16 Must-Track Ecommerce KPIs in 2021

Jun 7, 2021 | Best Practices, Blog, Warehouse Management Software

Introduction

The era of ecommerce runs on data. On a daily basis, terabytes upon terabytes of information are collected and analyzed. Although these data stores hold the key to ecommerce success with valuable insight for those that can find them, there is no way that the average person can break down and understand all that sales and order fulfillment data in a reasonable amount of time. That is where Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) come into play.

KPIs allow you to organize your company’s data and set specific and actionable goals against them. From social media to shipping logistics, you can use this information to track marketing trends, warehouse inventory, and customer service interactions. By breaking your KPIs down into categories as seen in this article, you can get a better idea of which tools might help you take the next step with your business.

 Here are some of the KPIs that are worth exploring for ecommerce businesses:

Ecommerce Sales KPIs

If you want to track your ecommerce sales effectively, these are some of the most helpful KPIs.

Conversation Rates

When it comes to managing your marketing output, you need to know how many consumers interact with your advertising material. These conversations give you a better idea of how well your marketing campaigns are performing and which ones may need a little bit of improvement.

Cost of Goods Sold

The cost of goods sold lets you know how much your business spent manufacturing the products or services you’ve released into the world. These KPIs are ideal for revenue calculations and can help you to identify places in which to cut your production costs, should the need arise.

Lifetime Value

Repeat customers are the lifeblood of a business. Lifetime value KPIs help you track how many times particular customers return to your business and how much they’ve spent. These customers tend to cost you less to acquire, as they already have some awareness of your brand.

Revenue Per Visitor

Instead of identifying how much repeat consumers have spent at your storefront, these KPIs will instead calculate the average amount that a generic consumer may spend on your ecommerce platform.

Customer Acquisition Cost

Wooing consumers isn’t cheap. If you want to get a better idea of how much you’re spending to win sales from your consumers, though, this KPI can run the calculations for you. That way, you can have a better idea about which advertising campaigns are pulling their weight and which ones you may need to adjust.

Ecommerce Marketing KPIs

Want to understand the impact of your marketing? Take a look at these KPIs.

Site Traffic

A site traffic KPI lets you know how many people come to your platform, along with what their demographics are, whether they made any purchases, and which platforms they found your ecommerce website on.

Return on Ad Spend

Your advertising ROI is one of the factors that influences your success. A return on ad spend KPI lets you know how your consumer revenue compares to the amount of money you spent on a particular advertising campaign. These ratios will give you a better idea about which campaigns are performing well and which may need to be fine tuned.

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate KPIs let you know how a consumer interacts with your website and what ratio of visitors are leaving your site right away. These KPIs are ideal for identifying bot behavior, too, if you think a competitor may be spamming your site.

Newsletter Subscriptions

If you run a consistent email marketing campaign, it’s important to know just how well your campaigns are doing. Newsletter subscription KPIs keep track of new and retained newsletter subscriptions, ensuring that you have a better idea of who you’re talking to when you send out your newsletter each week.

Social Media Engagement

Social media is the lifeblood of the digital business. Engagement KPIs let you know who is interacting with your content online, either via comments, shares, or likes. These KPIs also let you keep track of which platforms you perform well on and how far your content has been shared by unaffiliated consumers.

Ecommerce Customer Service KPIs

Want to know how your customers feel about your products and service? Take a look at these customer service KPIs for ecommerce.

Customer Satisfaction Score

Like ROI, customer satisfaction score is an important variable that can impact your company’s success. Your KPIs generate this score based on the answers consumers provide on post-purchase or post-experience surveys.

While it isn’t always easy to get consumers to participate in these surveys, the ones that do can still provide you with valuable information about your company’s success. You can compare your existing KPI scores against the national average to determine what you could be doing more effectively.

First Response Time

Want to keep track of the amount of time it takes your HR team to respond to a customer’s concerns? First response time KPIs track just that. With this data at hand, you can improve your HR guidelines, specifying faster response times to cultivate improved relationships with your customers.

Customer Resolution Time

In a similar vein, there are KPIs available that let you know how long it takes your HR team to address and resolve a consumer’s product-related concerns.

Ecommerce Shipping and Logistics KPIs

A customer has made a purchase. Now what? Take a look at these KPIs for shipping and logistics.

Order Fulfillment and Accuracy

No one likes to receive an order that isn’t theirs. This KPI lets you know how many packages you’ve shipped that have successfully arrived at the appropriate destination. If the order fulfillment values start to dip, then you’ll need to consider the influence it can have on customer opinions about your business.

Order accuracy data will also let you know whether your 3PL delivery line needs to be improved. If you’re sitting on an unusually low percentage of accurate orders, then there may be line errors at your warehouse that you need to address.

Inventory Levels

Whether you have invested in warehousing solutions or store your own inventory, you need to know where your inventory levels stand on a day-to-day basis.  Rely on inventory level KPIs to replenish your stock when necessary and to calculate your business’s average supply-to-demand ratio.

Order Volume

If you’re manufacturing products several months in advance, you need to know how much of your inventory goes out per month on average. Order volume KPIs calculate your sales by day, month, or quarter, depending on your needs. You can use year-out estimates to track the ebb and flow of your sales and to pre-produce inventory for each month.

