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<p>In a world where companies use numerous different tools to track business performance, data dashboards have become essential for conveying the most important numbers to teams within your company and your clients quickly and with ease.</p>
<p>An ecommerce dashboard has just that purpose. It provides your ecommerce team with a clear overview of key financial and website KPIs at any time. In addition, it enables tracking and analysis of essential elements for your ecommerce businesses on a day-to-day basis.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>Keeping a close eye on your ecommerce dashboard allows you to monitor the performance of your online store in real-time and, more importantly, ensure that all your customer journey is well-documented along with shopping experience events.&nbsp;
</p>
<h2>Which KPIs and Metrics Should My Ecommerce Dashboard Include, and Where Is the Data Coming From?</h2>
<p>Modern e-commerce businesses know the value of tracking key performance indicators, as they help you make the best decisions possible for your business and adjust your sales and marketing efforts in real-time to ensure your pre-set goals are met.&nbsp;
</p>
<h3>1. Which KPIs and Metrics Should You Include?</h3>
<p>There is no universal answer. What you include in your ecommerce dashboard depends on your business goals and what you want to accomplish with the data.
</p>
<p>Now, keep in mind that when properly optimizing the performance of your ecommerce store, you need access to useful and actionable data, preferably in real-time. However, when you have a large number of metrics at your disposal, choosing where to begin can be tricky.
</p>
<p>Now, if you are new to this, opting for a pre-built<a href="https://databox.com/template/google-analytics-ecommerce-overview" target="_blank">ecommerce dashboard template</a> might not be a bad idea. Just to get you started. In most cases, these contain the following metrics -
</p>
<ul><li><b>Average Order Value</b> - an average value of transactions within a specified date range.
</li><li><b>Ecommerce Conversion Rate</b> - the percentage of sessions that resulted in an ecommerce transaction within a specified date range.
</li><li><b>Revenue</b> - revenue from web ecommerce or in-app transactions within a specified date range.
</li><li><b>Revenue by channel</b> - similar to the previous metric, just split up by channels.
</li><li><b>Transactions</b> - the number of completed purchases on your site within a specified date range.
</li><li><b>Users </b>- visitors who have initiated at least one session within a specified date range.
</li></ul>
<p>Now, these are just some of the options you might be interested in when deciding what to feature in your ecommerce dashboard. However, it is important to point out that the KPIs and metrics you choose to track also depend on where you get your data from.
</p>
<h3>2. Possible Data Sources for Your Ecommerce Dashboard</h3>
<p>Data that populates your ecommerce dashboard has to come from somewhere. It can be a single source or multiple sources, depending on what tool you use to collect it and display it.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>As you probably know, you can use a whole selection of tools to collect and display your data from Google Analytics to Shopify, WooCommerce, or HubSpot. You can use a single one or have data for multiple sources pulled into a single ecommerce dashboard so that you can have a far more insightful report on the growth and success of your online store.
</p>
<h2>What are the Some of the Most Important Insights I Can Get from an Ecommerce Dashboard?</h2>
<p>One of the most important benefits that tracking ecommerce metrics and KPIs provides to brands is gaining a deeper understanding of how visitors are using their ecommerce websites.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>Once you have chosen the data source and the ecommerce metrics and KPIs that you want to track, it is time to analyze them and get insights that will help drive ecommerce success and help you create smart marketing strategies.
</p>
<p>Let’s take a look at this a bit closer.
</p>
<h3>1. Detect Major Issues and Fix Them Quickly</h3>
<p>Here are just some of the things that your ecommerce dashboards can alert you to:
</p>
<ul><li>Website downtime
</li><li>Build-ups of support queries
</li><li>Low stock
</li><li>Order fulfillment issues
</li></ul>
<p>If you are checking your dashboards daily, you can react to these alerts, see where the problem originates, and fix it in real-time. Thus, ensuring customer satisfaction rate stays high.
</p>
<h3>2. Understand Customer Behavior Better and Adjust Your Efforts Accordingly</h3>
<p>The ultimate goal of any ecommerce store is to sell as many products as possible. To sell more products efficiently, it is important to understand how people who visit your online store behave and make adjustments accordingly, so they end up staying longer and coming back for more.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>So, for example, optimizing the number of conversions per number of visits is one way to ensure that your ecommerce site is performing well. And one way to identify how your online store currently performs in that regard is to track the path leading immediately up to a conversion.
</p>
<p>Why is tracking that path so important? To be honest, customers that are about to convert are typically impatient, and when they are willing to make a purchase, they want the process to be smooth and fast. By tracking the steps that lead directly to conversions, you can iron out any issues that would prevent the desired outcome.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>In that case, make sure you are tracking at the least the following:
</p>
<ul><li>Funnel
</li><li>Checkout process
</li><li>Variable testing
</li><li>Form testing
</li></ul>
<h2>Ensure the Success and Growth of Your Online Store</h2>
<p>Think about it. Currently, there are an<a href="https://wpforms.com/ecommerce-statistics/"> estimated 12 million – 24 million ecommerce sites</a> across the entire globe, and more online stores are created daily.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>Sure, less than 1M of these sites sell more than $1,000/year, but it is still a competitive market, and you will need all the help you can get to ensure the success and growth of your online store.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>And that’s where ecommerce dashboards come in.
</p>
<p>A carefully constructed ecommerce dashboard can provide you with insights into how your store is doing in real-time and what areas require adjustment or a complete overhaul, ultimately helping you reach the sales goals you are aiming for.&nbsp;
</p>
<p><br></p>


Ecommerce Analytics

What is an Ecommerce Dashboard?

