The 10 Best KPIs Every Online Store Owner Should Keep an Eye On

Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) are measurements that reflect the performance and progress of a business. One of the most valuable benefits of running an online store is the ability to effectively measure KPI’s and then use this data to optimize your e-business. We have defined the 10 best KPIs every online store owner should keep an eye on.

When analyzing key performance indicators for an online store, retailers should ask themselves “What goals is my online store trying to achieve?” and “what defines success for my online business?” For most online retailers, regardless of the nature of your business, you can monitor the progress of your online store and uncover new strategies with these 10 vital indicators.

Top Key Performance Indicators for E-commerce Sites

Every online store owner wants to increase their sales, traffic and customer base and by actively monitoring the following KPI’s you’ll have a better understanding of your e-commerce site’s success and reveal where to place your efforts.

1. Site Traffic

You want to measure your online shop’s traffic for daily, weekly and monthly visits. This measure should be standard for every online merchant and will allow you to analyze why there has been a dip or spike in traffic. Set a goal for the average number of visitors you want to reach on a weekly basis and develop marketing strategies to achieve this. Read about how to drive new traffic to your online store to help meet your goals.

2. Product Page Visits

Which pages on your site are getting the most views and which are getting the least? By analyzing the traffic going to specific product pages, you’ll have a better understanding of your customers’ preferences and how they are interacting with your site. Maybe you have a great product that customers aren’t finding and you will need to reexamine your site’s navigation and/or search engine.

3. Average Page Views and Time on Site

These metrics will tell you if your shop’s content is engaging and if your traffic is targeted. If these stats are low, you’ll want to reconsider the focus keywords and ad campaigns that may be bringing in unqualified traffic. How about your site’s loading speed? Remember that online shoppers are impatient! Test your e-commerce site’s speed with GTmetrix to understand if you need to optimize your shop’s speed.

4. Exit Pages

When are your customers leaving your site? Is it when they realize that they need to create an account to complete a purchase? Maybe it’s when they see the shipping costs. Analyze when exactly your customers are exiting and try to optimize those pages to engage customers to keep shopping. Guide your customers to complete a purchase with this article on the importance of call to action buttons on your e-commerce site.

5. Referral Sources

How your customers arrived on your site is a key metric to track. Is it from Google, emails, advertisements, social media, or another source? Invest more time in the sources of traffic that are working for you and think again about those that aren’t. Remember that the bounce rates of these referral sources are important to consider before deciding that a referral source is effective or not.

6. Conversion Rate

Is your online store doing what it takes to get your customers to complete a desired action? Closely monitor your conversion rate to help improve elements of your online store. Are your call-to-action buttons driving customers to take the next step? Is your traffic qualified? A/B testing plays a huge role in understanding conversion rates. Read this article by Ecommerce Rules on 5 eCommerce Store Elements you Must A/B Test to start converting more visitors into shoppers.

7. Return Rate

Analyze your new visitors vs. returning visitors. Are you taking the necessary measures to keep customers coming back? As I always say, it’s less expensive to retain a customer than it is to gain a new one. Evaluate your customer service efforts and how you maintain relationships with customers. This article by Econsultancy shares 21 ways online retailers can improve customer retention rates.

8. Net Profit

Net profit = Revenue – Cost. This is essentially your bottom line and tells you the profitability of your online business after taking all costs into account. This metric will tell you if your business is successful or not. Good news for PrestaShop users, PrestaShop v1.6 will show you your net profit (in real time!) within the back-office dashboard! Learn more about the brilliant KPI’s in PrestaShopv1.6 dashboard.

9. Average Order Value

This metric is useful because it tells you the sum of your sales divided by the number of orders received. This term is also interchangeable with Average Cart Value. Once you understand your AOV, you’ll be able to measure which strategies work to increase the average order of customers. This blog post tells you 5 Easy Ways to Increase your Ecommerce Cart Value.

10. Cart Abandonment Rate

This key figure must not be ignored. According to a Baymard Institute, an independent research company, the average e-commerce shopping cart abandonment rate is a whopping 67.75%. Why is it happening? Could it be that they are surprised with an expected cost? Did their coupon code not work? Were they not able to find out when the product would ship? Test your check out funnel and understand why your customers would leave items that they want. Good news for PrestaShop users, you can send automated, personalized e-mails to clients that left items in their shopping cart and incentivize them with a discount! Download the Abandoned Cart Reminder module from PrestaShop Addons.

Monitoring Ecommerce KPI’s

It should be instinctive to closely monitor and check your key performance indicators on a regular basis, even daily! We reviewed the top best KPI’s for online store owners but don’t remember that there are many more indicators of success such as new customer accounts, social media engagement, customer service open cases, pay per click conversions, newsletter open and click through rate and more! These resources should help you make sure you make the most out of all the indicators available on your site.

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- 10 ways to Reduce Returns for your E-commerce Site - 10 ways that e-merchants can save money, increase customer satisfaction and build trust in customers.

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