eCommerce Analytics 101: The Key Metrics That Every Store Owner Should Keep An Eye On

The most successful eCommerce stores track every aspect of their site, analyze the data, and make changes based on the results. Some of the major eCommerce retailers do this constantly, tweaking their website on an hourly basis.

Here are some of the key metrics that all eCommerce businesses should keep an eye on.

Website Visits

Track how many unique visitors you have per day, week, month, and year. As well, track what

percentage of visitors are new and what percentage are returning. (Ideally, you want a balance of both. Lots of new visitors means that you are successfully driving traffic to your site. Lots of returning visitors means that your content is successful in bringing people back to the site.)

You should also track the number of views and visitors per page so that you can see where traffic is growing and declining. You may want to segment your visitor statistics further (where possible) by demographics like age, gender, geographical location, etc.

Conversion Rate

This is the most important metric for an e-commerce business: what percentage of visitors to your site actually buy a product? To obtain this number, divide the number of unique visitors by the number of orders for a particular period.

For example, let’s say that 100 people visited a website and 10 people purchased a product from it. That’s a conversion rate of 10%. (The average conversion rate for most eCommerce stores is about 4%.)

Bounce Rate

This measures the number of people who visit one page on your site and then leave without visiting any other pages. A high bounce rate indicates that visitors do not find your page relevant or cannot find what they are looking for.

Duration/Stickiness

This metric measures how long visitors stay on each page and on the site as a whole. Typically, the longer the user stays on the site, the more likely they are to complete a purchase.

SHOPPING CART METRICS

It is also important to track various aspects of your shopping cart and checkout processes. Continually optimizing the checkout experience should increase sales and improve your conversion rate. Let’s look at the three most important items.

View-To-Cart Ratio

Track how many products are viewed and how many of those products are actually added to a shopping cart. This is especially effective if you test different product pages and/or different “Add to Cart” or “Add to Basket” buttons.

Checkout Conversion Rate/Abandonment Rate

How many visitors who start the checkout process actually complete it and place an order? Conversely, how many visitors abandon their shopping cart before or during checkout?

Customers can abandon their shopping cart for any number of reasons, many of which are not even related to your site. In some cases, the shopping cart abandonment rate can be up to 80%.

In addition to the overall checkout conversion rate, you should analyze each checkout step to see where customers are dropping out. This will show you where you need to streamline and optimize the process.

Average Order Size

Track how many items are in each order and what the overall value is. This can give you valuable information for things like promotions and price changes.

Tracking Referrers and Keywords

Last but not least, pay close attention to where your visitors are coming from. What sites are effectively driving traffic to you and which are not? This can help you assess how well various campaigns are doing and where your time and money is best spent.

If you have any questions or would like help setting up the analytics for your eCommerce business – give us a call on 0203 488 3149 or send us an email at info@swayvendigital.com and we'll happy to help.