<p>One of the keys to success with email marketing is constantly testing to see what works and how you can improve your email campaigns.&nbsp;<br></p>
<p>While you might be tempted, like many email marketers are, to just rely on your gut feeling, the problem with relying on your assumptions or guesses is you’re not always going to be right.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>There are going to be times when your email list reacts more positively toward something, be it a design, subject line, call-to-action, etc. over a variant you could’ve sworn they’d prefer. That’s why it’s important to regularly run A/B tests so that you know you’re making evidence-based decisions that are actually improving the performance of your campaigns.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>If you haven’t performed any A/B tests before, you might unsure of what it involves, what the benefits to them are, and even what you should test. The good news is that A/B testing is an incredibly simple form of testing.&nbsp;
</p>
<h4>Defined: A/B Testing for Email Marketing</h4>
<p>A/B testing, also known as split testing, is incredibly simple in that all it involves is sending two different variants (an A variant and a B variant) to your email list and seeing which variant performs better.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>The difference between variants could be something small like a differently worded subject line that most subscribers aren’t going to notice. Or it could be something more substantial like an entirely different email design and layout.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>Good A/B testing will, however, only test one element at a time. That way you can be more confident that any difference in how the two variants performed is down to that one element. As opposed to trying to determine which of the elements resulted in the change (and relying on gut feelings again).&nbsp;
</p>
<p>In terms of measuring performance, there are several potential email metrics you should be looking at:
</p>
<ul><li>Open rates (the number of people who open and read your email)
</li><li>Click rates (the number of people who click on a link within your email)
</li><li>Conversion rates (the number of people opening your email who go on to make a purchase)
</li></ul>
<h4>Benefits of A/B Email Testing</h4>
<p>By running regular A/B tests, you’ll gradually start improving your key email marketing metrics. Which are:
</p>
<h5>1. Improved open rates.</h5>
<p>By testing the factors that influence your open rate (e.g., your subject lines and preview text, etc.) you’ll get a better idea of what resonates with your subscribers and what doesn’t. This will allow you to optimize your future campaigns for more opens.&nbsp;&nbsp;
</p>
<h5>2. Improved click rates.</h5>
<p>Just like with your open rates, by testing elements within your email you’ll slowly but surely get a better understanding of what type of content and links your subscribers tend to click on. You can then create your future emails around what you know works to improve your click rate.
</p>
<h5>3. Improved conversion rates and sales.</h5>
<p>By improving your open and click rates, you’ll be driving more potential customers to your site. This will ultimately result in more sales, and (especially if you also <a href="/articles/ecommerce/ab-testing/" target="_blank">A/B test elements on your store</a>) will also result in an improved conversion rate.&nbsp;
</p>
<h4>What Can You A/B Test?</h4>
<p>While there are a few things that immediately spring to mind in terms of what to A/B test, when it comes to email marketing, there are many potential tests that you can be running. These include:
</p>
<h5>1. Your subject lines.</h5>
<p>Subject lines are one of the most popular elements of campaigns to test for email marketers. Part of this is because they’re easy to change and most marketers often already have a couple of ideas for potential subject lines.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>Once you know what the two subject lines you want to test are and you’ve sent the email, the metric you’ll want to keep an eye on is your open rate.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>While it’s worth also paying attention to your click and conversion rate, your subject line is one of the few elements of your campaign that subscribers will see before they open your email. That’s why the metric that’s going to be impacted the most from experimenting with your subject line is going to be your open rate.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>After your email has been opened, the email design and its contents are going to have a much greater impact on whether people click through to your site and then make a purchase or not.&nbsp;
</p>
<h5>2. Your preview text.</h5>
<p>Your preview text is the optional additional line of text that proceeds your subject line. This means it performs much the same job as your subject line and is also a great candidate for A/B testing.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>Just like when testing different variants of your subject lines, the main metric you’ll want to track when experimenting with your preview text is your open rate.&nbsp;
</p>
<h5>3. The sender name.</h5>
<p>Your sender name is the name your subscribers see in their inbox of who sent the email.
</p>
<p>For most brands, this is usually just their brand name. For example, “ACME Brand”. Some brands, however, will add a bit of personality to their sender name by including the name of someone like their founder. For example, “Jane from ACME Brand.”&nbsp;
</p>
<p>This might be something worth experimenting with some of your future email campaigns. If you decide to run this type of A/B test, the metric to pay attention to is your open rate.
</p>
<h5>4. When you send your emails.</h5>
<p>It’s common for email marketers to fall into a habit of always sending their campaigns at the same time of day and the same day of the week. However, when you send your emails can have a major impact on your open rate.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>To really know when the <a href="https://www.smartrmail.com/blog/what-day-of-the-week-should-you-send-your-emails/">best day to send emails</a> to your customers is, you should run some A/B tests where you vary the day of the week (e.g., Tuesday vs. Thursday). You can also do the same with the time of day (morning vs. afternoon).&nbsp;
</p>
<p>Again, the main metric you’ll want to look at here is your open rate.
</p>
<h5>5. Your call-to-action text.</h5>
<p>Call-to-actions (also known as CTAs) are an incredibly important part of your email. It’s the part of your email that gets your subscribers to perform the action you want them to (e.g., click through to view a certain product collection or redeem an offer).&nbsp;
</p>
<p>Given how important it is, it’s well worth testing different variants of your CTA wording. For example, “Grab Yours Before Stocks Run Out” vs. “Hurry! Buy Now to Avoid Disappointment”.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>Because CTAs are usually directing people to click through to a particular page, the metric they’ll influence the most is your click rate.&nbsp;
</p>
<h5>6. Which landing pages you funnel people to.</h5>
<p>Speaking of CTAs, it’s also worth testing which pages they direct your subscribers to. For instance, instead of linking to a product collection, it might be better to link to a <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/ecommerce-landing-pages/">dedicated landing page</a> for your current sale.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>As your subscribers usually don’t know exactly which page they’ll end up on until after they’ve clicked on the link, the metric you’d be looking at here is your conversion rate.&nbsp;
</p>
<h5>7. The length of your emails.</h5>
<p>Some merchants tend to prefer to send long emails that showcase plenty of their products. Others opt for shorter emails that are to-the-point.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>In either case, you might want to experiment with how your subscribers respond when you send an email that’s longer or shorter than what you’d usually send and seeing what effect it has on your click rate.
</p>
<h5>8. Your email design.</h5>
<p>There are many factors that go into your email design such as the layout, how many columns you use, the style of images, whether you use images at all, etc.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>While you shouldn’t play around with too many different elements during the one A/B test, otherwise you won’t be sure which change led to the results, it’s worth experimenting with your email design.&nbsp;
</p>
<h5>9. How you great your subscriber.</h5>
<p>While you should always be personalizing your emails with your subscriber’s name, there is room to experiment with how you great them. For instance, “Hey Darcy” vs. “How’s it going, Darcy?”.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>This is something that’s quick and easy to change between your two variants but may have an impact on how your subscribers engage with your campaigns. If a particular style of greeting resonates with your subscribers more, then you’d expect your click rates to go up.&nbsp;
</p>
<h5>10. Trying out new ideas.</h5>
<p>If you’ve had ideas for potential things you could add to future emails but aren’t sure how your subscribers will react, then an A/B test is the perfect way to find out.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>For example, if you’re thinking about including customer testimonials as a form of social proof, you can include them in only one of the variants and see whether they improve your click and conversion rates.&nbsp;
</p>
<h4>Conclusion</h4>
<p>A/B testing is a simple yet powerful way to improve your email campaigns.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>All it involves is creating two variants of the same email and seeing which one resonates with your subscribers more.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>By doing this regularly, you’ll constantly be refining and optimizing your campaigns, maximizing your open, click-through, and conversion rates in the process.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>With many email apps letting you set up these tests quickly and easily, there’s no reason not to be constantly A/B testing!</p>

What is A/B Testing for Email Marketing?

