31 eCommerce Metrics and KPIs that Actually Matter

KPIs and metrics are like guiding lights for eCommerce businesses. 

They show you what's working well, where things are going wrong, and what's worth your time and money. 

In this post, we’ve compiled a list of all the key metrics for your eCommerce business.

These are tried and tested data points that all successful eCommerce founders swear by.

Let’s dive in!

Jump to: 

Sales KPIs and Metrics

Marketing KPIs and Metrics 

Email Marketing KPIs and Metrics 

What’s the difference between eCommerce KPIs and Metrics?

Let’s settle this debate once and for all.

All KPIs are metrics, but not all metrics are KPIs.

Let us explain.

Metrics are general data points, but KPIs are metrics that matter.

These are KPIs for eCommerce business - the performance indicators that indicate growth.

For example, page views are metrics, but sales/orders are KPIs. 

So metrics become KPIs only when seen in your business’s performance.

If they impact growth, revenue, or sales in any way, they should be measured.

This also means it’s time to stop worrying about vanity metrics—that add nothing to your business’s bottom line.

Taking the example above, page views may give a boost of confidence but it should also convert into sales for it to matter.

But let that not make you think that metrics aren’t important.

To end it, KPIs may be your end goal, but metrics are what leads you there.

So keeping an eye on your eCommerce performance metrics is an important aspect of running a successful business. 

How to decide which eCommerce metrics or KPIs to use?

If you’re not sure which eCommerce KPIs or metrics to track, let these 3 questions guide you:

✔️ Will a change in the metrics affect my business’s bottom line? 

✔️ Does improving the metric directly help you meet your business goals?

✔️ Will improving this metric improve other metrics as well?

31 Important eCommerce Metrics and KPIs to Track and Measure 

eCommerce Sales KPIs and Metrics to Track and Measure 

1. Page Speed Score 

Page speed score is a metric that measures the page load time and performance of a web page. 

It’s a score out of 100, with higher scores indicating faster loading times. 

The page speed score is calculated based on a number of factors, including the size of the page, the number of requests, and the use of compression.

According to Google's CrUX dataset, content takes 2.6 seconds to show up on mobile devices. 

The desktop sites are slightly faster, with a load time of 2.3 seconds. 

Consequently, on average a normal page load time for real users is therefore in the 2 to 3 second range.

Recommended reading:

How to speed up Shopify Website 

How to speed up BigCommerce Store

How to speed up WooCommerce Store

How to speed up NetSuite eCommerce Store

2. Leads Generated

On eCommerce stores, the leads are the percentage of visitors who become leads through sign-ups.  

Here’s how to calculate lead generation rate:

The number of leads generated / the number of visitors to the website.

If you’re looking to generate more leads, here are some timeless strategies that have proven to work.

3. Conversion Rate

In eCommerce stores, the conversion rate is a KPI that measures the percentage of visitors who make a purchase.

A high conversion rate is a good sign that your online store is effective at converting visitors into customers.

A low conversion rate can indicate that there are problems with your website or your marketing efforts.

Remember: Conversion rates differ depending on the industry and there are various reasons why your conversion rates drop. 

Here’s how to calculate a conversion rate in eCommerce: 

the number of conversions / the total number of visitors

For instance, if an eCommerce store receives 200 visitors in a month and has 50 sales, the conversion rate would be 50 divided by 200, or 25%.

If you’re looking to improve conversion rates, read:

Scientific strategies to increase your eCommerce conversion rate

*Underrated* conversion rate optimization ideas for eCommerce

4. Average Order Value (AOV)

Average Order Value is a metric that is used to measure the average total of every order placed with a seller over a specific period of time.

AOV is a key metric that is used by online businesses to understand the purchasing habits of their customers.

Here’s how to calculate the average order value

AOV = Revenue / Total number of orders

For example, let’s say in the month of January your website store’s sales were $50,000 and you had a total of 1000 orders. 

By using the formula, your average order value in the month of January was $50.

If you’re looking to boost AOV, read this:

Proven upselling strategies with examples for online stores  

5. Gross Profit Margin 

Gross profit margin is a metric that is used by eCommerce stores to assess the profitability of their business. 

Here’s how to calculate the gross profit margin 

(Total revenue-cost of goods sold / Total revenue)  x 100 

For example, if your cost of goods sold is $20,000 and your revenue is $60,000. Then your gross profit margin is 20%. 

Here’s how you can boost profit margins:

• Identify fast-moving products and make more profit by restocking these items regularly
• Increase prices during high-demand and low-supply periods to maximize profits
• Reduce shopping friction with size and comparison guides to convince them about product benefits 

Recommended reading: More ways to boost profit margins for eCommerce stores

6. Revenue Per Visitor (RPV)

Your per-visitor revenue shows how much money you earn for every visitor that comes on to your website. 

