Web Analytics - KPIs that matters most in ecommerce websites

Given that the goal of eCommerce websites is to sell and maximize the dollars invested, common key performance indicators are orders, conversion rates, revenue, CAC, ROI, and CLTV.

Non-commerce sites are generally outlooked in the more prominent world of eCommerce websites. Therefore, you can take cues from non-commerce websites and use the key indicators that matter a lot because they tell us interesting customer behavior insights that lead to growing sales.

• Visitor loyalty
• Recency
• The length of visit
• The depth of visit
• Micro conversions (none sales-related conversions)

Let's dive right into why these key indictors from non-commerce sites would matter to eCommerce owners.

Visitor loyalty

It is defined as the frequency of visits to your website for a specific period. You will get the data for the average visits per visitor.

To increase visitor loyalty for your site, set a target of a particular number of visitors that you should achieve over a specific period and analyze the trends of your progress towards the goal set by you.

Compare your performance over the period and ensure that you achieve the predefined percentage of web traffic.

In addition, it will help you know about the characteristics of your visitors. Finally, you should update your website frequently depending upon web analytics for increased web traffic.

This data from Heap shows the number of sessions over the unique user count ratio. So it shows in a given month that if the number of multiple sessions by a user is high, visitor loyalty is good.

The data compares those who visited the service page versus those who didn't visit the service page. You can see that the engagement is improving over time, which is a good indication site visitor is engaging more.

Recency

It is the number of repeated visits to your website—the more recent visitors visit your site from the prior visit, the better.

For example, if you have set the target of the recency of visits KPIs to be one day ago, it means that you want visitors to visit your site every day to enjoy the so-called valuable content on your site.

It is the normal set target for a site that is non-transactional. Here you will become more advantageous of the repeat visits.

This will help you to know whether your site is performing well or not. For example, if your web analytics data shows that 80% of the audience consists of new visits, it is time to improvise upon your site content, hook, and design.

If you create incentives for repeated visitors, you can surely enjoy success and measure your success through web analytics.

Here is an example from data from a site I advise. This is one way to look at how recently a specific cohort of users will return to your website.

Data shows the users who visited the site for the first time in a certain month revisited the site x months later—highlighted in yellow shows that frequent site revisits are improving over time.

The length of visit

It refers to the quality of visits during a reporting period depending on how long each visit lasts. It is the most common and the most prominent KPI used in non-commerce sites. If you get a clear picture of the distribution of this KPI by analyzing your web analytics report, then it is easier to proceed further.

Suppose your site could increase this KPI if you make them stay on your website for one minute long, then take measures to convert more visits into a successful one by engaging your customers.

Give importance to the visitor's satisfaction, and they will stay with you for a long period and even until eternity. Identify your own goals and measure this KPI for success.

Here is an interesting view of using the length of visit.

The number of unique visitors to the service page is growing, and the time between the first session to service page is shrinking. This behavior change by the website visitor is achieved by optimizing the call-to-action placements.

The depth of visit

It is mainly concerned with the number of pages consumed by your visitor in the reporting period. It is important to note that most websites are now web pages and not a single page. Therefore, it is more powerful than the average page views per visitor. It helps us to have a broad picture of our customer experience. Here also it helps to improve our goals and measure success.

Micro Conversions (e.g., Site Registrations, Viewed Contact Us, Survey Participation)

Conversions may not ring the bell for those running any e-commerce sites. Still, you may have a registrations page for users to receive newsletters, contact forms to contact the site owner, or surveys to ask your users important questions that matter to you.

These practical actions that you may want your users to take are conversions, and it is highly recommended to tweak your analytics tools to measure these conversions and monitor its drop-offs through funnels.

Thus, these are the important KPIs to be noted in a none e-commerce site. If you give importance to them, you could dream of success and experience it. Here are a few recommendations for the actions taken according to your web analytics data obtained

• Positively work with your goals measured against these KPIs.
• Segment the data. It will give you the key insights into how to drive the web traffic on your site. Find out the keywords that drive the valuable traffic segment to your website.
• Find out the most important acquisition sources for visitor loyalty and length of visit. Analyze the nature of content people with long visits consume. By this type of segmentation, you can reach your destination, i.e., the measures for improvement.

This micro conversion is important for eCommerce sites if you're running ads and want to retarget those who have done specific micro conversions. In many cases, that helps your paid advertising to be more effective.

All these valuable KPIs will help you increase the quality of traffic to your site and make it a better-performing website with an increased number of loyal visitors.

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