Wrap It Up

With the collection and tracking of the above KPIs, you’ll keep your finger on the pulse of the health and success of your ecommerce business. From marketing KPIs that gauge the success of your advertising efforts, to shipping and logistics KPIs that illustrate how efficiently you get products to customers, an effective KPI reporting strategy gives your company’s decision-makers all the information they need to make informed choices.

Ecommerce Customer Experience Tips for Summer 2021

Jun 2, 2021 | Best Practices, Blog, Warehouse Management Software

Summer is a great time for margaritas and digital marketing. By focusing on the digital platforms that people visit most frequently in the warm months, your ecommerce business should be marketing the summer vibe with sizzling deals and scorching offers. Sunny weather makes people happier in general, so ecommerce business owners, especially in the dropshipping domain, need to be on the ball when it comes to customer experience. If you are not up-to-date on the latest trends in customer experience, your competitors will be. 

With ecommerce margins already stretched thin for small to medium sized businesses, it is vital to capitalize on the latest tech and tools to win and retain customers. Especially during summer months, because customers spend less time looking at their devices as they do in the cold depths of winter. 

It’s necessary to put in some extra work to grab the already limited attention span of your audience. Once you have it, how do you convert the sale? This article details the main customer experience trends in ecommerce going into the summer of 2021. 

Create a Summer 2021 Strategy for Improved Customer Experience

The latest ecomerce trends for improved customer experience are the following:

• mobile optimization, 
• micro-influencers, 
• email marketing, and 
• voice search. 

The commonality found here are summer-savvy, ‘on-the-go’ styles of consuming information. From looking at a shopping app on the beach or checking email by the pool, your company should intelligently spend resources where people are looking. 

Strategy 1: Mobile optimization

When people are on holiday, camping, or out sunbathing beside a swimming pool (must be nice), the summer months tend to be downtime for PC usage, and uptime for mobile devices, smartphones, and tablets. 

Increased mobile usage also draws more people to social networks such as Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram, which creates added opportunity for ecommerce merchants to sell or advertise on those platforms and makes it easier to reach your target audience. Depending on the age demographic of your products or services, create optimized ads and campaigns to suit summer buying behaviors.

Also, don’t be afraid to churn some marketing budget on running promotional campaigns geared specifically for the summer months. You can run these in isolation or try some re-targeted ads to your email database subscribers. Hitting people with the same message on multiple platforms is a proven approach to generating more attention and conversions. 

Strategy 2: Utilizing the power of Micro-influencers

If you run a new company or are launching a new product, people usually require more convincing to buy, compared to a big brand or known entity. With ecommerce specifically, customers need to trust in what they’re buying to be convinced to open their wallets. The younger the potential customer, the more important it is to find a way to show them your product in all its glory.

Enter: Influencers. Showing people how things work is even more effective when the person doing the demonstration is someone they know.

Some surveys show that influencers or bloggers promoting your product can increase sales by upwards of 30%. This doesn’t mean you have to spend tens of thousands to enlist a d-list celebrity on Cameo. In fact, many survey respondents indicated that they respect and associate with micro-influencers more than celebrities that are just in it for the paycheck. 

Beyond their effectiveness, another advantage of micro-influencers is that they are a lot more cost-effective than traditional online advertising channels. Some influencers will even agree to be paid in different ways than just cash, like free or discounted product. 

Try negotiating with these influencers to give them product samples in return for promoting your products. Also, you could consider an ambassadorship, offering a percentage of sales instead of a flat fee agreement. 

Strategy 3: Email marketing 

Summer is not the time to overlook your hard-earned database of email subscribers. In fact, it’s the ideal time to catch people checking emails on the go, during an idle moment in an airport, ferry, or at their hotel. 

While social media may create a buzz of activity and noise, it doesn’t come anywhere near email marketing regarding conversion rates. Email marketing is one of the best-performing of all digital channels in terms of creating conversions. More than 65% of users polled indicated they had purchased the back of an email campaign. That rate is more than double that of the combined social media platforms. 

Email marketing is highly targeted since it enables you to send specific messages to people that have already expressed an interest in your products. Utilize a basic CRM and email marketing tool to track what your subscribers are interested in. You can update their preferences and send them only the most relevant products. 

Ensure your email marketing campaigns show a clear ‘call-to-action’ button at the end. Summer sales, discount codes, and personalized recommendations are particularly effective. You can also use email marketing to clear overstocked products or discontinued seasonal lines. 

Strategy 4: Turn up the volume on voice search.

Voice search accounts for around 50% of searches, by some reports. This varies by country, but there is no denying voice search is a growing trend. 

Virtual assistant devices are present in an increasing number of homes. This creates a new opportunity for ecommerce retailers: Voice search optimization. Voice search does not directly compare to search engines optimization (SEO) and must have specific content.

Ensure that your website, and especially your product listings, are optimized for voice search. Voice search responds more to search phrases than it does to traditional keywords, so you should customize searches based on answers to questions.

Wrap It Up

Successful ecommerce retailers need to be leaders in customer experience along the shoppers’ journey. Creating a smoother customer experience means making it easier for people to buy from you wherever possible.

Position your products where people will see them during the summer months, mainly mobile devices, smartphones, and social media. When you’ve piqued their interest, ensure that the buying or decision-making experience is a smooth one. From showing color options to tech specs, your potential customers should locate and see more information quickly.