For an ecommerce store, metrics are very important. The best entrepreneurs of online stores are obsessed with ecommerce metrics to grow your business. Indeed, it is this obsession with measurement and optimization that has allowed their stores to grow so fast. However, it is not always possible to optimize each parameter. Instead, it is important to focus only on those metrics that can truly mark the difference between success and failure. Do you want to know them?
Here are the 7 parameters you should consider to grow your ecommerce business:
- Sales Conversion Rate
- Website Traffic
- Average Order Value
- Revenue on Advertising Spend / ROAS
- Email Opt-in Rate
- Customer Acquisition Cost
- Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate
1. Sales Conversion Rate
The first in the list of ecommerce metrics to grow your business, is for sure the one of the Sales Conversion Rate. It allows you to understand the percentage of users who visit your online store and complete the purchase.
Finding out this metric is easy, you just need to know the number of sales and the number of visits in a predefined period. Once this data is collected, divide the number of sales by the number of users and multiply everything by 100.
The Conversion Rate for online stores varies between 1% and 2%. Globally, the average of ecommerces that have been optimized, reaches up to 2.58%. To improve this metric, you need to increase the number of sales made.
In the next paragraphs we will reveal some techniques on how to do it.
- In an online store, it is impossible to touch the product. The best way to attract your customers is to use qualitative images and videos. So your customers will know exactly what they are purchasing.
- Review your check out process. Run various tests to see if your process takes too long, or needs too much data. People don’t like wasting time and you may face the risk of pushing away customers ready to make a purchase.
- Create coupons to use at the check out for a limited time. You can for example discount a certain amount or a certain percentage of the total purchase value.
- Attention to shipping costs. Today it is not difficult to find sites with 0 shipping costs. If you don’t offer free shipping, your users will most likely search elsewhere. Does it seem impossible to cover these costs? It is not. Increase the product price just enough for shipping.
If you want to learn more, read our article How to grow ecommerce sales
2. Website Traffic
From all of the metrics covered in this article, Site Traffic is the easiest to understand. Often also referred to as a session, it affects the number of visits your store receives. Reviewing this number of visits is essential. A high number of visits means more potential customers.
Naturally arises the question: “How can this traffic increase?”
There are two main techniques:
- payment
- organically
Payment
The paid technique includes all advertisements made through social media channels or the ones made on search engines. To grasp the interest of your possible customers you should create dedicated, interesting and captivating campaigns. Keep in mind that their landing point must be the homepage of your site, or a specific product in your ecommerce.
Organically
The organic technique consists in increasing visits without payment.
To create an organic strategy you can start to manage social media profiles dedicated to your brand, your ecommerce and your products.
Through these profiles you can promote your products by offering promotions and invite your followers to visit the online store.
In the same way, you can optimize your presence in search engines through SEO techniques.
3. Average Order Value
Your users are spending, but how much?
In this metric we are talking about an average amount of money spent every time a customer makes a purchase in your ecommerce. To calculate it, just divide the total revenue by the number of purchases.
For example, if during February the sales from the site were €100,000 and the total of the purchases made were 1000, then we calculate as follows:
€100,000 revenue / 1000 purchases = €100
The average order value for February is €100.
Knowing this value helps you evaluate your digital marketing efforts and pricing strategy. This way you can measure the long-term value of individual customers.
To increase the average value of the order, you must invite your already customers to spend more.
There are various techniques and strategies for accomplishing this goal. For example, you can offer your customers a product that matches the one already purchased.
Two strategies that you can start executing from today and that users usually like a lot are:
– Free shipping after a certain purchase expense.
– The proposal of a discount for a greater volume of articles.
4. Revenue on Advertising Spend / ROAS
Calculating the return on investment of an advertising is important because it gives you a quick overview of profitability. Advertising costs cover the costs of all social or search engine campaigns.
If you are investing €20 per day on Facebook or Instagram campaigns and €10 per day on Google, but your revenue reaches only €24 per day, it means that you are not aviating the right campaigns. You need to know which of these campaigns needs to be optimized.
Look at the channels where you are performing your strategies. Are you sure that your potential customers are on Instagram? On the other hand, it may be that the chosen strategy that it’s not the right one for your product. Improve the content of your advertising campaigns and audience targeting to reduce expenses and increase revenue.
5. Email Opt-in Rate
This shows us the percentage of visitors who sign up for our email list.
How many people have registered? What is your number of subscribers?
The list of your registered online customers has an important value for you. Through it you can understand a lot about your customers: preferences, their characteristics and much more. Understanding your customers’ behavior will help you create specific, interesting campaigns and leverage your products.
Many successful ecommerce entrepreneurs have kept an eye on this metric. When it is optimized and used in the right way it can bring a return of more than 40 times compared to other channels.
To increase the value of your eMail Opt-in rate, you can first review your existing strategy and design. If you are not attracted to registering yourself, why should others be attracted? You have to think and create something interesting by clearly specifying what you are offering. Maintain a short but inviting communication.
One strategy that works is to create coupons or special discounts for people who register on your site.
6. Customer Acquisition Cost
It often happens that among the many metrics and the appropriate optimizations, entrepreneurs “forget” the cost per conversion. However, this metric helps in understanding how much you are paying for each converted action. Having a high cost per conversion means that you are spending far more of what you should.
If you have exceeded the limit you had in regards to your initial Conversion Cost, our advice is to review your strategy and identify the points where you can improve.
There are so many convenient techniques that can help you attract visits and convert them into sales. Most likely your advertising campaigns need to be optimized. Reconsider the targeted audience, the creativity, thus the content used for them.
And what about your Call to Action? Is it working well?
Another strong point you can use at your advantage, is organic marketing. Create interesting posts for the various social channels; optimize your site, or create specific articles that are interesting for your users but especially for the search engines.
7. Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate
This metric shows you the percentage of shoppers who add one or more products to their cart but do not complete the purchase process.
The reasons for this behavior can range from a very complicated check out process, to less obvious reasons such as an unattractive design. It is not always your fault or your ecommerce fault.
After some studies it has been verified that almost 70% of people abandon their shopping cart before checking out.
In the following sentence we will reveal one of the techniques that has proven very effective in lowering the numbers of this metric.
Prepare specific emails or launch remarketing campaigns dedicated to products abandoned by these potential customers.
To succeed in this initiative, there are various plugins that can add interesting features to your site. These plugins will collect the necessary data and even proceed with the automatic delivery of the emails you will prepare.
As we mention above, another reason may be a long and complicated purchase process. Maybe you asked to leave too much data before proceeding with the purchase.
If so, you can review your process for shortening the steps, and also allow visitors to make a purchase without having to sign up. If you want to have the data of your buyers, at the end of the purchase you can offer a coupon to be received by email for those who have taken your product.
Of course, there are also many other ecommerce metrics to grow your business which can influence the optimization of your online shop. Every business must find the ones that work best for its own growth.
Surely, by optimizing the 7 metrics listed by us, you will see a clear improvement in your revenue. We focus only on the most important ones, those that can make the difference between success and failure.
