37 E-Commerce Key Performance Indicators (Kpis) That Forms The Backbone Of Your Online Store
There are various criterion that define the success or failure of various events. These factors are known as performance driven metrics that drive the success and growth of a business organization in this cut throat competitive world. Similarly, to become successful in the field of eCommerce industry, you need to be in constant touch in the developments happening around you and you must be aware about all the factors that may affect the performance of your business organization in the long run. Every business organization should proactively work towards these deciding factors that can control the fate of your business entity. Let us explore more about these 35 eCommerce KPIs that are classified into the categories of marketing, sales and customer services for providing a new direction and dimension to your eCommerce store. Sales driven key performance indicators
Every business organization is centered around the sales activity as it drives the ultimate
revenue. If you can’t manage the sales activity for your business organization, you are sure to loose a considerable amount of revenue and business opportunities to your rivals. Here are some of the sales key performance indicators that can decide the success of your business organization. 1.
Complete sales information-
By having a complete detailed information about all the sales activity that is happening on your store, eCommerce organizations can effortlessly plan out a strategy for making an effective product sales. You need to have an extension that can provide you complete sales related information to your organization in the form of hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually, semi- annually or in any other way. 2. Average order size for your store- It is one of the primary matter of concern for eCommerce organizations around the world as it tends to affect their performance in the long run. If you are having a significant decrease in the average order size for a particular product in your store, it is time to market that concerned product more proactively through various promotional campaigns, sales offers and other such efforts. 3. Average margin obtained on a product- Sometimes, it is more important to keep your products moving through your eCommerce store so that the stock doesn't become obsolete for your organization. Don't run behind unrealistic profit margins that may hinder the sales of your popular products by raising the price to a much higher level but contend yourself to a small profit margin by placing your product pricing more reasonable. 4.
Shopping cart abandonment rate-
In this age of cut throat competition, e-commerce sites are facing a formidable opponent that may affect the chances of their product sales. To reduce the impact of shopping cart abandonments, you need to have a faster, simple and engaging checkout process that can urge your customers to shop from your online store. Further, make significant improvements in your site design, navigation facility and site loading time for making your targeted customers engaged to your eCommerce site. 5.
Conversion rate-
The conversion rate is defined as the accomplishment of a particular action on a site by the visitors. It can be the sale of a product, downloading of a software or ebook, account registration for an event, newsletter or webinar, click on a particular link or any other action. Higher the conversion rates for a site, more is the growth and popularity of that online business organization among its rivals. 6. New customer orders versus returning customer sales- For the growth of a business organization, it is important to add new people to your customer list without losing your existing loyal customer base. You can reward your returning customers with appropriate sales offers and schemes in order to make your business organization the most preferred place for online shopping. 7.
Cost incurred on the sold product items- An ideal eCommerce store should have
the cost and other overhead expenses of their sold products under its control so that their operating cost should not exceed their selling price for that particular product. This will ensure the smooth functioning of the organization in the rough tides of market volatility and stringent competition. 8. The affinity of the customer towards a product- There are various products in an online store that have a slight preference by customers than other relative products. Considering the popularity of your available products, you can start an effective promotional deal by mixing your less popular products with more popular products so as to keep your inventory stock moving smoothly and to avoid your products from getting stuck in the inventory. 9. Customer- product relationship- Track product categories and product pages on your site for getting better insight about the most viewed products by your targeted customers. Understand the mindset, preferences and interest of your visitors in order to make your available products more presentable and popular among your customers. 10.
Stock level of your inventory control-
Don't just pile up products without making any analysis of your inventory stock as it could lead your products to get stuck in your stock control if the demand for that product is not so high. Keep your stock ready to deliver products to your customers if you feel that the sale of particular products are going to surge due to the ongoing sales offer, price discount, start of a particular season or other such factors. 11. Market capitalization of your company in comparison to the total market sizeExplore the customer base and market capitalization of your company in your particular business segment for preparing long term business strategies that can help you in reaching out to your targeted customers in a better way. Further, it will help you in understanding the current business scenario for your eCommerce organization for making maximum impact among your business rivals.
12.
