profits for your business. Customer lifetime value is an essential indicator in encouraging companies to focus on the long-term health of relationships with their customers.

Understanding the lifetime value of customers helps shop owners prepare future marketing and strategy to increase the customer’s loyalty. It is easier to sell a product to an existing customer than a new one.

33. Sales

Merchants can monitor their sale number by a specific period like a day, week, month, year. The timeline depends on their management system. Having the right sales strategy can help your store run smoothly.

Related post: E-commerce Tips to Boost Sales - Sales Pack for Magento 2 stores

34. Gross profit

This KPI is calculated by subtracting the total cost of goods sold from total sales.

Gross Profit = Total number of sales - Total Cost of Goods sold

You need to avoid 9 Ecommerce Mistakes That Can Bleed Your Profit To Death

35. Revenue per visitor

It gives you the average number of how much a person spends during a single visit to your site.

36. Inventory levels

This KPI indicates how much stock on your store and how long it is sitting and selling.

37. Customer Acquisition Cost

This indicator lets you know the amount of cost that you are spending to acquire a new customer. You can measure this indicator by checking how your marketing expenses and break down per client.

38. Repeat Purchase Rate

Repeat purchase rate helps business doers to measure customer loyalty and plan the sales strategies. This rate tells you the number of customers that return to your website to make another purchase.

39. Purchase Frequency

This measurement shows the average number of orders your customers made during a specific period.

Purchase Frequency = Total Number of Orders/ Total Number of Unique Customers

KPIs for customer service

40. Customer satisfaction score

This KPI is typically measured by how customers are satisfied with your product or service. Improving customer service can help the company gain loyal customers and expand brand awareness in the future.

41. Number of customers complaint

It shows the number of clients who are not satisfied with your product or service. Every store owner wants to keep this number as low as possible. However, this indicator also helps to know the performance of your customer service, and you can take the proper action to improve it.

42. Average resolution time

This is the amount of time that one issue will be resolved by customer support. It starts from the point at which the customer reached out about the problem. Companies tend to reduce this number to make customers more satisfied.

43. Customer feedback

You can get customer feedback from the survey. This is a significant indicator that provides you the valuable data from your customers. By analyzing the information to know where you need to improve, you can enhance customer service.

44. First response time

This KPI shows the average amount of time that a customer will receive the first response from the customer service to their query.

45. Active issues

Active issues are the total number of issues that a company currently has. Monitoring the number of current issues on your helpdesk system is necessary. If problems are resolved effectively in a short time, the number of active issues will never be high. If this number is high, it means that you have more customer service requests than usual. The company needs to investigate the reason for this.

46. Refund rate

If your refund or return number is too high, it means that your products or service are unable to fulfill customer expectations. It had better have a survey to get the customer’s feedback before you proceed with the refund. By this, you will know how your customer’s expectations and improve your products and service later.

47. Resolved issues

The number of resolved issues at a specific time reflects how your customer service works to carry out the problem. Resolved issues are associated with specific service agent which can be a great indicator for the company to know where additional training would be beneficial.

48. Net promoter score

This score is the measurement of how your customers will recommend your products, service to other people. It also provides insight into your customer relationships and loyalty.

KPIs to measure store performance management

49. Hours worked

Companies want to check the hours worked KPI to assess the difference between the estimated and the actual worked hours. It will help to predict the resources for future projects easier.

50. Budget

It shows the amount of money that you allocate for your project. With this KPI, you can make a few adjustments for your plan and execution if it is necessary.

51. Cost variance

This number refers to the difference between total real cost and your predict cost. It supports you to have an in-depth look to know where you need to hold back and where you should invest more.

52. Return on investment (ROI)

Return on investment measures the gain and the loss generated on an investment. The higher the number, the better the situation is. It shows all the expenses and earnings related to a project.

The return on investment formula is

ROI = (Net Profit/ Cost of Investment) * 100%

53. Cost performance index (CPI)

The CPI tells you how the resource uses effectively. It is calculated by using the earning value to divide the actual costs.

CPI = Earned Value/Actual Costs

Conclusion

To sum up, measuring the organization’s performance via Key Performance Indicators is an indispensable concept that most companies use today. KPIs are measurements that allow business owners to assess the performance of their current process effectively and apply necessary corrective action. Without KPI metrics, it is nearly impossible to translate the company’s objectives into day-to-day operations.