Metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) are crucial points to monitor when running an eCommerce marketing strategy. They illustrate the pain points you may or may not be aware of and uncover any bottlenecks in user experience that could potentially lead to the downfall of your Shopify or WooCommerce company.
eCommerce digital marketing metrics and KPIs tell the story of your customers’ user experience. Once you discover the right data points to monitor, it all comes down to understanding, adapting and growing because of them. This is the merging of eCommerce and inbound digital marketing.
What Are Marketing Metrics and KPIs?
Marketing metrics and KPIs are data points that track events on your website and document your company’s growth, or lack thereof, via marketing campaigns. Broken down, the two concepts can be seen as this:
- Key Performance Indicators: Track how well your business is accomplishing digital marketing goals (e.g. Click Through Rate, Conversion Rate)
- Metrics: Track the progress of a process or operation (e.g. Audience Size, Ad Reach)
Website Metrics and KPIs
The following data points are general website marketing metrics to keep track of when running the website portion of your online store:
Users
Users are individuals who access your website. What’s important to note here is that if an individual accesses your site via different devices, they will likely appear as multiple users to your Google Analytics account. This is due to the fact that devices can have separate IP addresses.
Users DO NOT ALWAYS EQUAL Individuals
New Users
New Users are unique users who have accessed your domain for the very first time. Once a user accesses your site on one device, they are a new user. They will be documented as just a user for any subsequent sessions from that device.
Consequently, if a user accesses your site for a second time, but from a new device, they will then again be listed as a new user.
Returning Visitors
Knowing your Users and New Users metrics will help decipher how much of your traffic comes from returning visitors which is a great indicator for how well you retain your audience. Knowing your audience retention will help gauge the effectiveness of your contact management strategy.
Users – New Users = Returning Visitors
Sessions
A session is an event in which a user accesses your website. The session starts once their browser loads your domain. It doesn’t matter if they typed the URL in and pressed Enter or they clicked on a link they found on Facebook or an ad they came across elsewhere on the internet. A session ends when the user changes domains or closes their browser.
What’s important to note is if the user accesses your site on a computer, but also accesses on their phone, as well, that will count as two sessions.
Sessions DO NOT ALWAYS EQUAL Users
Page Views
Page views make up sessions. Once a page of your website is accessed and loaded, a page view is counted. If a user goes to page A, then clicks a link to page B, but then goes back to page A, then page A will record 2 page views from that user. This metric is great for measuring your content marketing strategy.
Entrances
Entrances are the page views that begin a session. The number of entrances a page collects in a given window of time is the number of times that page is the first page a user sees on your domain during their session.
If the same user leaves the site or closes their browser and then returns to your site, the first page they see will then be counted as another entrance. It’s like a physical entrance. Once you walk into a store, you enter it. You realize you forgot your wallet or purse and walk out to your car. You then enter again with money, even though you had already been in the store once before.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is a metric that monitors how much of your website traffic leaves without clicking to go to another page after the landing page. It’s shown as a percentage as it compares these single-page sessions to all sessions in the given timespan.
Your site-wide bounce rate is important to know, though it’s more important to know the bounce rates of your homepage and individual product pages as well for user experience purposes. This is explained more further down in the article.
eCommerce Metrics and KPIs
The following data points are some of the most important stats to monitor on the storefront end of your business:
- Cart Abandonment Rate
- Average Revenue Per Customer
- Customer Acquisition Cost
- Marketing-Originated Customer Percentage
- Marketing-Influenced Customer Percentage
- Conversion Rate
Cart Abandonment Rate
Cart abandonment rate is a harrowing data point. It will likely grow as your company grows, though it’s due to indecision on your customers’ ends. Simply put, it measures how many users fill their cart with one or more items, but don’t complete the checkout process and purchase.
Average Revenue Per Customer
Average revenue per customer (ARPC) is the average amount of revenue earned for the number of fully converted customers in a given window of time. This can be higher or lower depending on a number of factors such as niche, audience size and product category.
For example, if you sell luxury goods that only a select segment of the market is interested in, yoru ARPC will most likely be higher than a store that sells everyday consumer goods to the general public.
Customer Acquisition Cost
Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the literal financial cost allocated to each converted customer. Essentially, if you have spent $5,000 on marketing and you have made successful sales to 10 different customers, then their individual CAC is $500. Obviously, you want to keep this metric lower than your ARPC.
ARPC / CAC = Return on Investment per Average Customer
Marketing-Originated Customer Percentage
Marketing-originated customer percentage (MOCP) measures how many of your customers initially come in contact with your brand vai one of your marketing channels. If the customer finds your store through an ad, social media, forwarded email, QR code or any other trackable marketing asset, then they will increase this metric.