Here’s how to calculate revenue per visitor: 

Revenue Per Visitor = Total Revenue/Total number of Unique Visitors

OR 

Conversion Rate x Average Order Value 

How to improve your revenue per visitor:

• Reduce purchase pain points by bundling products together and avoiding multiple purchases. 
• Create a personalized shopping experience with personalized product recommendations, geo-personalization, etc.
• Retain long-term relationship with loyalty programs.
• Use heat maps and A/B testing to optimize your website as per customer behavior and needs.  

Are you using personalization enough for your eCommerce business? Check out : 13 guaranteed ways to boost your revenue with smart personalization

7. Customer Retention Rate 

The customer retention rate a.k.a repeat purchase rate measures the percentage of your customers who come back for another purchase. 

Formula to calculate customer retention rate

Customer retention= ((CE-CN)/CS)x100

Where,

CS= Number of customers at the start of the measured period

CE=  Number of customers at the start of the measured period

CN= number of customers acquired during the period

Here are some strategies to improve customer retention rate:

• Reward repeat purchases with free samples or complementary products 
• Develop a personal connection with repeat purchasers by leveraging special days in their lives (e.g., birthdays) 
• Personalize mystery offers for the highest-paying customers

Recommended reading: Customer retention strategies that actually work

8. Time Between Purchases

Time Between Purchases metric is the average number of days a customer takes between making two purchases when looking at the past 365 days. 

Here’s how to calculate the time between purchases: 

TBP = 365 / (Number of orders in past 365 days/number of unique customers in past 365 days) 

9. eCommerce Churn Rate 

The churn rate is the rate at which customers are ceasing to buy from your website.

Here’s how to calculate the churn rate:

(Users at the Beginning of the Period - Users at the End of the Period) / Users at the Beginning of the Period

The churn rate is indicative of how well the company can retain customers and instill customer loyalty. 

Ensuring a low churn rate should be your main focus for achieving revenue growth in the long run. 

Further reading: 20 Powerful Ways To Reduce (And Prevent) eCommerce Churn

How to improve Customer Churn Rate:

• Try relationship marketing - Engaging your customers with your product is a great way to reduce churn. Give them ample reasons to choose your product for their needs. 
• Offer incentives - Try keeping your customers hooked to your site with offers and discounts. However, do keep your profit margin in mind before going all out. 
• Educate your customers - Provide how-to posts and product videos to help the customer understand how to use the product. This will make them feel more comfortable and informed. 
• Offer expert customer service - The best way to prevent customers from not buying is of course to keep them happy.

You'd love to read: Why Are People Adding To Cart But Not Buying?

10. Return Rate 

eCommerce returns is the process where customers return products to the store. 

Consumers returned products worth a staggering $817 billion—just over 16% of total retail sales. 

The National Retail Federation estimates the cost of returns amounts to $101 billion. 

When asked why they returned items, PowerReviews found that 81% of online shoppers said the item was damaged or defective. Other reasons include:

• Item doesn’t fit (75%)
• Item doesn’t match the description (56%)
• Don’t like the item(s) (33%)
• Ordered multiple items/sizes (14%)
• Item arrived late (11%)

Recommended reading: Here are some proven ways to "prevent" eCommerce returns

11. Conversion by Device Type

The conversions by device type metric measures the number of conversions made by visitors categorized by their device types such as desktop, mobile, and tablet. 

This metric helps to gain insight into consumer behavior and lets eCommerce store owners make fact-based campaign decisions. 

12. Micro-conversion Rates 

For eCommerce stores, micro-conversion rates are as important as the main conversion rate (i.e. customers making a purchase).

Consumers often visit the website to do 1 of 4 things: learn more about the brand, understand the product range, read testimonials, and make price comparisons. 

Here’s how to get more micro conversions:

• Feature discounts and promotions as part of the account creation process
• Ask shoppers to sign up to ‘save the cart’ or ‘share the cart’
• Convince shoppers to download product care guides or get personalized help through live chats

Product Page Metrics  

13. Add-to-Cart Rate

An add-to-cart rate is a metric that determines how many shoppers add products to the cart. 

A recent report shows that the average global add-to-cart rate in 2023 is around 7.83%.

The add-to-cart conversion rate is calculated by the following formula:

(Sessions with cart item viewed) / (total sessions) 

Here’s how to improve the add-to-cart rate on product pages:

• Display limited-time offers to drive urgency
• Convince shoppers of product popularity with star ratings near the product description 
• Show product comparison charts to help shoppers choose the right product

Recommended reading: How to increase the add-cart rate

14. Bounce Rate

Bounce Rate is the percentage of visitors that leave a webpage without taking action. 