Competitive pricing of your featured product-
In this world of cut throat competition, product pricing plays an important role in driving the customer interest and product sales for your site. Make your product more alluring and pocket friendly for your targeted customers for persuading people to purchase through your online store. Marketing based key performance indicators
Marketing forms the backbone of a business organization as it provides the required boost to a company by creating necessary awareness about your company and its products. If you are
failing in capitalizing the business potential for your organization through marketing efforts, you will surely lag behind your business rivals in terms of conversion rates and revenue. Take a look at these key performance indicators that need to be considered while managing the marketing campaigns for your business organization. 1. Incoming site traffic- The amount of traffic coming onto your website can decide the growth, conversion rates and product sales for your eCommerce organization to a great extent. Incorporate different methods and approaches in your site design, product pricing, site navigation, checkout process and other such areas for directing a large number of traffic on your website. 2. The amount of time spent on your site- In order to push product sales for your eCommerce organization, you need to analyze the amount of time spent by your targeted customers. Track the onsite behavior and activity of your incoming site traffic for getting complete information about how and where do your customers spend most of their time on your site. Once, you are aware about the factors that are diverting the attention of your targeted customers, you can effortlessly bring them down towards your conversion funnel. 3. Number of page views made by the visitors-
It is important to get appropriate number of visits on your product page in order to persuade people to make purchase through your online store. If your featured product is getting maximum customer attention, there is an increased chance of improving your product sales and conversion rates. 4. Source of incoming site traffic-
Business organizations need to evaluate their incoming site traffic through the use of various web analytics and site monitoring tool for the effective targeting of their customers. Mocking Fish is one such tool that is gaining immense popularity among numerous online business organizations due to its feature packed user friendly dashboard design, low cost, high reliability results, simple installation and implementation, responsive web design and other such functionalities. The insight heat map tool of Mocking Fish can provide business organizations with complete customer information like type of device used, time of browsing, segmentation of customer based on their interest, browser used or any other crucial data. By getting a detailed information about your source traffic, you can plan out a better promotional strategy for targeting incoming traffic that is coming through desktop or mobile devices for boosting your conversion rates and product sales. 5. Attention towards unique visitors as well as returning customers- eCommerce stores need to find out a way that can keep their new visitors and returning customers equally interested in your site and its products. Offer everybody something interesting to spend time on your site through attractive sales offer, easy checkout process, engaging site navigation and other such features for increasing your product sales and sales revenue. 6. Time specific site monitoring-
Keep on tracking your site visitors on a regular interval of time so that you can decide which is the best time to target your customers in order to maximize your sales. Once, you are well aware about the time of engagement of your site traffic, you can plan your promotional activities in a better way so that more number of people are aware about the offers provided by your eCommerce organization. 7. Customer retargeting through text messages-
If you are having a large number of abandoned customers on your site, it doesn’t mean that you can’t drive them back towards your conversion funnel. All you need to do is to make your promotional strategy more customer focused through the use of various customer retargeting methods. But, out of these methods, text messages are the most economical way of customer retargeting as the cost incurred on customer retention is much lower than other means of customer retargeting. 8. Persuade customers for the subscription of newsletter- It has been a common practice these days to make your customers register on your site for getting free newsletter subscription. In this way, you can easily store email address of your targeted
customers for better targeting in order to fulfill the pre decided sales target. 9. Customer engagement through the use of chat sessions- Depending upon the convenience of your customer, business organization need to provide various methods of customer redressal like email, phone support, 24/7 chat service and other such mechanisms. Providing customer support through multiple ways increase the trust and loyalty of the targeted customers towards your online business organization which could act as a significant factor in improving your sales revenue. 10. Social media marketing through various social platforms-
Due to the increasing popularity of social sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Linked in and others, business organizations are actively working towards improving their social media presence in order to increase their loyal customer base. These social platforms have emerged as the new place for business engagement as it provides exposure to a large group of online customers belonging to different ethnicity and region. 11. Amount of traffic generated by your website blog- Content marketing has still much relevance left in this competitive online business environment. You need to promote your website blogs for the purpose of getting more site traffic that could help you in improving your conversion rates and product sales for your eCommerce store. 12. Click- through rates (CTR) achieved on product page- An effective way of understanding the mood of your targeted customers towards your business organization is to analyze the number of click through rates (CTR) on your site. By getting more CTR, eCommerce sites can effortlessly grab customer attention for changing their business fortunes. 13. Improve the pay- per- click traffic volume for your site- If you are unable to get a genuine high traffic on your site, you can take the help of PPC services to get a respectable traffic on your site for boosting your chances of conversion rates and product sales. These PPC services is an important part of SEO and is being used by
numerous business organizations as an effective medium of paid traffic. 14. Effective number and quality of product reviews-
Reviews have the power to influence the purchasing decision of the targeted customers to a great extent. So, engage visitors to write good engaging reviews about your product so as to get the instant attention of the people towards your featured product. Include a significant number of positive reviews about your business organization and its product that are capable of swaying the interest of your visitors towards purchasing your advertised product. 15. Monetary charges and efficiency of affiliate performance- Affiliates are one of the oldest form of getting paid traffic on your site. You need to analyze the performance, reliability and rate charges of your affiliates for getting the most affordable affiliate marketing services for your eCommerce organization. This model is used by some of the world’s eCommerce giants like Amazon, eBay in USA and Flipkart, Snap deal and such others in India and other parts of world. Customer service based key performance indicators
Goodwill, trust and loyalty of customers is important for the growth of any business organization and this can be evident by the success story of the eCommerce companies like Amazon, eBay, Ali baba, Flipkart and such others. In order to retain the trust of your targeted customers, you need to provide a seamless customer services so that customers can address their various issues related to product delivery, product quality, transaction related issues and other such problems in a convenient manner. Here are the list of various customer service performance metrics that can affect the overall performance of your online store in the long run. 1. Analysis of different customer service platforms-
Business organizations providing the customer services should constantly track their various customer redressal platforms like phone support, email support, chat service or any other medium. It will provide them a clear idea regarding the recurring issues of the customers. So, a proper record of customer- customer service representative needs to be maintained for the reference purpose in future customer issues. 2. Average time spent on issue resolution- In order to win over the trust and loyalty of your targeted customers, work towards the effective resolution of your customer’s issue.
