Ask any successful entrepreneur and they will tell you that the foundation of every good business decision should be timely, relevant, and verifiable information. Without the right data in your hands, you are bound to make mistakes and some poor choices that might jeopardize the future of your business. One of the biggest business challenges that successful entrepreneurs face is staying on top of the latest developments and collating important data into actionable reports on a continuous basis.
It can be easy to simply trust your gut feeling and “wing it” from time to time, but those decisions will never achieve the same results as the ones you make using data you collected on your marketing, branding, sales, customer, and internal Key Performance Indicators. With that in mind, let’s take a look at those crucial KPI groups that you, as a serious Ecommerce leader, need to keep track of at all times, and use for business growth.
Sales and conversion KPIs
There are so many KPIs that you need to track that we have to talk about KPI groups instead of individual performance indicators – the first one being sales and conversions. Conversion KPIs should be at the top of your list because they will tell you how your business is faring in a competitive industry when it comes to sheer sales and revenue volumes. And as you know, revenue is the lifeblood of every Ecommerce venture.
With that in mind, it’s important that you track your total revenue and your revenue per sales channel in order to find out where the bulk of your customers are converting. Next, keep an eye on your conversion rate to find out how many customers are completing a certain action on your site. You will also need to know your overall ROI for your sales efforts, your average order value, and the lifetime value of a customer. These KPIs will show you whether your sales efforts are paying off, and where you should try to minimize expenses while improving efficiency.
Brand KPIs
The Ecommerce world is oversaturated with competitors at the moment, and you can expect the industry get even more competitive in the years to come, which is why you have to focus on building a recognizable, memorable, and authoritative brand. Earning the trust of your customers is paramount and it can only be achieved with strategic brand-building and marketing, so be sure to track the following brand KPIs.
First, determine your brand sentiment by running online pools and surveys that will tell you how the public feels about your store. Next, monitor brand mentions across the online world to discover how, when, and why people are mentioning your brand. Finally, be sure to monitor brand awareness and reach, in order to find out how visible and noticeable your brand is online. These metrics will give you the insights you need to take your branding to the next level and stand out from the crowd.
Important marketing KPIs
Marketing is the driving force behind long-term business success, and it’s the main way Ecommerce stores disseminate their brand across the online world. Needless to say, it’s imperative to track all relevant marketing KPIs in order to minimize marketing expenses while improving the impact of every new campaign you create.
Firstly, be sure to track crucial SEO KPIs and collate them into comprehensive SEO reports in order to improve your organic and paid traffic, minimize your bounce rate, update your keywords, and climb the SERP ladder. Next, compile other important marketing KPIs such as marketing ROI, traffic by source, social media traffic and engagement, email open rate and CTR, and more. These metrics will be essential in analyzing the performance of your marketing efforts so that you can improve quickly and effectively.
Internal KPIs
Measuring progress and quantifying success over the long term is not just about tracking external KPIs, but also your internal performance indicators. After all, gaining insight into the performance of your teams and internal processes will help you minimize human error, elevate productivity, and create a more efficient and effective operation across the board.
Be sure to monitor your intra-department and cross-department communication to identify pain-points and places where miscommunication occurs. Be sure to use project management and employee management tools that will give you clear insights into the productivity of your teams, how they’re using their time, what the average project and task completion rates are, and more.
Customer acquisition and retention KPIs
Finally, remember that the fate of your online store rests in the hands of your customers, so you have to monitor some key customer-related KPIs in order to improve your approach to customer acquisition, retention, trust, and loyalty. Simply monitoring your customer acquisition rate and comparing it to your customer retention KPI will give you an insight into how many people are actually becoming your long-term brand supporters. You can monitor customer trust and loyalty by conducting online surveys and sending out quick questionnaires, which will tell you how trustworthy your brand is and what you can do to create a more reputable brand image.
Wrapping up
Ecommerce is a competitive field, which is why you need to monitor key performance indicators in order to grow your business using solid information. Be sure to track these KPIs so that you can create a comprehensive framework for growth and expansion.
