Measure your base eCommerce metrics
Understanding how well your online store is converting is crucial to improving your eCommerce site’s conversion rate. The average conversion rate on eCommerce sites is only between 1-3% so being able to improve is crucial to long-term success, but the only way to improve is to understand where you have the most opportunity.
Step1: Create the inputs needed for this play:
Note: If you are using our Shopify integration you should have these events available by default as a part of the integration.
| Name | Description |
| View PDP | An event that captures the product description page for a given product |
| Add to Cart | An event that captures a click on an “Add to Cart” button |
| Start Checkout | An event that captures the start of the checkout funnel (e.g. filling in the first field of contact information or clicking a “Checkout” button) |
| Confirm Order | An event that captures confirmation of a completed order, with an included property for the total price of the order |
| Total Price | A property on the “Order” event that captures the total price of the order |
| Customer Order Count | A user property that counts the total number of orders a user has made |
Step 2: Create your Dashboard in Heap
Click here to create this Dashboard in Heap.
Report Breakdown
Report 1: Order Funnel
What does it tell you?
This report looks at your purchase funnel. Once a user actually views a product, how likely are they to convert?
How to interpret?
This funnel is all about helping you to determine which step of your funnel needs the most attention. Chances are high that there will be significant drop-off between viewing a product and actually adding it to the cart, but look at your remaining 3 steps… is there room to improve the flow once someone has signaled that they like the product (by adding it to their cart)? If you see a step you want to dig in to, feel free to add more granular steps. Maybe users are dropping off between clicking checkout and confirming their order b/c there is an error happening on your submit payment info field or maybe you just ask them for too much contact information and they get frustrated and give up. Maybe the users who pay with PayPal are converting at a higher rate than those who pay by CC! Whatever the case, this funnel is your foundational starting point to understanding where your biggest opportunity for improvement lies.
Add a Group By to see how the conversion rate differs between different cohorts
Report 2: Average Order Value
What does it tell you?
This report will show you your average order value per day over the last 30 days.
How to interpret?
As you make changes to your site, add new products to your inventory or launch new marketing campaigns you’ll want to keep an eye on this report. If this is increasing, then great, you’re doing something right. If you see a decrease you may want to dig in further to uncover the reason for this dip… perhaps it’s just a result of your seasonal clearance event.
Report 3: Order Conversion Rate Over Time
What does it tell you?
This report is similar to the funnel we looked at first. However, there are two key differences. 1. This report is looking at your overall conversion rate from viewing any page on your site to making a purchase (the funnel only looks at conversion rate from when someone actually adds an item to their cart). 2. This is showing you your conversion rate overtime instead of looking at your conversion rate within a limited window. This will help you understand performance over time.
If you want this report to match your funnel report more closely you can swap the Pageview event out for your view PDP event
How to interpret?
Similar to the previous report, this report is really about measuring the impact of your changes over time. Any time you make a big change be sure to mark it with a Footnote so that you can understand the impact.
Report 4: Step by Step Order Conversion Rate
What does it tell you?
The Order Funnel showed you the number of unique users dropping off between activation steps, but this report will tell you how each portion of your funnel is improving over time.
How to interpret?
We recommended earlier that you should find the area of your funnel with the most opportunity and work on that micro-conversion. This report will help you to interpret the impact your changes are making at a granular level over time. If your goal is to simply improve the conversion between adding an item to the cart and beginning the checkout process then this can help you monitor that.
Report 5: Revenue
What does it tell you?
This report is pretty simple…how much gross revenue is your site making per day?
How to interpret?
You likely won’t see any large changes here over a 30 day period but if you see any large spikes or dips you may want to dig in further. Was there a sale that performed really well? Did a new marketing channel or an influencer’s mention on social cause a spike? Did you recently start “suggesting” other products for users to purchase? Is the increase due to a higher average order value (AOV) or was it due to an increase to the total number of purchases? Understanding what drives success can help you to refine your future acquisition strategy.
Report 6: Average Revenue Per User
What does it tell you?
This report will show you the average revenue generated per customer over the past year.
How to interpret?
This is a key metric for many eCommerce companies. Over time, you’ll want to see an increase here but this metric is great for knowing what your baseline is here.
Report 7: Repeat Purchase Rate
What does it tell you?
This report will show you the percentage of users that come back and make a 2nd purchase.
How to interpret?
Shopify reports that on average, repeat purchase rate for first time customers = 27%. Returning customers convert at a much higher rate than first time customers. Investing in improving repeat purchase rate (RPR) could be more impactful than focusing on improving your conversion rate for first time customers.
Report 8: Average Order Frequency
What does it tell you?
This report will show you the average number of purchases per customer over the past year.
How to interpret?
This result should be closely paired with the previous report to understand how often your users are coming back to make purchases. But rather than looking at the % who do, this shows you your average order total. Coming back a second time is fantastic but ideally your customers are coming back again and again and again.
Report 9: New vs Returning Customers
What does it tell you?
This report is a count of the number of purchases that came from first time vs returning customers.
How to interpret?
You’ll want to see an increase in both lines here over time to ensure your business is growing. You’ll want exposure to attract new customers while also getting more users to come back and purchase again.
Taking Action
This dashboard is less about uncovering unique insights with specific solutions and it’s more about getting a baseline understanding of common metrics that we find our eCommerce customers care about. Use this dashboard to get a sense of your current performance and to inform the areas you want to focus on in the next quarter or year to make a meaningful impact to your business.
In Conclusion
Too often we see our eCommerce customers only focusing on acquisition channels as the key way to improve their conversion rate but optimizing the site experience itself can have a huge impact on your bottom line. Try out the dashboard