It’s time to talk about numbers! Yes, those metrics that are so relevant that sometimes seem boring but that every business has to observe to check the performance of their online store.
And it is that the numbers of an ecommerce are particular. Therefore, in this post we are going to share some reference statistics within e-commerce so you can analyze if your metrics are within the usual or expected parameters.
The proposal is that, based on these statistics, you can better consider your objectives and put together a business plan according to that.
Let us begin!
The 3 most important metrics of an ecommerce (don’t lose sight of them!)
Of all the metrics offered by an online store, we highlight three fundamental ones:
1) sales generated.
two) visits: is the number of times a user enters your online store.
3) Conversion rate: is the percentage of those visits that actually turned into sales. The formula to calculate it is: (number of sales x 100%) / (number of visits).
To sell has been said!
Our Marketing Director, José Abuchaem, ensures that: “Having in your head the number of sales that your online store has per day, week or month is very important because that number will help you set goals that you can materialize with what you want”.
And it follows: “It’s hard to say ‘I want a 3% conversion.’ But saying ‘I want to sell 50 products per month’ is a palpable goal that we can all understand”.
“Furthermore, if you know how much profit margin each product leaves you, you can ask yourself ‘How much do I want to earn at the end of the month? $30,000?’ Ok, from that number, you calculate how many products you have to sell to reach it. If, for example, each product brings you a profit of $300, then you have to sell 100 products per month”.
At this point, it is important that you know if your business can support that stock, that supply and that demand. Be honest with yourself!
Relate your visits to your conversion rate
Regarding the , José considers that “1% is a reasonable conversion rate number from visit to sale. So if you want to sell 100 products, you are going to need 10,000 visits per month”.
If what you are looking for is to increase your conversion rate (also known as CVR for its acronym in English), you have to try be more granular in stages that there is from the moment the visit enters your store until it becomes a sale.
“Start by seeing how many people are actually visiting the products, how many people are adding a product to the cart. Because if nobody adds a product to the cart, it’s a problem. On the other hand, if people add a product to the cart but then do not close the sale, that is another problem”.
“In the first case, it may be that:
– people are not liking the products,
– that the price is not appropriate,
– that the product pages are not clear,
– that you have,
– that they are of low quality (all this harms the),
– or that you are simply not bringing the right people to your store”Jose assures.
For this reason, it is very important that, through tools such as , you review what are the pages where you have visits but they are not going to the next stepto the next page, so we can work on improvements there.
You can access this information from ‘Behavior’ / ‘Site content’/ ‘All pages’ and filter by date.
We recommend that you analyze the visits of each product and see if it generated sales or not. You can do the same with categories: understanding which one brought you the most traffic will allow you to discover where you have to improve.
For example, if you realize that the category “T-shirts” converts better than “Pants”, it may be because you are giving more information in that category (and you should do the same in “Pants”), or the pants are one more product. complex or maybe, as Jose explained above, you’re not bringing the right audience into that category.
On the other hand, if people add a product to the cart but then do not close the sale “Most likely it is a issue of shipping costs or payment methodssuch as not offering credit card payments or installments”.
“To solve it, you can try offering free shipping. This action usually highly improves the conversion”.
Consider offering free shipping
If you choose this alternative, you have to think very well how to implement it. We share some ideas:
- Absorb the full cost of shipping.
- Absorb one part and add the other to the price of the product.
- Put all the cost of shipping in the price of the product.
Keep in mind that, according to the analyzes of the Tiendanube Data team, promotions like this one work very well inside the country. On the other hand, in the City of Buenos Aires, users prefer discounts on products.
Ultimately, it is very important to try resolve the shipment in some way so that it does not become an obstacle for the buyersince it is the first difference in price with a product from a physical store.
If you try to offer free shipping, you validate if this was a problem or an obstacle for your customers when buying. 🙂
Do you have a cloud store? Look from your Administrator.
Bonus track: what other metrics are relevant for an ecommerce?
How much information! Well, to make the metrics more pleasant, we share an infographic that we put together especially for you.
Compare these numbers with the ones your store throws, and adjust your own business plan!
Paid visits vs. organic visits
It is important to highlight that the three most important metrics of an ecommerce that we mentioned above will vary greatly in their standard depending on the actions you are (or are not) performing:
“If you are not doing anything and everything through social networks or email marketing, that is, through people who already have a relationship with your brand, conversions in general are going to be high (above 1%)”assures our Marketing Director.
And adds: “Perhaps, with organic traffic, for every 1,000 visits they buy 20. But if, suddenly, you start doing paid marketing and you go from 1,000 visits to 5,000, don’t think that now 40 are going to buy you: they are people who still don’t know to your brand, and your conversion rate probably won’t change too much, at least initially.”.
You have to give that audience time to get to know you better, don’t despair!
Of course you have to work on advertising so that it generates a good conversion and return the cost you are investing.
Therefore, we strongly suggest that you measure the actions you take on a daily basis to make changes on the fly and improve your performance.
That is, check if it is generating sales, if it is generating bounces (the bounce rate is the percentage of people who reach a certain page of your store, but do not continue browsing others) or what are its partial results to carry out the necessary adjustments.
It’s time for analysis!
Now that you know what they are the most important metrics of an ecommerce and its statisticsyou are ready to analyze if the numbers of your business are within those usual parameters.
If necessary, rethink your goals and create a new, more powerful action plan for your online store!