Top 10 Metrics to Assess Your Web Store Performance

Despite the fact that it is imperative to assess the store’s performance as a whole, it is equally important to figure out which sections or areas of the store are performing good and which ones are not, so that these can be evaluated further. To extract information, understand it and then make changes accordingly, web store owners should have a good grip on web analytics.

Understand What Works

It is important that you know what is working, so that more effort and investment goes into those activities. For instance finding out what social media channel drives the most traffic to your website.

Knowledge Is Everything

Your data will not only help you assess the performance of your activities but also shifts in consumer behaviour. With insights into that you are more likely to adapt your plans inline with the demand.

Key to Higher Conversions

Having access to relevant statistical information would enable you to track change in online behaviour as a result of any experimentation on your website. Giving you the opportunity to test updates and changes in order to increase returns.

Selecting The Right Metrics By Understanding Customer Stages

At every step of the consumer journey, the consumer has a different intent. In order to set the right metrics for each of these stages, it is important to understand Customer Stages:

Product Discovery

At this stage of the funnel, you want your customers to discover your product. To find out how many people came across your product, you will track impressions, brand awareness and eyeballs.

Consideration

At the consideration stage you would focus on making your customers engage with your product, that would potentially result in a purchase. In order to track how many people engaged with your product compared to how many came across your product, you are likely to look at the sources that are driving traffic to your webstore.

Conversions

At this stage of the funnel, apart from the established metrics such as revenue, conversion rates (CVR) and transactions, you should track and understand the actions that typically lead to a sale.

Retention

Repeat business is critical to scaling your online business. You do not want to invest money to attract consumers to your web store, only to lose them after a single purchase.  High customer retention rates mean higher profits, hence it is crucial that you measure it to understand and improve customer loyalty.

Advocacy

Analysing word of mouth and referral marketing stats will tell you how effectively you have acquired new customers without spending money. Analysing user generated content is a good way to start.

Top Ten Metrics to Assess Your WebStore Performance

Here is an overview of important metrics to consider measuring that can help grow your online business. Number of online transactions Not just the revenue but the total transactions are also important in understanding how customers are interacting with your estore. Sales Conversion Rate This metric is important in determining how much traffic is needed to generate your target sales. It can be calculated by dividing the total number of sales with the session to your estore. This can be evaluated by channel, category of products and campaign. Website Traffic The following website traffic performance indicators should be measured on a monthly basis.

• Sessions: When following site sessions, keep in mind that a single user can open different sessions on different gadgets or browsers. Sessions commonly end after 30 minutes of inactivity, it includes all activities such as page views, events, and transactions.
• Users: If a person is using two different browsers, then the cookies set will show more sessions. Set up Session Unification by integrating Google Analytics with logged in user data to resolve this issue.
• Pages/Session: Use this to find out how many pages were viewed in a single session.
• Bounce Rate: Bounce rate will tell you single page visit sessions, the lower it is the better.
• Average Session Duration: This is the average duration of all the sessions and along with the bounce rate is helpful in understanding how engaging your estore is. This could be segmented further to compare new visitors to returning visitors.
• New Users: This will help you track new users but if the cookie gets deleted from the user’s browser then that will count as a new user.

Revenue By Traffic Source

This will help you focus on the channels that are driving the most and the best traffic to your website, enabling you to make more informed investment decisions.

Customer Acquisition Cost

CPA is important in judging the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. Studying CPA by channels and campaigns will help you determine where to invest more or scale back. CPA can be measure in two ways:

• Direct sales conversions: based on the last channel
• Assisted conversions: based on a series of visits that led to the final purchase

Average Order Value

AOV is your total sales divided by total number of transactions. In the event that you have a wide range of items it may be worth going further on this metric by better understanding the average order value across different categories. Observing this on a month to month basis will enable you to comprehend and more importantly influence trends.

Customer Lifetime Value

Customer lifetime value (CLV, CLTV, LTV or LCV) is important in determining how much a customer spends over their lifetime and how much you can spend to acquire new customers. The KPIs required to calculate CLV are:

• Average order value
• Purchase frequency
• Time period (On average companies retain customers for three years)

Percentage Of Returning Customers

It is a universal rule that retaining existing customers is cheaper than acquiring new ones. It is therefore important that you track this metric and work towards improving it. Formula for this metrics is: # of Returning Customers / Total Customers x 100% = Percent of Returning Customers.

Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate

This metric is helpful in finding out how many visitors added products to the cart but did not go through the checkout process. The lower it is the better, however it also indicates an intent to purchase.

Net Promoter Score

Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures how likely a client is to recommend your web store to a friend. This could be done by sending out surveys to customer representatives. The higher it is the better as it is an indicator of how well your referral program is performing. The list is not exhaustive and you can choose from a plethora of other metrics that you can use to further your web store goals, depending on your needs and resources.