Although Google is of great importance to companies with an Internet presence, traffic from the Mountain View search engine is one of many KPIs and e-commerce metrics.
According to BuiltWith data, more than 27 million pages use the Google Analytics service daily, one of the main players or one of the top services for e-commerce metrics.
It is a free service that allows controlling the infinity of data and in most cases is very easy to register and integrate with the web portal in question.
Although it has been operating for years, it was in 2011 when it experienced its true boom. For e-commerce, the use of Google Analytics is indispensable.
It is currently one of the most important e-commerce conversion products. But its trajectory dates back to 2005 when Google launched the purchase of a company that took the first steps in Google Analytics. This is Urchin Software Corp.
Also, this service of metrics in e-commerce brings ideas to Adaptive Path, the company after the product Measure Map that was acquired and used in the redesign of Google Analytics in 2006.
Finally, in 2012 is announced the version “Universal Analytics”, a completely renewed version of Google software.
But what is the top of e-commerce marketing metrics? In the following lines, we will review some of the most important KPIs for online stores.
What are the most important e-commerce KPIs and metrics? Discover them!
In order for a business to go well, those responsible must always take into account everything related to metrics; that is to say: always be aware of how the store’s trajectory is going, whether it is physical or online.
But in the latter case, e-commerce has to measure all its movements if it wants to know at all times which factors are the most important and which are the least contributing to the growth of the business.
Below we encourage you to discover a selection with the most important KPIs and e-commerce metrics. You can’t miss it!
Cart Abandonment Rate
One of the main problems faced by e-commerce is the massive abandonment of shopping carts.
To be able to verify this type of action, e-commerce has tools as powerful as Google Analytics, which allows them to determine what is the abandonment rate and determine which products are those that are left in a queue in most cases.
Products added to wishlist
If there is one thing that can be important to know the tastes of users who visit an online store, it is to be able to know first hand the wishlist.
It is a list drawn up by customers in which they accumulate the items in which they have set and would like to purchase in the future.
Knowing these data will allow e-commerce to continue offering in the future products or services that fall within the parameters of preference of their potential customers.
Regular customers and their buying habits
Another interesting data for any responsibility for e-commerce is to know what is the behavior of their regular customers.
With these metrics in hand, online merchants will be able to know how long it takes their registered customers to return to the store and what their pattern is within it: their tastes, how long they are browsing the catalog, which products they visit and how many of them are the most repeated.
Why is the latter interesting? Because you will always be able to act accordingly; that is if you want to sell or finish off the stock of some items that appear regularly in the visits of our customers, be able to apply discounts or integrate them in future promotional campaigns.
Sales Conversion Rate
Another important e-commerce metric and KPIs to measure is what is known as a sales conversion rate.
What does this mean? Well, it is also necessary to know the percentage of sales that is translated from all the visits collected in an e-commerce store.
For example: if during a period of one month the online store has obtained 100 visitors and all of them have achieved a total of 50 transactions or sales, the final result will be 50%.
Cost of goods sold (or COGS)
But in the top of e-commerce metrics, we also find the so-called cost of goods sold or COGS.
As its name indicates, this reference determines how much the company is investing in each sales unit (product sold). For some e-commerce stores, the calculation will include warehouse expenses, salaries, administrative expenses, and so on.
But other e-commerce stores will include manufacturing expenses in the equation (if your business model also covers this process).
Knowing this metric is important for businesses, as it allows them to have a useful reference in time. The goal of e-commerce stores should be to reduce their COGs to the minimum possible.
Revenue per visitor (or VPR)
These KPIs allow you to determine how much money an e-commerce store receives for each customer that enters your online shop. The RPV metric or revenue per visitor is useful to know what are the average expenses of each visitor.
Obviously, this is an average figure, since not all visitors make a conversion, nor will buyers make expenses as small as those indicated in the RPV.
But it is a very interesting indicator, that the best online stores never lose sight.
Metrics and KPIs in e-commerce are important in any business and more if it is online. The Internet presence is complex and many factors must be taken into account if you want to make the business work well and know what is the behavior of the target audience.
This will make the sales strategy much more solid, recover the investment much more efficiently and with less expense, and have the customer more satisfied knowing their tastes beforehand.
When trying to set metrics you should avoid useless or misleading metrics. Using vanity metrics can mislead you and negatively affect your sales. To learn more, you need to read the “Which KPI Is Most Likely to be a Vanity Metric” article.
