Essential ecommerce metrics for 2025 success

If you are still struggling with understanding your ecommerce performance despite having a dashboard, chances are you’re tracking too many and/or irrelevant metrics.

An essential piece of ecommerce reporting is choosing the right metrics, which helps you make better decisions and grow your business. In this article, you’ll learn which metrics and KPIs matter most, how to interpret them, and how to use them to guide your decisions.

We’ll also discuss tools and techniques that help you build a more meaningful analytics setup.

How do you choose the right ecommerce metrics to track?

For ecommerce, classic marketing KPIs like impressions and clicks still have their place. These top-of-funnel metrics help you understand who is entering your pipeline. But the ecommerce journey goes beyond initial interest.

Conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, and lifetime value become critical as you guide visitors toward repeat purchases. Ensuring your data is clean and building a solid marketing measurement plan is essential as your business scales.

To make it easy to select the right metrics and structure your report, think of your ecommerce funnel as a story:

1. Attract: How people find you and end up on your ecommerce store
2. Engage: How people engaged with your website, for example, what pages do they visit, and for how long, etc. (time on site, pages per session)
3. Convert: What people end up buying (add-to-cart, checkout)
4. Retain: What value you get from loyal customers (repeat purchases, long-term value)

Engagement metrics

Engagement metrics let you understand how users interact with your site before they purchase. High engagement often indicates that visitors find your content compelling and your products appealing.

1. Time on site:

The longer someone stays on your site, the more likely they are to explore products or read descriptions. If your site's time is low, consider improving your product pages or adding guides to help visitors find what they need.

2. Pages per session:

This metric shows how many pages a visitor views in one go. More pages can mean more profound interest in your catalog. If low, try improving internal navigation or bundling related products together for easy discovery.

3. Bounce rate

The bounce rate measures how many visitors leave your site after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate could mean your landing pages aren’t delivering what users expected. For example, visitors may leave if ads promise discounts but the landing page doesn’t prominently display them. Adjusting content or testing new landing page formats can help.

Customer acquisition metrics

Acquisition metrics show how effectively you turn curious visitors into paying customers. They’re essential for evaluating the efficiency of your marketing spend and understanding where to optimize. Here are the main ones to watch out for:

Cost per acquisition (CPA)

CPA measures how much you spend to get a single buyer. Monitoring CPA helps you avoid overspending on channels that don’t produce quality customers. For example, if social ads bring a low CPA, you might reinvest there and cut back on a more expensive platform.

Conversion rate

The conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who take a desired action and make a purchase. A higher conversion rate means your messaging, product selection, or user experience is resonating. When the conversion rate rises, it often helps reduce acquisition costs because each visitor is more likely to buy.

Shopping cart abandonment rate

This metric shows the number of shoppers who add items to their carts but don’t complete the checkout process. A high abandonment rate could indicate confusing checkout steps, unexpected shipping fees, or a site that does not communicate trust.

Identifying the root cause can help you fix the issue. You can track these behaviors with ecommerce analytics tools and run tests to reduce friction.

Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

CAC is a deeper analysis of the cost of attracting a paying customer. While CPA focuses on direct campaign costs, CAC often includes broader marketing expenses.

Aim to reduce CAC by targeting the right segments and improving your site’s user experience. You can reinvest in those efforts if your marketing reporting shows that specific campaigns lead to better CAC.

Customer retention metrics

As you probably already know, happy customers do not only return—they spread the word. Satisfaction metrics help you gauge how well you meet expectations, pinpoint problems, and highlight what makes your brand stand out.

Tracking these metrics helps you adjust your products, improve your online experience, and foster lasting loyalty.

Net promoter score (NPS)

NPS measures how likely customers are to recommend you. A high NPS suggests you’re exceeding expectations, building strong relationships, and earning trust. If it drops, consider which steps in the buyer’s journey need attention, such as shipping speed or customer support responsiveness.

Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)

CSAT surveys invite customers to rate their experiences. Monitoring this score over time can show how specific improvements—like more straightforward returns or more precise product details—positively influence customer happiness.

Review ratings

Ratings and reviews are a direct line to your customers’ opinions. Positive reviews highlight what resonates with your audience, while negative feedback reveals issues that need immediate action. You demonstrate that you value your customers’ voices by engaging with reviews.

