An eCommerce marketing Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a metric that marketing teams use to determine the success of their retail online marketing activities.
Say an athlete is training for a marathon race. To win the gold medal, what are prime factors would he concentrate on? In my opinion, that would be stamina and record time for the track event.
And in the marketing world, these prime factors are what we call the Key Performance Indicators (KPI).
Now let’s draw an analogy to understand this better. Let’s assume that as an eCommerce store owner, your marketing goal would be to generate highly qualified leads. And using the KPIs, you would be able to deduce whether you’ve reached or fallen short of your target.
It’s that simple. Let’s now look at the top eCommerce marketing KPIs out there with tips on measuring them and discerning the benchmarks.
Table of Contents
1. eCommerce Site Traffic
What is eCommerce site traffic?
Your eCommerce website traffic refers to the total number of people who land on your site.
Why is eCommerce site traffic an important marketing KPI?
This is an important marketing KPI because the more people see your site on search results, the more likely they’ll visit you. That, in turn, translates into opportunities for your online business.
What is good eCommerce site traffic?
It differs depending on your niche. But if you are getting anything above 1000, that’s a good website traffic number.
How to measure eCommerce site traffic?
Set up Google Analytics for your eCommerce site to track the site traffic.
2. Average Session on eCommerce Website
What is the average session duration on an eCommerce website?
It refers to the average time that an average visitor spends on your eCommerce site during a single visit.
Why is eCommerce site traffic an important marketing KPI?
The average time spent on your site tells you how helpful the content was to your website visitor. If the session duration is low, it means something is amiss with your eCommerce website. Either it does not show relevant content, or renders a poor user experience, or has other factors that cause your visitors to jump to an alternate search result. So, by tracking this eCommerce marketing KPI, you would know what changes to implement on your site to better engage your visitor.
What is a good average session time?
The industry standard for a good average session rate is two to three minutes.
How to measure the average session time?
3. Page Views per Session
What is the page view per session on an eCommerce website?
The page views per session denote the average number of eCommerce website pages that a visitor views in a visit.
Why is the page view per session an important marketing KPI?
A high number of page views per session could mean two things: Either your eCommerce site is valuable, or your visitors are having a hard time unable to find what they’re looking for.
What is a good page view per session?
The benchmark would be anything above 4.4 page views per session. And the average number of page views per session is 2.8 (Littledata).
How to measure the page views per session?
4. Bounce Rate
What is the bounce rate on an eCommerce website?
The bounce rate is an eCommerce marketing KPI that tells you the number of visitors who left your site after viewing only one page.
Why is the bounce rate an important marketing KPI?
The bounce rate is a tell-tale sign of how relevant you are to your visitors’ search intent. For instance, let’s say that a user searches for cheap raincoats. And let’s say that your website pops up on the search results so that the user also clicks. But after landing on the page, if he does not find what he wants, he would abandon it and look into an alternate search result. And if this happens with most of your website visitors, then your bounce rate will be high. You would then need to take serious steps to lower the bounce rate.
What is a good bounce rate?
Always try to keep the bounce rate as low as possible. A general and ideal approach is to keep the bounce rate below 40%.
How to measure the bounce rate?
5. Average CTR
What is the average CTR on an eCommerce website?
The average click-through rate (CTR) is a KPI that illustrates how well your title tags and/or meta descriptions are generating clicks to drive traffic to your eCommerce site.
Why is the average CTR an important marketing KPI?
A high number of page views per session could mean two things: Either your eCommerce site is valuable, or your visitors are having a hard time unable to find what they’re looking for.
What is a good CTR?
On average, a search result on the number one position yields a CTR of 31.7%. Since it’s the highest rankings that get the maximum CTR, you can hold this as your benchmark.
How to measure the average CTR?
6. Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
What is PPC?
The pay-per-click (PPC) is a marketing KPI that shows how much you’re are spending every time a user clicks on your ads. Note that the PPC can also be referred to as the cost-per-click (CPC). And you can use it to measure the investments that go into both Google ads and social media ads.
Why is PPC an important marketing KPI?
Measuring your PPC can render you extreme levels of control. With this insight, you can boost the ad spend for queries, geographies, and demographics that work and reduce the ad spend on those that don’t work. This will help you get a better return-on-ad-spend (ROAS).
How much is the average PPC?
To advertise on the Google search network, you might have to pay about $1 to $2 per click.
How to measure the PPC?
7. Cost Per Conversion (CPC)
What is CPC?
The cost-per-conversion (CPC) is a marketing KPI that shows the investment you need to make in turning an eCommerce website visitor into a customer.
Why is the CPC an important marketing KPI?
Just like PPC, the CPC also gives you the measure of expenditure in online marketing. So if you are paying too much on a single ad but aren’t generating enough benefits, you have to either improve your ad's quality or revamp your marketing strategy.
How much is the average CPC?
Research shows that retailers and general store businesses invest $44.38 for Google Ad search CPC.
How to measure the CPC?
To select your KPIs, you need to first clearly state your goals and understand which areas of your eCommerce business are impacted by them. Note that the KPIs would differ for each of your goals - depending on whether they are related to marketing, sales, or customer service.
So, let me give you an example to help you create your eCommerce marketing KPIs. Let’s say that you want to grow your eCommerce site traffic by 30% in the next quarter. Then, here are the KPIs you’ll want to track and measure.
- eCommerce site traffic
- Average CTR
- Bounce rate
And if you need a CRM to track all these metrics for you in a central platform, try Ingage. That is an AI-driven CRM meant exclusively for eCommerce and brick-and-mortar retailers.
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