If you are in charge of the ecommerce (online sales) arm of your business, it is imperative that you possess a thorough understanding of metrics. These numbers can provide a definitive answer to just how successful your ecommerce efforts are – indicating whether or not additional resources need to be allocated towards that venture.
Your ecommerce metrics are the most critical factors in determining your success. In order to gauge and ascertain these numbers, we must first understand what they mean, and how they impact a business’ profitability.
To get an idea of what constitutes a respectable ecommerce performance, it’s essential to benchmark against your industry competitors. The metrics highlighted here represent the key indicators that will demonstrate where one stands within the pack; therefore it is important for each business to understand their position relative to their competition.
1. Traffic Volume
The most common, and perhaps the most obvious, metric to assess your site’s traffic is its frequency of visits.
Traffic volume indicates the number of individuals who have accessed your website over a given period. This can be evaluated in various formats:
Daily visitors are those who visit your site at least once per day. Weekly visitors come by with some frequency – perhaps every other day or even just once every so often.
The following chart shows that one-third of Apple’s New York customers make an infrequent purchase decision, registering only one out of ten purchases.
2. Engagement Rate
To gauge customer engagement, it is imperative to assess the frequency with which customers interact and engage with your website. The general rule of thumb is that if customers are spending more time on your site than in other instances – such as browsing through catalogs or performing transactions – then they are likely enjoying their experience!
Ensure that you utilize tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Insights to track customer behavior, making a note of how frequently people navigate throughout your ecommerce pages.
3. Conversion Rate
The final metric that you must monitor is the company’s conversion rate.
Conversion rate is a key performance indicator (KPI) that reveals how many visitors make it to your site and ultimately convert into customers. It also offers insight into which of these visitors come back, repeat visitors or otherwise – all contributing toward growing your bottom line!
Utilize a tool such as Google Analytics or Mixpanel to track visitor activity on your website. Where are they clicking? What pages do they visit most frequently? Are there certain tasks that they perform more often than others?
By carefully observing this information, you can identify patterns in your leads’ actions and adapt as necessary in order to increase sales volume.