<p>Analytics are incredibly useful in every part of your ecommerce business. The data you collect helps you understand your visitor behavior and which day of the week is your biggest revenue generator. But if you're not looking at data directly related to your product performance, keep reading to learn more about what this kind of analytics is and how it can make a big difference in your decision making.&nbsp;<br></p>
<h4>Defined: Product Performance Analytics&nbsp;</h4>
<p><a href="https://www.plytix.com/blog/product-analytics" target="_blank">Product performance analytics</a> is the collection and strategic analysis of data points (metrics) related to the purchasing funnel like how many times visitors view a product page, how many times a product is left abandoned in a cart, how many times a particular product gets to checkout, unique purchases, and more.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>These metrics that are gathered on a per product basis can tell you a larger story about your entire product portfolio! Many people neglect this level of analysis because they aren't sure why or how they should do it.&nbsp;
</p><h4>Why Product Analytics Are Important</h4>
<p>There’s one major reason that product performance analytics are important for ecommerce brands: they help you increase sales and improve overall operations.&nbsp;</p><h5>1. Understand the product funnel</h5>
<p>Product performance analytics, at their core, help you understand how well a product moves through the buying funnel. So from first impression to final purchase. No products are created equal, so it is really important to see which categories of products are more or less likely to be abandoned before checkout. Armed with this information, you can identify which products might be generally poor performers or are being snatched up by competitors in comparison shopping.&nbsp;</p><h5>2. Make better merchandising decisions</h5>
<p>Once you understand which products need help making it to checkout, it becomes easier to figure out why. For example, the real estate your product holds on your store could be directly related to the number of sales it has. You can begin to change the layout of your store to optimize navigating to a particular product. You can showcase collections or build out your recommended products section. Another problem often discovered is that the product images or descriptions aren't robust enough. You can tweak product pages to include in-context images, product demo videos or more detailed product descriptions. With the analytics, you will be able to see the impact of your merchandising efforts play out and learn how to best optimize your product performance overall.</p><h5>3. Avoid stockouts</h5>
<p>Inventory tracking is an important part of product performance analytics. Seeing in the moment how many items are being sold can help you forecast stock needs and work more efficiently with suppliers. This kind of performance data becomes more valuable when you couple it with regional or seasonal sales data. Many bigger brands and retailers also share this kind of point of sale data so that they have a more global view of who needs what and when. Being out of stock, if not a strategic choice, is frustrating for everyone.</p><h5>4. Understand and plan marketing efforts&nbsp;</h5>
<p>By tracking performance at a product-level, this lets you see how marketing and promotional efforts impact sales when showcasing different products or images. Let's say for example you promote a brand new handbag on Instagram for a set period of time. If you are tracking that handbag's performance over time, you will be able to see if that advert had any immediate effect on sales and how long after the promotion ended that they evened out. With product performance metrics available to slice and dice, you can also identify products for promotion faster, easier, and more systematically.</p><h5>5. Identify opportunities to boost revenue</h5>
<p>The end goal of running an ecommerce store is to generate revenue. Product analytics make it easier to identify opportunities to do just that. If you are tracking first time purchases versus recurring purchases, for example, you might discover products that may work really well on a subscription basis like laundry detergent or coffee capsules. If you track category impressions and store search, you could find out that your customers aren't finding a particular product they want and you could stock. Then of course, all the tests you can run with pricing, merchandising, and promotions are enough to help you optimize your overall web store profit!&nbsp;
</p>
<h4>How to Track Analytics</h4>
<p>The first step is to start tracking. Analytics only make sense when there are enough data points to analyze. The ideal situation is to have a single platform where you can see and report on your data so that it becomes something enjoyable instead of a chore. For product performance there are two main ways to get started:</p><h5>1. Built-in Analytics on Your Ecommerce Platform</h5>
<p>The ecommerce platform you choose will likely have built-in analytics that you can use to get started. If you have an existing ecommerce platform, do a little research to see what they offer. Otherwise, when researching platforms look for ones that help you track performance. This is a great investment for the long term success of your ecommerce business.</p><h5>2. Ecommerce Analytics Software Providers&nbsp;</h5>
<p>You can also search for software services that track and consolidate ecommerce data. It goes without saying, Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce is the best way to start if you're looking for something external. It is free and usually integrates with your shop system. This option usually requires either a plugin to your ecommerce platform or a bit of coding (inputting a script to your store).&nbsp;
</p>
<h4>Types of Product Performance Metrics</h4>
<p>How do you collect the right product performance metrics? Start small and targeted with a single goal in mind, then expand as you learn the ropes. Once you have a question you want answered, you can figure out which metrics will help you answer it. Here are just some basic metrics that can get you started:</p><h5>1. Impressions</h5>
<p>Impressions are how many times someone has viewed a particular thing. So for example a product detail page impressions are how many times a person has seen the individual product page. This includes things like product listing views, how many times a product made it to the shopping cart, checkout views and more. These are basic metrics that are building blocks for other types of analysis like conversion rates.&nbsp;</p><h5>2. Conversion Rates</h5>
<p>Conversion rates tell you the percentage of successful movements between different stages. Cart to Buy rates for example tell you what percentage of products made it from the shopping cart to a successful purchase. The opposite here of course is the ever-popular abandonment rates. If your conversion rate is 40% your abandonment rate is 60%. Conversion rates are crucial in identifying weaknesses in your buyer journey and purchasing funnel.&nbsp;</p><h5>3. Unique vs. Recurring Purchases</h5>
<p>This metric answers the question: "Do I have returning buyers?" You can spend a lot of money attracting visitors to your store, but if they come and then leave to never return, you need to figure out why. Before you can do that, you need to find out if it is even a problem.&nbsp;</p><h5>4. Average Order Value</h5>
<p>This is an interesting one. When taken as a standalone, your average order value can tell you how much people generally spend on a single visit to your store. But when you couple this metric with product-level detail, you can uncover which products impact your average order value more or less. Imagine you sell running shoes that whenever someone buys them they are more likely to also buy accessories like a fitness watch or running shorts. There can be a lot to be learned here when also taken with demographic data (which regions have higher AOV), metrics like average cart size, or other contextual pieces of information.</p><h5>5. Sales vs Returns</h5>
<p>Tracking which specific products come back to you is critical. The return rate will help you understand if your product listing is poorly designed (maybe the sizes or colors are off) or there is a deeper defect in the product. When you gather return data, also make sure to pick up on the qualitative data (what your customers say) so that the returns can be analyzed and the problems fixed.&nbsp;
</p>
<h4>Conclusion&nbsp;</h4>
<p>Where many ecommerce stores focus on general metrics like purchases, revenue, and visitors, there is a lot to be learned when adding in product-level insights. <a href="https://www.plytix.com/product-analytics-tool" target="_blank">Product performance analytics</a>are a critical part of optimizing your ecommerce operations, from web store management to sales and marketing. They give you deeper insight into what works. It is easy to get started with the tools available on the market and if you focus on a small set of metrics to start with, you can learn quickly. Want to learn more about this, as well as other ecommerce tips, trends, and news? Visit the <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/">BigCommerce blog</a> today.
</p>
<p>This blog post was contributed by Emma Kobylenski, Product Manager, <a href="http://www.plytix.com/" target="_blank">Plytix</a>.</p>

What are Product Performance Analytics?

<p>Key performance indicator (KPI) is probably a term that you encountered more than once in your professional life. But when asked, people often get lost in their definition of what a KPI is.&nbsp;</p>
<p>So let’s start with that, shall we?&nbsp;
</p>
<p>Let’s put it simply, an indicator is a measurable tool that helps us understand how our actions are progressing towards our goals. Indicators or metrics help us make sense of our data by turning it into information.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>KPIs are the top indicators that you will take into consideration to evaluate the success of your marketing campaigns and make a decision.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>There are several types of KPIs:
</p>
<ul><li><b>Quantitative KPIs</b> measure numbers. It could be the number of visitors on your website, the number of orders completed or the revenue per product.&nbsp;
</li><li><b>Qualitative KPIs</b> measure non-number items. For example, responses to a satisfaction survey reflecting your customer’s sentiment provide qualitative data.&nbsp;
</li></ul>
<p>We can also categorize key performance indicators on the management level:&nbsp;
</p>
<ul><li><b>Low-level KPIs </b>are the KPIs that are closely monitored on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
</li><li><b>High-Level KPIs</b> are the indicators that are discussed and presented during company meetings and among C-suite executives. They are most likely reviewed on a quarterly or twice-a-year basis.
</li></ul>
<p>Now that you have a clearer definition of what an indicator and a KPI are, let’s dive into the real topic of this article: Indicators you need to track to get the full picture of your ecommerce website performance.&nbsp;
</p><h4>Necessary Marketing KPIs</h4>
<p>We will cover every step of your <a href="https://www.clicdata.com/blog/how-to-create-a-marketing-and-sales-lead-generation-funnel/">marketing funnel</a>, from the acquisition to retention of your customers.&nbsp;</p><h5>1. Website Performance KPIs.</h5><h5><strong>Traffic by source</strong></h5>
<p>This is the very first indicator to implement when building your reporting. Without traffic on your website, you can’t move on to the next steps of your prospects’ behavior analysis.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>You need to know where your prospects are coming from. This helps with evaluating the performance of your different strategies. For instance, if the majority of your traffic is coming from organic search, that means that your SEO and content marketing strategies are working! <i>Keep it up!</i></p><p><strong>Traffic by device</strong></p>
<p>This indicator will give you more information on your prospects’ online habits. Are they browsing your website using their mobile device or using a desktop?
</p>
<p>According to Statista, the share of mobile phone website traffic worldwide reached <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/241462/global-mobile-phone-website-traffic-share/">52% in 2019</a>. That being said, you absolutely need to make sure your website is fully responsive and works perfectly on all small devices.&nbsp;
</p>
<p><strong>Website average position</strong></p>
<p>This indicator will give your average position in Google’s SERP (Search Engine Results Page) <i>- or any other search engine</i>.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>With this KPI, you can measure your website’s average position or filter it by products to see if they are visible enough compared to your competitors’ products.
</p>
<p>You can get the data from tools like <a href="https://ahrefs.com/">Ahrefs</a>, <a href="https://www.semrush.com/">SEMrush</a> or <a href="https://www.woorank.com/">Woorank</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;
</p>
<p><strong>Bounce rate</strong></p>
<p>If you’ve been in the world of online marketing for more than a month, you know how important the bounce rate is. This metric tells you the percentage of visitors who exited your website after seeing only one page, so the lowest your bounce rate is, the better. The industry average is somewhere around <a href="https://cxl.com/guides/bounce-rate/benchmarks/">20 and 45%</a>.&nbsp;</p><p><strong>Subscription rate</strong></p>
<p>This metric shows you how many people subscribed to your newsletter after consuming your website content. This is an important indicator to monitor because it not only tells you if your contact list is growing, but it also shows if your content is interesting enough for people to stay in touch with you.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>Growing your emailing list is critical since it will give you more opportunities to increase the volume of your sales and your customer lifetime value.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>There are many opportunities for your visitors to subscribe to your newsletter: On your blog, when placing an order, on a popup with a discount offer, etc.&nbsp;
</p><h5>2. Acquisition KPIs.</h5><h5><strong>Conversion rate by channel/source</strong></h5>
<p>Since your marketing efforts are all about making people purchasing your products, you need to know which channel and source is performing the best. What encourages customers to make purchases?&nbsp;
</p>
<p><strong>Conversion rate by device</strong></p>
<p>We mentioned the growing trend of the mobile traffic on websites around the world, but you also need to track your conversions on all devices.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>You will probably notice that 52% of your traffic is mobile-based, but 80% of your conversions are actually happening on desktop. That means that you need to improve your checkout process on mobile to improve your conversion rate on mobile devices.&nbsp;
</p>
<p><strong>Revenue by source</strong></p>
<p>This indicator is actually looking at the financial performance of your acquisition sources.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>It’s important to compare the traffic, conversion rate and revenue by source in order to understand which channel is actually generating revenue.&nbsp;</p><h5>3. Customer Loyalty & Satisfaction KPIs.</h5>
<p><strong>New customer orders vs returning customers orders</strong></p>
<p>This metric shows a comparison between new and recurring customers. Many business owners focus only on customer acquisition, but customer retention can also drive loyalty, word of mouth marketing, and higher-order values.
</p>
<p><strong>Customer lifetime value (CLV)</strong></p>
<p>The CLV tells you how much a customer is worth to your business over the course of their relationship with your brand. You want to increase this number over time through strengthening relationships and focusing on customer loyalty.
</p>
<p><strong>Net promoter score (NPS)</strong></p>
<p>There are a few KPIs that can help you measure your <a href="https://www.clicdata.com/blog/5-kpis-to-track-for-a-successful-customer-support/">customers’ satisfaction</a>, but the most common KPI is the NPS. This indicator tells a lot about the customer experience and service your teams are providing.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>You will be able to see the proportion of customers that are actively recommending your products and brand to their peers, those who like your products but don’t talk about it <i>-also known as the </i><a href="https://www.psychotactics.com/customer-retention/never-trust-a-silent-customer/"><i>silent customers</i></a><i>-</i> and those who had a bad experience about your product or with your customer service and will share that experience on social media.&nbsp;
</p><h4>Your KPIs in Automated Dashboards</h4><h5>1. Dashboards help you better visualize your data.</h5>
<p>Now that you have your whole set of KPIs in your hand, you need a tool to display how your website is doing. Dashboards are the best way to visualize and dig into your website and marketing data.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>Dashboards are also a great way to organize your KPIs.&nbsp;</p><h5>2. Automate your KPI updates.</h5>
<p>Having a great set of KPIs and an interactive dashboard is not enough for efficient marketing analytics. There’s a third component to your reporting that will allow you to better manage your business: Automation.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>There’s absolutely no point in setting up KPIs in beautiful dashboards if you’re wasting time updating them manually every week. Besides, manual entry and manual <a href="https://www.clicdata.com/blog/relying-on-excel-could-be-costing-you-big-time/">data processing on tools like Excel is error-prone</a> and can lead you to making bad decisions.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>You need to always rely on the latest data and only automation can bring you fresh data. Make sure to choose a dashboard solution that allows you to connect to all of your business applications and can update your data automatically.&nbsp;</p><h4>Now’s The Time To Take Action!&nbsp;</h4>
<p>Setting indicators and KPIs to measure the success of your marketing initiatives will help you save money, know when you need to double down your efforts on certain channels, or stop investments.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>You should look up for business intelligence tools with connectors to all your applications, automation features to update your KPIs, interactive visualization features to build your dashboard, and collaboration features to share these dashboards with your team.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>It’s time to start implementing and tracking your KPI to make your marketing strategy successful!</p>