A higher bounce rate indicates underlying issues with your website such as copywriting, page layout, or issues with content.

Here are some ways to reduce bounce rates:

• Add videos on your page: The average time on the page can be increased by embedding YouTube videos.
• Optimize your mobile UX: Your website should work well on mobile and tablets because most of the traffic today comes from mobile devices.
• Amazing design: Invest your time in making your site look attractive to make the user feel good about their experience on the page.

Looking for more ideas? Do read: 27 Practical Ways To Reduce eCommerce Bounce Rate

Checkout Page Metrics  

15. Cart Abandonment Rate

Cart abandonment is when customers add products to their cart and start a checkout process but leave before completing the purchase.

The average shopping cart abandonment rate on a global scale stands at 70.21% today. 

Here’s a handy calculator to help you calculate your cart abandonment rate.

Some ideas on how to reduce cart abandonment rate:

• Provide multiple delivery options and point out how much each will cost. For example, Amazon offers express delivery for an extra fee as well as standard delivery.
• Let shoppers switch between currencies with geolocation tags 
• Enable editable buttons on the cart page that allow customers to remove and edit their orders without hitting the back button.

Recommended reading: Powerful ways to reduce shopping cart abandonment (w/ examples)

16. Checkout Abandonment Rate

With the average checkout conversion rate stuck at 2.12% and shoppers spending less, online stores are struggling.

There are many reasons why shoppers drop off from a checkout flow, including:

• You don't have a shopper-friendly returns policy 
• No Luhn validation
• The checkout process is too long
• You haven't enabled auto-filling features
• Multiple discounts are not combined on one order
• There are no product thumbnails to validate purchases
• No free samples or complementary products

Are you trying to reduce the checkout abandonment rate? Here are 27 proven ideas with brand examples

Key Customer Service KPIs and Metrics to Track

17. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Net Promoter Score is used to measure customer satisfaction and loyalty by asking customers about their experience and how likely they are to recommend your product to others on a scale of 0-10.

Promoters - They have a score of 9 and 10 and are considered to be the most loyal customers. They help in the overall growth of the company by increasing the referral flows and improving the brand image.

Detractors - They have a score of 0 to 6. They are the customers who had a bad experience or those who are not likely to stick around and make repeat purchases.

Passives - They have a score of 7 and 8. They are the ones who have made a few referrals and with the right strategies can become very close to being promoters.

How to calculate NPS:

NPS = percentage of Detractors - the percentage of Promoters 

For example, if 60% of respondents were detractors and 40% were promoters, then your Net promoter Score will be 20.

You must also check out: 20 Solid Ways To Recover BigCommerce Abandoned Carts

18. Chat Sessions Initiated

The live chat performance indicator measures the volume of chat and shows the number of chat sessions that have been launched. 

With this metric, you can easily identify the popularity of live chat over other customer support channels like calls or emails.

You can use this metric to forecast workload during peak hours and repetitive queries, and make a strategy to segment the work between various customer support teams. 

19. Average Complaint Resolution Time

On eCommerce stores, average complaint resolution time is a KPI that determines how much time it takes (usually measured in days) to resolve a customer complaint or other customer support issue. 

Stores track the time from when a customer first communicates the problem to when they resolve it.

Reducing the complaint resolution time can significantly improve your customer service experience. 

eCommerce Marketing KPIs and Metrics to Track and Measure

20. Website Traffic

Website traffic is an essential KPI for any eCommerce business. 

It determines the number of people visiting your website. It’s also a clear indicator of your online visibility and the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

Research shows that 23.6% of eCommerce sales come from organic traffic. 

Here are some creative ways to drive traffic to your eCommerce store:

• Target the right keywords - For instance, head keywords like “sneakers” or “laptops” are highly competitive. Long-tail keywords like “Adidas running shoes for men” or “swimsuit for women” are easier to rank, and convert better despite having low monthly searches. 

• Create helpful content - Don’t just duplicate product descriptions. Instead write content like DIY guides, comparison blog posts, tips, and solutions to problems. 

• Target the right personas - Build up on buyer persona by analyzing the data based on your existing customers and creating ads based on them. 

You might also like: Getting traffic but no sales? Here’s why (& how to solve)

21. Average Session on the Website

The average session on a website is the average duration of time that visitors spend while viewing your website. 

A report shows that the average across all industries is 4.41 minutes. This means a good average session duration would be anything above three minutes.

Here’s how to calculate the average session on-site:

The total duration of all sessions(in seconds) / Total number of sessions

Recommended reading: How to increase average session time on your store

22. Pageviews per Visit

Pages per visit is a metric that measures the average number of pages visitors view on a site within a single session.

