Following a by its founder and expert in Rand Fishkin () in which it is proposed to build a dashboard to track the performance of your website, I think it is important to delve a little into what is that of a control panel or dashboard for eCommerce and how to build one for our store.
What is a dashboard or scorecard
A dashboard (in Spanish, control panel) is a panel of indicators that allow us to follow the behavior of our eCommerce.
It is a basic Business Intelligence tool that any eCommerce manager should use, although in many cases this is not the case. In an eCommerce dashboard we are going to use and relate a set of KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators, or key performance indicators).
As we already said in , these are calculated from monitoring data from various sources, and, in theory, should be prepared ‘ad hoc’ based on a strategy to see if our objectives are met or not. That is, the dashboards of two different companies will probably use different indicators.
Having said that, there are a number of features common to all types of dashboard for eCommerce, since all eCommerce have a common ultimate goal, which is to sell products. The idea of this article is not to present a dashboard that you can start using right now, but to give an idea so that everyone can start building their own, in accordance with the strategic objectives that have been set.
Therefore, if these strategic objectives do not exist, having a “generalist” dashboard will be useful to us, but not a quarter of what it would be if we had a defined strategy. It is important to be clear about the data we need.
Creating the dashboard for eCommerce
As everyone knows, or at least should, eCommerce sales don’t just happen. It is not enough to create our online store, upload it and keep catalogs and prices updated. We fall into this mistake many times: we consume all the initial budget in the creation of the web and we do not allocate a part (which should be important) Develop and execute a strategic marketing plan.
Let’s define some starting conditions:
- a) We have active presence in different .
- b) We perform online advertising actions: (Google Adwords, Facebook Ads and/or other additional advertising systems, depending on our monitoring.
- c) We perform email marketing actions
- d) We have a strategy SEO and we know which keywords we want to rank for.
- f) We have some minimum sales targets. Starting from this base, our dashboard for eCommerce will help us to analyze the different phases of our customer acquisition and conversion process (what is commonly known as the ).
We are going to take as a reference the phases that Fishkin uses in the already mentioned article to select a battery of indicators:
Phase
Indicator/
Obtaining
Meaning
brand awareness
Followers on the different social networks Statistical data or profile of each network Number of people directly reached by the messages Mentions, shared posts and RTs on social networks Idem Number of people who are interested in our messages Rate of mentions/RTs per publication in social networks Number of daily publications/number of RTs/mentions/times shared Degree of interest in the publications Rate of mentions in the media and external websites From Google Alerts or similar systems. Mentions/month or mentions/number of publications Degree of public or professional interest of the publications (depending on the type of media) External links Google Analytics Number of websites that have links that point to ours
First visits to our eCommerce
Total number of visits Google Analytics Total number of visits to our website Segmented number of visits (by country, city or age range) Google Analytics Total number of visits that come from the segments to which we mainly target Bounce rate Google Analytics % of visitors who do not go past the first page Pages/visit Google Analytics Degree of interest of the visitor Time of permanence Google Analytics Degree of interest of the visitor and the effectiveness or not of the texts or videos Origin of visits Google Analytics Number of visits coming from every source: organic, referral links, and social media traffic. Show SEO effectiveness
Recurring visits (community)
Parameters measured in the previous point but limited to recurring Google Analytics Ability to retain the first visits and convert them into recurring visitors () % of recurring over total visits Google Analytics Degree of extent of the community of recurring visitors Visits from or Visits/emails sent .MailChimp or other eMail Marketing systems. Google Analytics Degree of effectiveness of the
Conversion
Number of visits/number of customers Data from the eCommerce back office or setting up conversions in Google Analytics Effectiveness of the eCommerce website as a sales tool Segmented conversion rate (new/recurring) Number of segment visits/number of segment sales Degree of and/or repeat customer loyalty vs. new customer Rate of abandoned carts Abandoned carts/total orders Efficiency of the collection process and shipping costs. Average basket Average order amount Effectiveness of Sales/segment Sales of each segment/total sales Effectiveness of our targeting in marketing strategy
This is a basic example of the indicators for a very basic dashboard, in which the KPIs are mostly taken directly from the metrics and do not have a complicated elaboration. Obviously, each eCommerce must reflect on what it is most interested in measuring and find a way to have a numerical parameter for it.
How to use your dashboard for eCommerce
The point is that the table above is not a dashboard itself, but an example list of indicators basic and easy to obtain without using complex tools. There are many more indicators that can be used.
For example, the effectiveness indicators of your marketing campaigns in general, and specifically of your online advertising campaigns, combining the data of the advertising platform you use with those of Analytics, with special emphasis on the advertising investment/sales increase ratio.
To properly use our dashboard, we need to define a few more things:
1. Frequency of update and consultation
If you have an ERP or similar system, or are willing to invest in a tool that collects and calculates this data, ideally it should update automatically. Another thing is how often you check it. Eye, don’t make the mistake of checking your eCommerce dashboard daily and throw your hands in the head if one day things go wrong.
query frequency and analysis depends on many things: duration of your online marketing and advertising campaigns, frequency of meetings or presentation of reports to managers….
2. The important thing is the comparison and measurement of trends
The raw indicators are a photograph of a certain moment. It is very important that we get used to putting the data in its context and analyzing evolution trends.
For that we must make at least two comparisons: Current data compared to the immediately previous period (current month vs. previous month if reviewed monthly) and current data compared to average data (from the last year or a longer or shorter period for the averages to be statistically relevant). The analysis of positive or negative trends is what will give us clues to make decisions
3. Compare the data with your goals
Setting goals is complex, and it would require a specific post just to talk about it. In any case, the data that integrates the dashboard must have an objectivea goal to achieve, something basic to be able to have a true strategy.
4. Create graphs and add color
The data, especially their evolution, is much better understood if graphs are used. Dashboards usually include traffic light color codes to identify those indicators that show negative results, those that are neutral and those that show a positive balance, always thinking about the reference of the objective that we have set for ourselves.
In the end, your dashboard draws conclusions from analytical data that is not usually shown in detail. It looks something like this.
The dashboard is known as a scorecard for a reason: It is similar to the dashboard of a vehicle. A good and experienced driver can manage to drive “by ear” and know how fast he is going and if everything is okay or not just by the sounds and vibrations of his car’s engine, steering wheel and pedals. But most drivers, although we also perceive these signals, we need the figures, the indicators and the red lights on the instrument panel to be able to drive safely.
5. Incorporate it into your routines
And finally, something very important. data analysis must be something routine in any company, so we shouldn’t ignore the dashboard if things are going well and obsess over it if things aren’t going our way. Both the positive and negative evolution of a business have a series of “early” indicators that give us information long before that situation is noticeable in the economic results. Also, it’s not just about correcting course when things go wrong.
The dashboard for eCommerce, well used, presents us with opportunities that would otherwise go unnoticed, in addition to telling us why things are going well, something that is as or more important than knowing why they are going wrong (which in many cases is usually the most obvious).
The dashboard is a strategic decision support tool. The more complex a company is, the more so is its dashboard, although there are ways to simplify it by making it more summarized if we are going to present it to managers, grouping several simple indicators into a larger composite indicator. But this is already another matter. For now, if you’ve never had one, consider starting with something simple but that is really useful for you and your eCommerce. Airtame, for example, details achievable.
Now, do you dare to set up your dashboard for eCommerce?
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