But, in the process do pay attention to the average time that is spent on the issue resolution as the longer issue resolution time affects the trust, confidence and loyalty of your targeted customers. 3. Breakdown of the customer issues into various categories- Before heading towards the issue resolution, make a proper classification of your issue for tracking the exact nature, concerned authorities and reason for the problem. This detailed breakdown of the issue will help in the timely resolution of the pending problem for boosting the confidence of your targeted customers into your eCommerce organization. 4. Net Promoter Score- The success or failure of your eCommerce customer services can be easily determined by the net promoter score. It is the rate at which your customers are likely to recommend your online store to his/her family, friends or other known people. Higher the net promoter score for your organization, more will be the chances of your company being referred by your customers which can improve your product sales and conversion rates. 5. Comparison with the competitors in your business segment-
For ramping up your customer retention process, you need to have a close tracking of your competitors website for analyzing the possible reasons that are driving your customers towards your rival site. Once, you know the weak points in your site by making a detailed study of your competitors, you can seamlessly take corrective steps to eliminate those issues from your website. There are A/B testing tools like Mocking Fish that can be a huge blessing for your business organization because of its wonderful features. By making use of Mocking Fish, eCommerce site owners can check the usability, performance and conversion ability of their site elements through A/B testing for grabbing the immediate attention of their targeted customers which could play a crucial role in their conversion rates and sales revenue. A/B testing is one of the most used technique that can help in improving your customer engagement and site traffic. 6. Customer service improvement-
Business organizations need to introduce surveys, ratings system and feedbacks for their customers so as to get a better insight about the mindset and opinion of their customers regarding their business organization. This timely exercise will help in the removal of various bottlenecks and sore points in your business operational activities that can improve your customer service to a great extent. 7. Measurement of employee productivity- In order to ensure effective customer service to your customers, it is important to analyze the productivity of your employees for your business organization. Organize timely workshops, expert conferences, guest lectures, vocational courses for your employees for keeping them informed about the latest developments and innovations in your particular business segment. If your employees are properly skilled, they will be more capable in resolving the issues of your targeted customers. 8. Attributes used for your brand description- Monitor the feedbacks, product reviews, testimonials and ratings of your customers constantly for evaluating the words that are used to describe the product of your company. If there are too many negative feedbacks about your company, it is time to introspect what you are missing in your services that is resulting in a bad name for your business organization. 9. Rate of complaint escalated by customers- If your online business organization is getting a tremendous amount of customer complaints regarding your service, it is possible that something needs your earnest intervention for maintaing the trust and loyalty of your customers. Ignoring these bulk complaints can be disastrous for your business organization in terms of conversion rates, customer engagement and product sales. 10. Amount of cash flowing in your business organization-
Track down the monthly, quarterly and annual sales for your business organization in order to analyze the amount of cash flow that is a crucial factor for determining the success of your business organization. If there is no significant drop in your sales, it means that people are happy with your organization and its customer services. Final thoughts- eCommerce key performance indicators (KPIs) are an important matter of concern for various eCommerce organizations around the world as they can drive site traffic and customer engagement which can improve your conversion rates and product sales to a great extent. So, divert all your efforts, expertise and time on these key performance metrics that can shape the future destiny of your business organization.