11 Marketing KPIs Needed for Ecommerce

<p><strong>Definition:</strong> Dimensions are ways to view and segment qualitative data in Google Analytics, <a href="/articles/ecommerce/ecommerce-metrics/" target="_blank">used in tandem with metrics</a>. For example, the metric <strong>bounce rate</strong> could be viewed through dimension value <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/ecommerce-landing-pages/" target="_blank">landing page</a><strong></strong> in a report that helps ecommerce merchants understand which pages lead users to further explore their website.</p>
<h4>How to use Google Analytics Dimensions</h4>
<p>While metrics measure <em>what</em> a user does, dimensions segment to describe <em>who</em> they are in the first place. </p>
<p>For example, Dimensions can be used to uncover the gender, age, and location of the average user. While knowing that one individual customer is from Seattle isn't particularly helpful, knowing that 87% of the company's customers come from urban areas <em>is</em> helpful, because people who live in urban areas have clearly defined social and financial preferences that the company can cater to.</p>
<p>This information could also be used to improve the company's warehouse setup (by placing warehouses closer to where customers are), reduce shipping times and costs, and possibly <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/video-how-to-increase-your-average-order-value-with-free-shipping/" target="_blank">even allow free shipping</a> to be offered on lower-value orders.</p>
<p><strong>Furthermore, Dimensions can be used to trace the route that customers use to move through the site.</strong> Understanding the path a customer takes to get to the product they want helps explain how easy the site is to navigate, which pages are most effective at converting users into paying customers, and which pages aren't performing well enough to be worth keeping.</p>
<p>Constantly improving the company's online store is an important part of succeeding in ecommerce, and Dimensions can help decide what to focus the company's efforts on.</p>
<h4>3 important dimensions for ecommerce retailers to monitor</h4>
<p>Understanding the bigger picture requires looking at data through a variety of lenses. </p>
<ul>  <li><strong>User      Type:</strong> This Dimension declares <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/how-to-reach-the-right-audience-with-digital-marketing/" target="_blank">whether a particular user</a> is      new or returning, and is especially useful for judging the success of      advertising campaigns and site stickiness.</li>  <li><strong>Source: </strong>Tells merchants where their traffic is coming from. Monitoring acquisition sources is crucial to growing an online store, and can be further expanded on with the <strong>Source/Medium</strong> dimension. </li>  <li><strong>Geo      Network:</strong> If the store sells and ships physical goods,      understanding where users live <span class="contentcommentpluginspanclass">can impact a retailer's marketing and product development strategies. </span></li></ul>

Dimensions are a crucial component of viewing data in Google Analytics.

What are Dimensions in Google Analytics?

<p><strong>Definition:</strong> Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the total overall cost to acquire a customer, <em>including</em> the cost of producing, storing, and shipping the items that a customer purchases. This is one of the most important measures for online businesses because having a positive CAC is the <em>only</em> way for a business to succeed.</p>
<h4>How businesses use CAC to monitor performance</h4>
<p>Measures like <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-answers/what-is-cost-per-acquisition-cpa-what-is-benchmark-retailers/">Cost Per Acquisition</a> are a useful way of calculating the success of marketing campaigns, but a company's costs are <em>not</em> limited to marketing existing products.</p>
<p>When average order value (AOV) falls below the total costs associated with acquiring customers, ecommerce merchants are not turning a profit. CAC helps businesses understand the larger scope of their marketing efforts to ensure that costs are kept in check and products are priced accordingly. </p>
<h4>How to obtain a postiive Customer Acquisition Cost</h4>
<p>CAC and pricing go hand-in-hand: without knowing how much it costs to increase your customer base and expand the brand, you can't know how to price products. Converseley </p>
<ul>  <li><strong>Warehousing: </strong>Producing, shipping to the warehouse, and additional production and inventory costs. </li>  <li><strong>Fulfillment:</strong> shipping to customers</li>  <li><strong>Marketing:</strong> Paid ads, affiliate pay-outs, and any other marketing expenditures incurred between the awareness and purchase stages</li>  <li><strong>Labor: </strong>Marketing, support, and third-party contractors are involved throughout the fulfillment stage. </li> </ul>
<h4>Accepting high CAC for brand awareness</h4>
<p>While profits are clearly the ultimate goal, some online merchants find it well worth their while to forego short term profits for long-term gains. For example, many online stores attract new customers with special deals, limited-time offers, or "first month free" subscriptions. While this slims margins in the short term, the boost to customer lifetime value can return a supremely high ROI. </p>

Consider the entire cost of acquiring customers when building business models.

What is Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)?