The average pageviews can be calculated by:

the total number of page views / the total number of visits during the same timeframe

23. Store Sessions by Traffic Source

Store sessions are classified based on the source they are coming from, i.e. search engines, social media platforms, email, or direct. 

You can see this metric in the shop’s analytics tool and improve experiences based on the traffic sources.

Do check: 10 Sure-Shot Ways to Boost Your eCommerce ROI

24. Cost per Acquisition 

Customer Acquisition Cost or Return on Ad Spend is the cost of convincing a target customer to buy a product or service. 

Here’s how to calculate customer acquisition cost:

the cost spent on acquiring more customers / the number of customers acquired in the period when the money was spent.

For example, if a company spent $200 on marketing in a year and acquired 50 customers in the same year, then the CAC is $4.

Recommended reading: 22 creative ideas to reduce customer acquisition cost

eCommerce Email Marketing KPIs and Metrics to Track and Measure 

25. Email Clickthrough Rate

Email click-through rate is an important email marketing metric. 

It’s the percentage of subscribers who click on at least one link in the body of an email against the percentage of emails successfully delivered. 

The formula for email click-through rate or CTR looks like this:

Emails with at least one click ➗ Emails successfully delivered X 100

For instance, total email deliveries stand at 500, and out of that only 50 were opened—in this case, the email CTR would be 10%. 

Recommended reading: Here’s how to grow your email click-through rate quickly

26. Email Subscriber Value

An email subscriber is a shopper or customer who has given your store permission to send them emails.

So how can you determine email subscriber value:

✔️ Determine your active subscriber count

✔️ See how many direct sales you made from email marketing

✔️ Chose a specific time frame

• Monthly email subscriber value
• Annual email subscriber value
• Lifetime email subscriber value

For example, you’ve: 

15,000 active email subscribers (X)

$30,00,00 in annual sales from email marketing (Y)

When you divide Y by X, you get: $20 as your annual email subscriber value.

27. Email Click-to-open-rate

The Click-to-open Rate is essentially the percentage of subscribers who not only clicked to open your email in their inbox but also clicked at least one link in the email body. 

Here’s how to calculate CTOR:

Unique clicks ➗ Unique opens X 100

For instance, you’ve sent an email to 100 people, 50 have opened it and 25 have clicked on it. 

Your CTOR will be 50% in this case. 

Read more: How to improve email marketing "click-to-open" rate

28. Email Unsubscribe Rate

An email unsubscribe rate is a KPI that tells you how many subscribers opted out of your email marketing campaigns. 

Here’s how to calculate the email unsubscribe rate:

An unsubscribe rate is the number of unsubscribes divided by the number of emails delivered. 

For example, if 3000 emails are delivered in your email campaign and 20 subscribers have opted out then your unsubscribe rate is 0.6%. 

Recommended reading: Design brilliant unsubscribe page examples

29. Revenue per Subscriber

Revenue per email subscriber is an email marketing metric that determines the average monetary value of a subscriber on your email list.

Here’s how to calculate revenue per subscriber:

the total revenue generated from email marketing campaigns / the number of email subscribers

30. Email Return-on-Investment (ROI)

Return on investment is measured to evaluate the efficiency and profitability of your email campaigns.

Email marketing ROI is typically calculated as follows:

Step 1: Email Marketing Revenue - Email Marketing Costs= Net Profit

Step 2: Net Profit ➗ Email Marketing Costs * 100

So, in real-time, it would look something like this:

If $100, 000 is your email marketing revenue and $20, 000 is the email marketing cost, then net profit would be $100, 000 - $20, 000 = $80, 000 

So, ROI then would be:

Net Profit ➗ Email Marketing Costs * 100 = 80, 000 ➗ 20, 000 *100 = 400%

31. Subscriber List Growth Rate

Subscriber list growth rate is a metric that measures the rate at which a store's email or subscriber list is growing over a specific period of time. 

It’s an important metric for eCommerce businesses that use email marketing to communicate with their customers and prospects.

Read more: No-BS ways to get more email subscribers in eCommerce

Transform Email Marketing Into A Revenue Machine

Most eCommerce store owners don’t see email as a serious revenue stream.

Ask them about the importance of email marketing, and you'll hear: “We don’t really have a major strategy,” “We mostly use generic templates,” or “We just send emails to people on our list.”

BUT AT THE SAME TIME:

There are stores out there that drive 30%+ of their revenue from email marketing.

Engage can help you do the same - Book a free demo.

We’ll show you:

• workflows we can create for your store,
• proven ways to drive 30% or more $$ from email alone, and
• successful templates and strategies from your industry (and others).