Marketing guru Neil Patel once wrote that “Having access to statistical information from all areas of your online marketing and sales activities gives you an advantage over competitors that do not have this information.” Patel strongly believes that collecting data is an essential step for eCommerce business owners if they want to better understand their marketing efforts, figure out which channels are performing the best, and determine what steps they have taken in order to increase conversions.
However, merely tracking sales and marketing trends isn’t enough to transform your business. If you want your data to help you transform your business and reach tangible goals, you need to know which metrics to track, why they’re important, and how to interpret your results. Here’s how to get started:
Types of eCommerce Metrics
When you’re trying to grow your business and determine the success of your marketing campaigns, you should keep track of metrics within these 5 key areas:
- Audience. Collecting information about your target audience will provide you with better insights into your customers’ demographics, including their age, gender, location, and even their personal interests. This data can be used to create targeted ads and personalized shopping journeys.
- Acquisition. Whether you’re advertising your latest products with paid ads, email newsletters, or your company’s Instagram page, the acquisition metric will show you which marketing channels are attracting the most people to your website.
- Behavior. As a visitor browses your site, behavior analytics can track specific metrics including the content that people click on, which related items they view, how much time they spend on the site, and which products they end up purchasing. Behavior analytics could also include bounce rate, cart abandonment, or other actions taken by your online guests.
- Conversions. After people become customers, conversion data can track which campaigns cause sales to increase or decrease over time. This metric can help you discover the most beneficial marketing tactics for future campaigns.
- Paid marketing campaigns. If you use paid ads on social media platforms, such as Facebook or Instagram, you can determine the ROI of your campaigns by analyzing the data collected from these sites. For instance, you can view the average number of users who saw your ad versus the number of people who actually clicked on the link.
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