<p><strong>Definition: </strong>Return On Sales (also known as ROS, Operating Margin, or Operating Profit Margin) is a standardized ratio describing an operation's profits as a percentage of their sales revenue.</p>
<p>The ROS is one of the most widely-used business finance metrics. While it began as an offline metric, it is equally valuable for online businesses.</p>
<h4>Calculating The Return On Sales</h4>
<p><em>(Net Profit) / (Sales Revenue) = ROS</em></p>
<p>Net Profit is generally calculated by taking all sales revenue and then subtracting net operational expenditures, aside from taxes and interest. So an expanded version of the formula would be:</p>
<p><em>((Sales Revenue) - (Operating Expenses)) / (Sales Revenue) = ROS</em></p>
<p>The result is a percentage which expresses the basic efficiency of a business, in terms of converting investment into profit. This single percentage then becomes a baseline metric which can be used to judge an operation's performance over the years.</p>
<h4>How online retailers use ROS on a day-to-day basis</h4>
<p>Let's say an online retailer has the following basic budgeting breakdown:</p>
<p>Sales Revenue through all channels: <em>$100,000</em></p>
<p>Operating Expenses such as website hosting, content production, and staffing: <em>$70,000</em></p>
<p>$100,000 - $70,000 = <em>$30,000</em> in Net Profit.</p>
<p>$30,000 / $100,000 = 0.3, or a <strong>30%</strong> <strong>Return on Sales</strong>. For every dollar spent in expenditures, they are receiving 30 cents in profit.</p>
<p>The figures above do not factor in tax or interest, so real profits may be marginally lower. However, as taxes and interest rates can fluctuate and are almost entirely outside of a business's own control, ROS provides a stable indicator of standalone performance.</p>
<h4>Utilizing The Return On Sales In Management And Planning</h4>
<p>Like many business metrics, ROS is most useful in discovering long-term trends over the course of months or years. Because it can be quickly calculated, the ROS is highly valuable in tracking the efficiency of an operation over time. </p>
<p>An increase in ROS doesn't necessarily mean that revenues have to climb - it also reflects operational efficiency. On the other hand, a decreasing ROS may be indicative of poor financial management or waste. </p>
<p>Organizations striving for stability should closely monitor their ROS. With a high Return On Sales, companies can comfortably survive minor economic downturns and sales lapses.  </p>

ROS is a powerful indicator of operational efficiencies and profit margins.

What is Return On Sales (ROAS)? Why — and how — retailers should rely on this metric

<p><strong>Definition</strong>: Relevant cost, also called <strong>differential cost</strong>, is a management accounting term decsribing costs that pertain to a particular decision. Relevant costs will vary based on the context of the decision, such as an omnichannel business analysis by a multi-platform retailer.</p>
<h4>What types of relevant costs are there?</h4>
<p>Relevant costs are generally divided into two categories</p>
<ul>  <li><strong>Future      Cost </strong>- Incurred in the future based on the potential      decision made. This should vary from decision option to decision option.      If this does not change based on the decision, then it is an irrelevant      cost (see below).</li>  <li><strong>Opportunity      Cost</strong> - The cost in lost opportunity depending on the      decision made.</li> </ul>
<h4>Are there irrelevant costs?</h4>
<p>Yes, irrelevant costs are those that should not be considered when making a decision because they can not be changed: </p>
<ul>  <li><strong>Sunk      Cost</strong> - Costs that have already been paid are considered      irrelevant. </li>  <li><strong>Committed</strong> <strong>Cost</strong> - A future cost that is      considered irrelevant. If the future cost must be paid regardless of the      decision made then it is irrelevant.</li> </ul>
<h4>What are relevant costs that online merchants should think about?</h4>
<p>Executive management at a company decides that they want to develop a mobile application for Android-based mobile devices. They are presented with two options by the technical team: A web application wrapped to look like a mobile application or a mobile application written for Android. Each decision has several relevant costs:</p>
<ul>  <li><strong>Development      Time</strong> <em>(Future cost)</em> -  How much time will it take to develop      each option?</li>  <li><strong>Developer      Resources</strong> <em>(Future cost)</em> - How many people, and at what wage, are      required to build each option?</li>  <li><strong>Time      to Market</strong> <em>(Opportunity cost)</em> - How much will a difference in      delivery time impact sales, and what is the difference?</li>  <li><strong>Perceived      Performance </strong><em>(Opportunity cost)</em> - Is one option better performing      than the other, and what is the expected abandonment rate based on that      performance difference?</li>  <li><strong>Omnichannel      Marketing </strong><em>(Future & Opportunity cost)</em> - Can one option fit      the overall brand experience better than the other, and is there a cost      associated with integrating the application into the brand?</li> </ul>
<p>There are also irrelevant costs that should be ignored:</p>
<ul>  <li><strong>Existing      Website</strong> <em>(Sunk cost)</em> - The cost of the current website, even if      it were reused for the application, is irrelevant. Any cost mitigation it      provides would be accounted for in development time and resources.</li>  <li><strong>Testing      Software</strong> <em>(Committed cost)</em> - Regardless of the option chosen,      the same testing software will be used.</li>  <li><strong>The      cost of the iOS Application</strong> <em>(Sunk cost)</em> - Like the      existing website, the cost of the iOS application is irrelevant to this      decision.</li></ul>

Relevant cost offers valuable perspective on operating expenses.

What is relevant cost? How to measure and weigh business decisions

<p style="margin-top:3%;"><strong>Definition</strong>: Cost-per-click (CPC) is <a href="/articles/ecommerce/ecommerce-metrics/">a digital marketing metric</a> that measures the amount of money paid for each click in a pay-per-click (PPC) marketing campaign. Paid advertisements are a significant growth driver for many online businesses, making it essential to monitor cost-per-click and maintain a healthy ROI.
</p>
<p>The pay-per-click model is used by online platforms such as Google AdWords and Facebook. Understanding the cost of these campaigns and tying them back to a specific goal, such as product sales, is vital to make marketing spend efficient. Each click in a PPC ad campaign also serves to indicate the attention paid by an individual who searches for the business's specific offerings.
</p>
<h4>Interpreting CPC Within the Context of Search Advertising</h4>
<p>While important to measure, cost-per-click cannot be viewed in a vacuum. With cost-per-click identified, business leaders are better equipped to calculate return on investment (ROI). However, it must be noted that certain keywords with a high CPC produce a better ROI due to their <a href="/blog/conversion-rate-optimization/">heightened conversion rate</a>. Once CPC is determined, executives can figure out if the organization is overspending or under-spending for specific online marketing efforts.
</p>
<p>Cost-per-click should be analyzed in terms of value and cost. It's not enough to pay for clicks if they do not spur high-quality traffic. High-quality traffic is gauged through conversion rates and the average cost per acquisition. Focusing on identifying which clicks are valuable as well as cost-effective is essential to maximizing the value of PPC advertising.
</p>
<h4>The Auction Process</h4>
<p>An auction process is performed for each search where a Google AdWords ad is eligible to appear. The auction process determines whether an ad will appear for a particular search and in which order it will show on the page if it does appear. The process works as follows:
</p>
<p><strong>1. </strong>The system finds all ads      with keywords matching a search.
</p>
<p><strong>2. </strong>Those ads in this group      that aren't eligible to appear due to geographic or other reasons are      ignored.
</p>
<p><strong>3.</strong> Selection from the      remaining ads occurs based on their Ad Rank, which is a combination of the      bid, ad quality and projected impacts from extensions and other ad      formats.
</p>
<p><strong>4. </strong>Even if your bid is lower      than that of your competitors it may still win a higher position due to      highly relevant keywords and ads.
</p>
<p><strong>5. </strong>Ad position will      fluctuate due to variation in the competition for different keywords at      any specific point in time.
</p>
<h4>How CPC is Determined</h4>
<p>Figuring out how to lower the money spent on each click while maintaining or boosting the value of visits is a challenge for all businesses. Google's automated system provides pricing discounts for PPC campaigns that are properly managed.
</p>
<ul>
	<li>Those with excellent      quality scores (6 or higher) are given upwards of a 50 percent decrease in      cost-per-click. </li>
	<li>Businesses with accounts      that have a quality score of 4 or below are punished with a higher CPC.      This increase varies from a 25 percent cost-per-click boost to a 400      percent hike.</li>
	<li>It's also prudent to      optimize ads and landing pages to align with the prospective customer's      actual search to improve Ad Rank.</li>
</ul>
<p>Decreasing cost-per-click is not helpful if the business is already paying little for clicks, especially irrelevant clicks. A company should focus on boosting its quality score by using keywords that are directly related to the ad and landing page text. The goal is to obtain cost-effective clicks to subsequently decrease CPC. A minimal CPC directly relates to PPC success as it lowers the overall cost-per-conversion.</p>
<p><strong><em><u>Learn more about monitoring CPC at the Bigcommerce Support portal: </u></em></strong><u><a href="https://support.bigcommerce.com/articles/Public/How-do-I-add-Google-Adwords-Conversion-Tracking"><strong>Adding Google AdWords Conversion Tracking</strong></a></u><strong><em></em></strong>
</p>

Google advertising success requires careful monitoring of CPCs — learn why.