Marketing-Influenced Customer Percentage
Marketing-Influenced Customer Percentage (MICP) is similar to MOCP, but includes any customers that may not have originated in your contact list through a marketing channel, but was later nurtured after becoming a prospect.
Conversion Rate
Generally, when heard in an eCommerce context, conversion rate means the number of users who become customers. However, this isn’t always the case. A conversion is simply anyevent in which a user does something you want them to. Common conversions include placing items in the cart from a product page, email opt-ins, account creation, etc.
Internet Marketing Metrics and KPIs
The following data points are key pieces of information when running a marketing campaign for online store either through ads, social media strategy or even email marketing:
Reach
Reach is the number of unique users — remember this isn’t always unique individuals — who see your ad, boosted social post or organic social post. This is a great indicator for monitoring hashtags, bid amounts, keywords and anything else that you may incorporate into your marketing assets to build an audience.
Impressions
Impressions is the number of times an asset is viewed by anyone. If a user sees an ad twice in a given timeframe, then the reach here is one and the impressions is two. This number is always greater than or equal to reach. If you see that this number is increasing, but reach remains the same, it’s likely you can afford to lower your ad bid, or your change up your social post locations (Facebook/LinkedIn groups, Twitter/Instagram hashtags).
Impressions DOES NOT EQUAL Reach
Click Through Rate
Click through rate (CTR) is a ratio comparing the number of times an asset is clicked to the number of impressions it has. A “good” CTR can vary between platforms, channels, and even verticals! Low CTR in social media or email marketing suggests you aren’t connecting with viewers/readers. Low CTR in advertising suggests that your keywords aren’t aligned with your audience’s needs or your copy needs refreshing.
CTR is a valuable website metric when sizing up your site-wide content strategy. However, it is arguably the most important content marketing metric available when looking to grow your audience, thus it’s placement here instead of earlier in the article.
Demographics
Demographics is an umbrella term for various metrics that define your digital marketing strategy’s operations. Key aspects of demographics include characteristics of marketing asset viewers such as:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Interests
- Job Title
- and more…
These will all help decipher how aligned you are with your target audience, or explain who you need to focus on if the other metrics look good!
How Do I Use These Data Points?
To execute a strong content strategy for eCommerce with a powerful marketing campaign, it’s all about finding the right audience and segmenting that audience to provide the best user experience for each member.
Start with demographics. Find out who you are currently catering to and see if they are the audience you want to align yourself with. If not, do research to see what your target audience is interested in, where they are, who they are and how you can reach them. Different inbound marketing ideas work for different audiences.
Once you’ve gotten seen by the right people, start working to drive users to your site through your marketing campaigns. If they hang out in Google search result pages, focus on budgets and keywords for text ads. If they are usually found and accessed through social media, figure out a social ad program that works for them while you’re building a presence on their favorite social platforms. If you’re interested in having an agency do the heavy lifting for you, take a moment to learn about inbound marketing plans.
Download Our Inbound Marketing Checklist
All of these ideas require paying strict attention to your reach, impressions and CTR. Getting your CTR in a place you like will help build sessions and page views for your site. Where are you directing this traffic? Don’t send users to your homepage, unless it’s purely for brand awareness purposes. You are likely better off advertising and sharing product pages.
Product pages showcase individual offerings you want to sell. Product pages are the most valuable assets your website has. It’s on these pages that users convert. Therefore, you need to monitor user behavior here.
How much did you spend getting users to this page? How often do these users fill their cart? Do they follow through and purchase? Or abandon their cart? If there’s a break in their expected user experience, find out where it is.
Perhaps users click on a marketing asset, but bounce immediately afterward. Use a service like HotJar to track user clicks and areas of interest on each product page. It’s possible there are too many options, or not enough guidance into what you want them to do.
Once everything is working, monitor to make sure your marketing spend is lower than the inflow of revenue from the sales you worked so hard for.
Conclusion
Getting each of these content marketing KPIs and metrics in line with each other is a time consuming task and the job is almost never ending. After a bit of time spent working on everything, your campaign and eCommerce site will fall in line with each other.
From that point on, you need to keep monitoring these same data points for changes in the market. A new competitor or consumption trend can throw everything off the tracks.
In short, to measure the success of your eCommerce website, use digital marketing KPIs metrics to explain the status of your eCommerce KPIs and metrics. Using general website analytics to support your findings will help clear the path to make money on Shopify or WooCommerce.
The key is to use these data points to stay ahead of the curve and dictate the market instead of react to it. It will take time, but the payoff will be great when you see your eCommerce shop pick up speed and your customer list grow in size.