If you’ve ever wondered:

• “How do I know if I’m making any progress with my store?”,
• “How could I tell if my marketing strategies bring any results?”, or
• “Do all these sales actually contribute to my store’s growth?”

Then I have something super special for you – a list of the most important KPIs you should be tracking for your online store.

This isn’t the comprehensive list, by all means. There are many more metrics you could look at. But these 12 are the absolute must to monitor daily if you want to know your store’s performance.

So without further ado, here are the metrics you simply must monitor on daily basis.

Note: I divided those metrics into 3 categories depending on the area of business they relate to. This should make it easier for you to find the ones you’re not tracking yet.

Part 1: SEO / Traffic Metrics

These metrics will help you monitor typical strategies aiming to attract new traffic to the site.

Total Sessions

This metric, previously known as total visits, shows you how many people have visited your site for a specified period of time.

Tracking total visits helps to establish if there’s any change, be it increase or decrease in traffic. Even though on its own this metric isn’t enough to establish the reason for such change, it helps to quickly establish any differences in traffic patterns to investigate further.

Where to find it: Google Analytics. You can see it on the default “Audience Overview” report available right after you log into the GA.

New Visitors

A new visitor is a person who has visited your site for the first time. With this metric you can quickly establish if your marketing strategies help attract new potential customers.

Naturally receiving a lot of returning traffic isn’t a bad thing. But when you’re trying to grow your store, you should also be focusing on exposing it to as many new visitors as possible.

Where to find it: Google Analytics’ New vs. Returning report. Click the Audience tab, then Behavior and select “New vs. Returning”

Page Views

This metric shows how many pages, on average, your visitors view during their stay on a site. This number could help you assess two things:

1. How engaging is your content. If visitors view a number of pages per visit, it may suggest your site delivers the content they’ve been looking for.
2. If you actually attract the right visitors. In other words, if the keywords you position the content for attract your target audience or random, irrelevant visitors.

Where to find it: Google Analytics’ Audience Overview. You can detailed information in the Behavior section > All Pages.

Bounce Rate

Bounce happens when a visitor leaves your site right after landing on it, without viewing any more than one page on the site (or staying shorter than 10 seconds).

A high bounce rate indicates that visitors don’t find your content relevant to what they’ve been searching for. One reason for this could be poor content. Another, positioning for wrong keywords.

Where to find it: Google Analytics’ Audience Overview. You can get a detailed information in various other reports. For a quick overview though, this report is often enough.

Visitor Loyalty

This metric tracks how often people come back to your site. A huge number of returning visitors will indicate that they find your site engaging and research it as part of their typical buyer’s journey.

Where to find it: Go to Google Analytics > Audience > Behavior > Engagement.

Part 2: Sales

There’s no other reason you work so hard to attract all this traffic to the site but to make sales. And these metrics will help you establish if you’re efforts bring the desired result.

Conversion Rate

A conversion rate is a percentage of visitors who buy at your store from the total number of visitors. If your store receives a 100 visitors a day and 3 of them buy, then your conversion rate is 3% (3/100=0.03).

Conversion rate could suggest a number of things: the quality of your traffic, content, site. It’s probably the most important metric to track, especially after making any changes to the site.

Where to find it: Conversions report in Google Analytics or your ecommerce platform.

Average Order Value

This metric reveals how much, on average, your visitors spend at your store.

Knowing your AOV will help you decide if and what up-sells, cross-sells and other promotional strategies you should use to increase the average spend.

Also, combined with traffic data and conversion rate, AOV could help you estimate future sales performance.

Where to find it: Your ecommerce platform.

Cart Abandonment Rate

Not all visitors will complete their purchase. Many will add items to the basket but abandon it at a last minute. You should track the cart abandonment rate to establish if there aren’t any major issues with your cart or checkout, for instance, that prevent customers from completing the purchase.

Where to find it: Your ecommerce platform.

Part 3: Marketing

In the early days of running your store, marketing will be the most important activity you’ll endure. After all, without a steady influx of new visitors your store simply won’t survive.

And here are the metrics to help you assess the marketing performance:

Cost of Acquisition

This metric is particularly useful if you promote your store using Pay per Click strategies. It will reveal how much does it cost you to convert a visitor on your store.

Where to find it: You may have to calculate it manually by adding your total marketing spend and dividing by the total number of sales for the same period.

PPC Conversions

When you pay per each click, it’s a good idea to monitor the total conversion rate from your paid advertising strategies. Monitoring PPC conversions will help you establish if you’re spending the money on the right keywords and attract highly converting visitors.

Where to find it: Adwords report

Traffic by Channel

Lastly, you should also monitor traffic per each channel you use: organic, referrals, paid or direct. It will help you identify any anomalies in traffic, quickly establish what channels have been affected and plan actions to revert the trend.

Where to find it: Google Analytics > Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels

And there you have it…

The 12 metrics you simply must track everyday to establish if your store’s making any progress.

Do you track any of these already?

Are there any other metrics you think online retailers should monitor everyday? Let us know in the comments.