What is Cost-Per-Click (CPC) for ecommerce advertising?

<p style="margin-top:3%;"><strong>Definition: </strong>Cost Per Acquisition, or "CPA," is a&nbsp;<a href="/articles/ecommerce/ecommerce-metrics/" target="_blank">marketing metric</a> that measures the aggregate cost to acquire one paying customer on a campaign or channel level. CPA is a vital measurement of marketing success, generally distinguished from Cost of Acquiring Customer (CAC) by its granular application.
</p>
<p>    Total Campaign Cost<br> _________________ = CPA<br><br>         Conversions
</p>
<h4>Why CPA is such an important metric</h4>
<p>Many marketing metrics are <em>indicators</em> of success, such as <a href="/blog/conversion-rate-optimization/" target="_blank">conversion rate</a> and visits (or "sessions"). Cost Per Acquisition, on the other hand, is a financial metric used to directly measure the revenue impact of marketing campaigns.
</p>
<p>Armed with AOV (average order value) and <a href="/blog/customer-lifetime-value-loyalty/">CLV (Customer Lifetime Value)</a>, online businesses can determine an acceptable CPA for ecommerce acquisition. <strong>Conversion rates are a primary indicator of <em>marketing</em> success, but CPA provides the business perspective by which to gauge campaign success.</strong>
</p>
<p>Cost Per Acquisition is used in the following paid marketing mediums:
</p>
<ul>
	<li><strong>PPC</strong></li>
	<li><strong>Affiliate</strong></li>
	<li><strong>Display</strong></li>
	<li><strong>Social      Media</strong></li>
	<li><strong>Content      Marketing</strong></li>
</ul>
<p>It can also be used for&nbsp;<a href="/articles/ecommerce/ecommerce-seo/" target="_blank">ecommerce SEO</a>, email, and other platforms without direct advertising costs but that still require overhead (labor, indirect expenses such as content production, etc.).
</p>
<h4>Defining a Quality CPA</h4>
<p>There is no universal benchmark in ecommerce for a "good" CPA. Every online business has different margins, prices, and operating expenses. The most important factor in determining a desired CPA is understanding these factors, enabling a business to calculate how much they can reasonably afford to pay for acquiring customers. Other influencers include:
</p>
<ul>
	<li><strong>Business      Stage:</strong> Are you at a point where profit margins are the first,      second and third priority? Or are you in a growth stage where profits can      be sacrificed for brand exposure? Clearly defining <a href="/blog/one-powerful-formula-help-reach-online-sales-goals-sellmore/" target="_blank">ecommerce goals</a> and risks is      crucial to developing benchmarks that everyone in the organization is      content with. </li>
	<li><strong>Budget:      </strong>A limited marketing <a href="https://www.freshbooks.com/blog/the-5-step-plan-to-creating-a-balanced-business-budget" target="_blank">budget for your business</a> lends itself to conservative      ad spend. With reduced ad spend, focus on low-hanging fruit —      high-converting terms and brand queries. As the budget goes up, campaigns      can be expanded to include lower-converting terms with a higher CPA. </li>
	<li><strong>Advertising      Medium: </strong>Where you choose to spend ad dollars is greatly      influenced by the factors discussed above in <em>Business Stage</em>. <a href="/articles/ecommerce/affiliate-marketing/">Affiliate</a>, PPC, and Content Marketing      have varying expectations and different desired outcomes. For example,      content may convert less in the short-term but can be a key driver of      brand awareness. </li>
	<li><strong>How      "Acquisition" is defined:</strong> While CPA usually refers      to the cost of acquiring paid customers, the metric is sometimes applied      to secondary campaigns such as newsletter sign-ups or direct mail listings. It is considered best practice to use CPA as the overarching      metric that connects secondary conversions to the primary conversion:      making a sale. </li>
</ul>
<h4>Tracking CPA</h4>
<p>Online businesses can track cost per acquisition through a variety of methods, including:
</p>
<ul>
	<li>Utilize UTM parameters to      <a href="https://web.utm.io/google-analytics-utm-tracking-code-builder/" target="_blank">generate link codes</a> for social or affiliate marketing</li>
	<li>Exporting PPC campaign data from      AdWords</li>
	<li>Using promotional codes      and building custom links for internal campaigns </li>
	<li>Implement a CRM system</li>
	<li>Include a form field on lead forms that asks customers how they found out about a campaign, which can help plug attribution gaps</li>
</ul>

CPA helps a business evaluate the financial success of marketing campaigns.

What is Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), and what is a benchmark for retailers?

<p><strong>Definition</strong>: Customer retention is a business metric that measures the percentage of customers who subsequently return and make a purchase. Retention is an important assessment of a business's product quality, customer service, and ability to distinguish itself from competitors.</p>
<p>Repeat customers are the heart of an online business, given the marketing costs associated with bringing in new prospects and the significant rise in lifetime value associated with repeat purchasers. Customers who return to the same store are also more likely than average consumers to recommend a brand, making their net value almost limitless. </p>
<h4>Customer retention drives margins</h4>
<p>Businesses and research firms have spent millions of dollars studying consumer behavior and the factors that influence customer retention. The verdict? <span class="contentcommentpluginspanclass">A mere five percent boost in customer retention <a href="http://www.retentionscience.com/customer-retention-should-outweigh-customer-acquisition">has the potential to increase profits</a> by anywhere from 25 percent to 95 percent.</span> The compiled data clearly indicates that it is much more cost efficient to retain current customers than it is to seek out new ones. The impact of retention on a company's ability to stay in the black is tremendous.</p>
<ul>  <li><strong>LTV:</strong> a      higher customer retention rate puts the company in a fantastic position to      achieve the lifetime value of each customer. Yet the effects of customer      retention extend beyond lifetime value.</li>  <li><strong>Brand      advocates: </strong>Customers who are retained actually become powerful      advertising agents on behalf of the company. <span class="contentcommentpluginspanclass">They are more likely</span>      to promote its goods and services to friends, family, co-workers and      beyond.</li>  <li><strong>Increase      in AOV: </strong>In a nutshell, the importance of customer retention      boils down to the fact that satisfied customers spend more at the      businesses that bring them pleasure. They also serve the business by      spreading the word about it to others, which, in turn, creates even      happier customers.</li> </ul>
<h4>Increasing customer retention: where to start</h4>
<p>Retaining customers is a challenging endeavor with no magic formula. It all comes down to providing a better experience that stands out in industry. </p>
<ul>  <li><strong>Excel      at the basics: </strong>Shipping, customer service inquiries, and product      fulfillment are the 'meat and potatoes' of effective ecommerce.</li>  <li><strong>Monitor      and learn from customer feedback</strong>, implementing changes      based on recurring customer pain points. </li>  <li><strong>Stay      on top of online reputation</strong>, including product reviews,      social media feedback and blog posts. Leverage positive feedback as a      social proof on your website. </li></ul>

Customer retention is a key indicator of a business' ability to satisfy customers.