Product return rate

A high rate of returns or canceled subscriptions may indicate that product descriptions require more detail or that sizing charts need clarification. Addressing these problems alleviates customer frustration and fosters trust in your store. Over time, decreasing return rates suggest a better alignment between your products and the market.

Return visitor rate

If people return to your site, it’s a strong signal they value your brand. These return visitors might become loyal customers if you nurture their interest with personalized offers or newsletters. Consider segmenting these loyal audiences to tailor campaigns even further.

Inventory metrics

Inventory metrics keep your store’s operations running smoothly. Well-managed inventory ensures products are available when customers want them without tying up too much capital.

Inventory turnover rate

This metric shows how often you sell and replace your stock. A healthy turnover rate means items sell steadily, reducing the risk of holding excess stock.

Stock-to-sales ratio

Comparing stock levels to sales figures helps determine whether you’re over- or understocked. Balancing these numbers can improve cash flow and reduce storage costs.

Stockout rate

Stockouts occur when shoppers want to buy, but you have nothing to sell. Tracking this rate helps you avoid missed sales. Consider blending data like inventory and sales data to see the full picture.

Carrying costs

Holding inventory isn’t free. You pay for storage, insurance, and sometimes spoilage. Tracking these costs ensures you’re not overcommitting resources to products that aren’t moving.

Which tools help track ecommerce metrics?

Choosing the right tools is key. You want platforms that collect data accurately and present it in a way that makes sense. Combining multiple solutions can give you a complete picture of your ecommerce store's performance, from acquisition to retention.

Ecommerce analytics platforms

Tools like Google Analytics, Shopify, etc., help you understand visitor behavior, from traffic sources to on-site actions. You’ll find different dashboards and reports about your customer behaviors and website performance.

You can also explore an ecommerce dashboard template for Looker Studio or a Shopify reporting template for Looker Studio to visualize these metrics more clearly.

Spreadsheets and data warehouses

If you want to go beyond the reports provided by ecommerce platforms, you can use a tool like Supermetrics to get data into a spreadsheet or a marketing data warehouse. While Excel and Google Sheets are great for ad-hoc analysis and daily campaign monitoring, a data warehouse is for those who want more computing power and combine ecommerce data with other business data.

Data visualization solutions

Presenting data in a way that tells a story is crucial. Data visualization solutions transform raw numbers into charts and graphs that reveal patterns.

Connecting these solutions with your ecommerce platform allows you to build custom dashboards that guide daily decisions. This process encourages collaboration among your team so that everyone understands how metrics connect to actions.

Best practices for tracking ecommerce metrics

Build a narrative around your metrics

Beyond measuring a single metric, the real power lies in connecting different ones to tell a story. For example, if your conversion rate increases but your CAC remains steady, you may segment customers more effectively to lower those acquisition costs. Consider adjusting product details or improving images if your AOV is high, but return rates are climbing.

Don’t forget to validate assumptions through testing. If you think a certain segment responds better to a discount code, run an A/B test if you assume that younger audiences prefer visual product guides, track time on site, and conversion among that demographic. Testing ensures your decisions are based on data-backed insights, not just guesses.

As you gather historical data, you’ll establish benchmarks that make it easier to identify shifts in performance. You'll know exactly when to act if your NPS dips or your inventory turnover slows. Turn metrics into a story that everyone on your team understands.

Instead of just saying, “Our CAC improved by 10%,” show the entire journey: how a new ad campaign brought in higher-quality visitors, how they engaged more deeply with product pages, and how that reduced CAC in the long run.

Embracing new technologies

Emerging technologies like AI and machine learning are making it easier to analyze ecommerce KPIs. AI-driven tools can predict inventory needs, so you know how much stock to keep. They can also analyze campaign creatives to suggest tweaks that resonate more with your target audience. You’ll spend less time guessing and more time refining.

Think about analyzing how Gen Z customers interact with your TikTok ads. AI can review thousands of data points, spot patterns, and recommend changes for your next campaign.

Your turn

Choosing the right ecommerce metrics is about focusing on what drives growth rather than tracking every number. As you gain insight, remember to create a narrative around your data to make it easy for everyone to understand what’s happening. Show how each metric relates to the next. Experiment with segments, test new approaches, and adopt analytics and reporting tools that help you visualize and share insights.

This approach will help you make more informed decisions, communicate value to stakeholders, and adapt quickly to market changes.