What is customer retention? Why return shoppers matter

<figure><img src="https://www-cdn.bigcommerce.com/assets/answers/GA-product-performance-report.jpg" data-image="y0p4vvhm2mja"></figure>
<p>Google's Product Performance Report provides valuable insight into how customers are interacting with your products. With detailed metrics and segmentation capabilities, it can transform the way you <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/easy-way-to-measure-product-conversion-rate/" target="_blank">measure product performance</a> and make decisions across every aspect of your business. With a proper understanding of these metrics and how to utilize them, you can <a href="/articles/ecommerce/conversion-rate-optimization/">raise your conversion rate</a> and optimize marketing spend.</p>
<h3>How to measure product performance</h3>
<p>The sales performance section of the Product Performance Report shows high-level metrics such as revenue, order quantity and refunds.</p>
<p>The shopping behavior section is where you can drill down into your data and find opportunities. The metrics in this section Metrics offering the strongest insights include:</p>
<ul><li><strong>Product list views:</strong> The number of times a visitor viewed a product list in a section of the online store, including referrals from search engines</li><li><strong>Product detail views:</strong> How often a visitor clicked on a product detail page or box</li><li><strong>Product adds:</strong> When the product was placed in a visitor's shopping cart</li><li><strong>Product removes:</strong> When the product was <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/abandoned-carts/" target="_blank">removed from a visitor's shopping cart</a></li><li><strong>Unique purchases:</strong> The number of unique purchases for a product, as opposed to total sales</li><li><strong>Cart-to-detail rate:</strong> The number of products added to a shopping cart per number of product-detail views</li><li><strong>Buy-to-detail rate:</strong> <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/4-tips-increase-average-order-value-boost-revenue-video/" target="_blank">How many products were purchased</a> per number of product-detail views</li></ul>
<p>In addition to grouping products by brand or category, the Product Performance Report can also be customized by date range. The report's data table will automatically be sorted by the Quantity column, meaning you'll see the biggest sellers in your online store at the top of the table.</p>
<blockquote>Determine which products are selling in higher quantities with relatively low price tags and pair them with ads or promotions for more expensive items.</blockquote>
<h3>How to optimize your store based on the findings</h3>
<p>The Product Performance Report is a window into how shoppers interact with products in your online store, making it a valuable tool for tweaking your product offerings and presentation to maximize conversions. Some possible strategies include:</p>
<ul><li>Using the unique purchases metric, determine which products are selling in higher quantities with relatively low price tags and pair them with ads or promotions for more expensive items</li><li>Using the product removes metric, find out which products have the highest number of removes from carts and build promotions around them to nudge customers toward actual conversion</li><li>Using the product list views metric, see which search engines are sending visitors to your product lists and determine if your marketing spend may be better spent elsewhere</li><li>Using the buy-to-detail rate metric, figure out if low numbers are related to poor <a href="http://blog.bigcommerce.com/perfect-product-description-formula/" target="_blank">product description copy</a> and try different tactics</li></ul>
<h3>Create the Product Performance Report</h3>
<p>As part of Google's Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce tools, ecommerce businesses should use Product Performance Report for greater effectiveness and efficiency. Once Enhanced Ecommerce is enabled, you can access this report by navigating to the Conversions section of your dashboard and selecting Product Performance under the Ecommerce menu.</p>

GA product performance report

Google's Product Performance Report provides valuable insight into how customers are interacting with your products.

What's the Google Analytics Product Performance Report?

<figure><img src="https://www-cdn.bigcommerce.com/assets/answers/GA-product-list-performance-report.jpg" data-image="27zsyca0qubs"></figure>
<p>The Product List Performance Report is one of the <a href="http://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6014841?hl=en" target="_blank">Enhanced Ecommerce offerings</a> from Google Analytics. It allows you to track how clusters of products are performing in your online store. By analyzing <a href="http://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6014873?hl=en#product-list-performance" target="_blank">customer engagement metrics</a> for product lists, online retailers can better tailor product placement and suggested offerings to <a href="/articles/ecommerce/conversion-rate-optimization/">maximize click-thru rates and conversions.</a></p>
<h3></h3>
<h4>What the report shows</h4>
<p>Within Google Analytics, a product list is a logical grouping that can be created using different dimensions. The three main ways to group product lists are:
</p>
<ul>
	<li><strong>Categories</strong>: The simplest of the product lists, categories allow you to compare, for instance, how shoes in your online store compare with handbags. This is the most intuitive means of grouping products and also the most static.</li>
	<li><strong>Search Results</strong>: When you create product lists based on search query results, it moves all of the products that are returned to the user from a particular search into one product list. For example, all of the products that are shown when someone searches for "handbag" could be made into one product list. This is a dynamic list, as the served results could change over time.</li>
	<li><strong>Related Products</strong>: This is another dynamically-generated list, which groups all products that appear under the heading "customers who purchased this product also liked…" into one product list. The product list could then be evaluated to determine which suggested offering performs best. Similarly, you can group cross-sell and up-sell blocks into product lists.</li>
</ul>
<p>The Product List Performance Report is configured as a data-driven chart. It isn't intended to compare product performance within a set period of time, but instead to compare products to one another. The report displays the number and percentage of clicks, views and the click-through rates for each product list being tracked in your online store.
</p>
<p style="margin-left: 20px;"><br></p>
<blockquote style="margin-left: 20px;">Analyzing customer engagement metrics for product lists can help retailers maximize click-thru rates.
</blockquote>
<h4>Why it matters</h4>
<p>Most online retailers probably have a good sense of which categories are the best sellers in their online stores. The real value of the Product List Performance Report is its ability to group products together dynamically based on search results or suggested products. That lets you analyze not just how well specific products are doing, but how they're performing in conjunction with other products.
</p>
<p>By looking at the data in this report, you can gain insights into how to position products to maximize search result and suggest offerings visibility. You can:
</p>
<ul>
	<li>Run experiments to find the optimal number of search results that are shown per page to spark conversions</li>
	<li>Fine-tune which cross-selling and up-selling offerings are suggested to customers based on what's already in their shopping carts</li>
	<li>Determine which suggested products generate the most engagement</li>
</ul>
<p>Rather than basing intra-site marketing on intuition, the Product List Performance Report lets you group, track and analyze the performance of products that would otherwise be hard to compare. These insights can also fuel smarter spending on external marketing activity, because you'll know exactly which of your pages are the most successful and which up-selling and cross-selling offerings are most likely to generate a higher sale.
</p>
<h4>How to create the report</h4>
<p><strong></strong>To access the Product List Report, you must enable Enhanced Ecommerce from the Admin tab of the Google Analytics page. In the View column, click on Ecommerce Settings. Under Step 1, turn the Enable Ecommerce status to on. Click Next Step and then under Step 2 turn the Enhanced Ecommerce Settings to on. Finally, head to the Conversions section to generate the Product List Performance Report.
</p>

GA product list performance report

The Product List Performance Report is one of the Enhance Ecommerce offerings from Google Analytics

What is the Google Analytics Product List Performance Report?

<p style="margin-top:3%;"><img src="https://www-cdn.bigcommerce.com/assets/answers/GA-sales-perfomance-report.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;">The <a href="https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6014872?hl=en#sp" target="_blank">Sales Performance Report</a> is a powerful Google Analytics tool to evaluate revenue and overall sales within a defined period of time. By keeping an eye on the graphical representations of sales performance, you'll be able to see at a glance whether you're generating more revenue year-over-year, your store's seasonality, and any other sales trends.</p>
<h4>What the Sales Performance Report shows</h4>
<p><strong></strong>The Google Analytics Sales Performance Report shows three main metrics in motion: total revenue, conversion rate and average order value. It presents both numerical data and graphic representations of that data, which makes it easy to see both sweeping trends and specific metric shifts.</p>
<p>Time is the primary means of customizing this report, so you can select either a particular day or a specific time period. The main reason to customize the time frame for the report is to gauge whether there are recurring time-based trends in any of these metrics (such as more sales in the latter half of the month) and whether there is a general trend toward increased improvement.</p>
<p>In addition to the main performance indicators represented in the tabs at the top of the report, the Sales Performance Report also tracks more granular metrics. These include: total tax charges, total shipping charges, total refund amount, and the number of units sold in total ecommerce transactions.</p>
<h4>Why it's helpful</h4>
<p><strong></strong>The Sales Performance Report shows you which days your online store brought in the most revenue. That's immensely helpful to crafting targeted advertising and marketing initiatives, promotions, and even product offerings.</p>
<blockquote>Month-over-month improvement across sales, average order value and conversion rate are signs of a thriving business.</blockquote>
<p>If the report shows that the bulk of your sales are happening on the weekends, for instance, you might retool your advertising strategy to target weekend shoppers. If the report shows a general trend toward the summer months generating the most revenue, you might consider retooling your product offerings during the winter months. Or you could even consider branching into new shipping global markets where your warm-weather offerings would generate sales during complementary months. <br></p>
<p>More globally, the Sales Performance Report shows the sales growth of your online stores. You'll want to see month-over-month and year-over-year improvement across all three metrics (sales, average order value and conversion rate) as the strongest signs of a thriving business. If one or two of those metrics seems to be flagging, you can make improving it a priority for the next sales cycle. Or if, overall, you saw a dip in those key performance indicators after a specific event (say a site redesign), you'd be able to implement changes to recapture some of that lost sales base.</p>
<h4>How to create the report</h4>
<p><strong></strong>The Sales Performance Report is part of the Enhanced Ecommerce offerings by Google Analytics. You'll need to turn on Enhanced Ecommerce on your site to access this data. Then, to create the report head to the Dashboard and <a href="https://analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com/course01/assets/pdf/DigitalAnalyticsFundamentals-Lesson6.2EcommercereportsText.pdf" target="_blank">select Sales Performance</a>. You can modify the date range for the report results using the drop-down menu.</p>

GA sales perfomance report

Knowing which days your online store brought in the most revenue helps you craft effective marketing initiatives.

What is the Google Analytics Sales Performance Report?

<p dir="ltr">A SaaS business provides customers with software services&nbsp;over the internet. The typical SaaS business model is subscription-based.&nbsp;That means a customer signs up with the SaaS business and can then use their software for as long as they maintain their subscription.</p>

<p dir="ltr">Generally, SaaS subscribers don’t have to invest in much infrastructure to run the solutions they subscribe to. It’s the SaaS businesses that host the software tools in the cloud and provide access to their customers. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Say, for example, you run a contact center. Your telephony and communication software will probably get provided on a SaaS basis. You’ll sign up with a SaaS company that then hosts the solution on your behalf and allows you to add many users all of whom can access and use it. </p>
<h2 dir="ltr">What are the Advantages of SaaS?</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Next, it’s time to consider what SaaS can do for you and what kinds of benefits come along with switching over to using <a href="/blog/open-source-ecommerce-vs-saas-ecommerce/" target="_blank">SaaS ecommerce</a>. Below are the top four advantages of using SaaS.</p>
<h3 dir="ltr">You can get access anywhere.</h3>
<p dir="ltr">Traditional on-premises solutions are restricted to the place where they’re physically installed. Since they rely on hardware, they aren’t always portable and can’t work from just any location.</p>
<p dir="ltr">SaaS solutions are the opposite. Given that SaaS is a cloud-based approach, it’s easy to access your SaaS products from anywhere, as long as you have an Internet connection. You don’t need to install hardware to use them, since they’re hosted online.</p>
<p dir="ltr">What this means in practice is that SaaS empowers employees to work from anywhere, including on the go. They can access SaaS platforms from mobile devices, personal devices, laptops, desktops, tablets and any other internet-capable equipment. This boosts workplace flexibility and makes it easier for employees to stay connected wherever they are.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Thanks to this flexibility, SaaS solutions also make for some of the <a href="https://www.dialpad.com/blog/customer-service-software/">best customer support software</a> out there. That’s because they enable customer support agents to connect with customers across platforms and regardless of location.</p>
<h3 dir="ltr">You can scale your business easily.</h3>
<p dir="ltr">With traditional on-premises solutions, scaling up isn’t exactly an overnight deal. You’ve got to indicate how many new users you’d like to add to the business network, pay for the relevant equipment — bearing in mind that each individual new employee needs their own hardware — and arrange for installation to take place.</p>
<p dir="ltr">All of that takes time, not to mention money. That’s why it’s a relief to know that SaaS solutions are designed to be highly scalable.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Thanks to the fact that they’re based in the cloud, SaaS solutions don’t need to be installed by experts. Anyone who’s purchased access can simply install the relevant SaaS app on their devices, log in and start using the solution straight away.</p>
<p dir="ltr">This makes SaaS solutions well suited to startups, as well as small and medium-sized businesses looking to scale up. They’re also useful for enterprises that are continuing to grow, as they can support that kind of scaling.</p>
<h3 dir="ltr">You don’t have to worry about IT maintenance.</h3>
<p dir="ltr">This is a major reason why <a href="/blog/saas-myths/" target="_blank">SaaS is a viable option for businesses</a> of all kinds — all IT maintenance is handled by the provider when you use a SaaS solution.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Let’s put that into context.</p>
<p dir="ltr">If you’re using a traditional solution, you’ll need to handle its upkeep yourself. That means that anytime something breaks or needs to be upgraded, the responsibility for this will fall to your company.</p>
<p dir="ltr">You can’t outsource the IT maintenance of traditional solutions unless you’re renting the equipment from a company that expressly states they’ll handle all maintenance for you (which wouldn’t be profitable to them, so those tend to be hard to come by).</p>
<p dir="ltr">Now consider SaaS solutions. Since they’re hosted in the cloud, there’s no new IT equipment that needs to get set up in your office. That means there’s no new IT maintenance to handle.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Your provider will manage all cloud-related maintenance. This makes SaaS solutions more attractive to anyone who doesn’t have room in their budget for extra maintenance, upkeep and upgrading costs.</p>
<h3 dir="ltr">You can save up on hardware costs.</h3>
<p dir="ltr">We’ve mentioned a few times that SaaS doesn’t come with new hardware costs, so we’ll go into more depth on that here. SaaS solutions help you save on hardware costs for a simple reason: they don’t rely on hardware.</p>
<p dir="ltr">When you install SaaS solutions on your devices, you’re adding a functionality to the equipment you’re already using instead of acquiring a new piece of equipment to perform a specific function. This means you get to keep using the devices you already own, ensuring you’ll save on hardware costs in both the long and the short term.</p>
<p dir="ltr">For example, when you use modern SaaS solutions like Dialpad, you get to take advantage of the <a href="https://www.dialpad.com/glossary/hybrid-cloud-architecture/">hybrid cloud architecture</a> they offer to get access to an all-inclusive communications hub. This works across your devices, ensuring you can easily connect with anyone, from anywhere, by any means.</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">What are the Challenges of SaaS?</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Of course, SaaS isn’t a perfect ‘one size fits all’ solution that works for every single business or individual.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Before you take the leap and invest in SaaS solutions for your company, it’s important to be aware of the challenges and obstacles that often come with using SaaS. Below are the top three most common — and most prominent — difficulties that arise with SaaS.</p>
<p dir="ltr">These challenges may also be overcome depending on the specific provider you choose. We’ll cover that in more detail shortly though.</p>
<h3 dir="ltr">Internet speed can be your enemy.</h3>
<p dir="ltr">SaaS is reliant on the internet. It’s fully cloud-based, ensuring that you can log in and access it from anywhere… <em>if </em>you’re able to connect to the Internet. In the event that you’re unable to connect to the internet, you’ll be unable to access your SaaS service. That means you can’t log in at all. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Internet speed also has a major impact on the way your SaaS service works. If you have a slow Internet speed, you’ll <em>probably </em>be able to log in. However, you may not be able to use all your features depending on your provider.</p>
<h3 dir="ltr">Customization is limited.</h3>
<p dir="ltr">Unfortunately, not all SaaS providers give you the full range of customization you might be used to from using traditional solutions.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Many SaaS providers provide a small degree of customization. However, they do tend to put a limit on the total number of changes you can make, or the total number of add-on features they make available to you.</p>
<p dir="ltr">This is the one challenge that’s most easily overcome with a bit of careful research.</p>
<p dir="ltr">While it’s true that most SaaS providers provide limited customization options, this isn’t true for <em>every </em>provider, nor does it mean the options you’re looking for don’t exist.</p>
<p dir="ltr">It’s well worth it to take the extra time and look into lots of different solutions. The specific combination of features you’re after is highly likely to be available somewhere, even if not all providers offer it. </p>
<p><br></p><h3 dir="ltr">Moving your data to another SaaS provider won’t be easy.</h3>
<p dir="ltr">The one thing all SaaS solutions have in common is that they’re based in the cloud. This makes them an excellent choice for many reasons, though at the same time, it can also work in SaaS providers’ disfavor.</p>
<p dir="ltr">That’s because it can be challenging to move all your data from one SaaS provider’s secure cloud storage spaces to another’s. On the bright side, this means your chosen providers are keeping your data safe. However, this isn’t particularly helpful when you’re the one trying to move or remove your own data.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Let’s look at an example: SaaS platforms are often useful to those whose daily workflows include <a href="https://www.dialpad.com/blog/chatbot-use-cases/">chatbot use cases</a>, such as contact center agents and managers. These people (and chatbots!) will process lots of customer data each day, which gets stored in the cloud where it’s then intended to stay. This makes it challenging to move to a new provider.</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">The Final Word</h2>
<p dir="ltr">In the end, it’s impossible to concretely say that SaaS is the solution for everyone. However, we can confidently say that it’s a great choice for most businesses.</p>
<p dir="ltr">SaaS comes with a lot of benefits, all of which make it a huge improvement over traditional on-premise systems. It’s flexible, scalable and cost-efficient, making it an excellent choice for most companies.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Is SaaS <a href="/blog/on-prem-vs-hosted-vs-saas/" target="_blank">the right choice for your ecommerce</a> business? Weigh the pros against the cons and you’ll probably find that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.</p>
<p><br></p>

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