Ecommerce Metrics: What a New Online Store Should Track

You have launched your online store, the first orders are coming in and your campaigns are running. You open your analytics and see dozens of numbers: conversion rate, LTV, cost per lead, pages per session, bounce rate, returns and more. It feels as if you need to master all of them at once. In the first months, that is a mistake.

A new store needs only a few metrics, but they have to be the ones that flag a problem early and show you where to act. In this guide we cover eight core metrics:

• revenue;
• number of orders;
• average order value;
• conversion rate;
• traffic sources;
• return rate;
• repeat purchases;
• the ratio of operating costs to revenue.

For each one, we explain how to calculate it, how often to check it and what to do when the number looks bad. Further down you will also find how to set up tracking in GA4 and in your store platform, a weekly and monthly review routine, and the mistakes worth avoiding. If you are still in the planning stage, start with our guide on how to open an online store and come back here after launch.

Revenue, number of orders and average order value

Revenue and number of orders

These are your store's vital signs. Until you have a steady flow of customers, every other metric is secondary. Look at both numbers together, not just at total revenue: sometimes revenue holds up thanks to a few large purchases while the actual number of customers is falling. One month with a big business order can easily hide a decline in your regular customer flow.

Track both metrics consistently and compare day over day, week over week and month over month. Once you have a full year of data, also compare against the same period last year: around seasonal peaks such as Black Friday, the run-up to Christmas and the summer sales, the numbers jump, while public holidays and the quiet weeks after a big sale can pull them down.

If the number of orders drops sharply two days in a row with no seasonal reason, treat it as a warning sign. In that case:

• check that your campaigns are live, the budget has not run out and no ads have been rejected;
• make sure your best-selling products are in stock;
• look for technical problems on the site: a checkout page that does not load, failing payments or a form that does not submit;
• go through the purchase journey yourself, on a phone, all the way to the thank-you page.

There is no single "right" growth rate for every store. What matters is the trend: a steady month-on-month increase in orders tells you the store is heading in the right direction, even if the pace is slow.

Average order value

Average order value (AOV) shows how much a customer spends on average in a single order. The calculation is simple: divide revenue by the number of orders. As a purely illustrative example, €45,000 in revenue from 150 orders gives you an AOV of €300.

AOV has a direct effect on profit. It is often easier to raise average order value by 10% than to grow traffic by the same amount, because you are working with people who have already decided to buy.

Checking AOV once a week is enough, but always look at the trend. If it is falling, it may be because:

• your higher-priced products are out of stock;
• customers mostly buy during promotions;
• your advertising is bringing in an audience that is too cold and does not yet know the brand.

To raise it, add bundles, recommend complementary products on the product page and in the cart, and use offers such as free shipping above a certain amount. Set that threshold slightly above your current AOV, so the customer is motivated to add one more item.

There is no universal "right" AOV either. At this stage the only question is whether it covers your advertising, shipping and product costs. That is your store's unit economics, and without healthy unit economics, growth simply makes the losses bigger.

Conversion rate: how many visitors actually buy

Conversion rate is the percentage of store visitors who place an order. If 1,000 people visit the site and 10 of them buy, your conversion rate is 1%.

There is no single number that is right for every store. It depends on your niche, product price, traffic channels and device. Low-priced impulse purchases convert better than furniture, electronics or expensive jewellery, which people think about for several days while comparing prices. Traffic from a retargeting campaign also converts better than cold traffic from social media. So the most useful benchmark is your own store over time, with conversion checked separately for each channel and each device.

Check your conversion rate once a week. Most platforms, including Shopify, WooCommerce and Wix, show it in their built-in reports, and Google Analytics 4 calculates it once you have set up ecommerce events.

What to do when conversion is low

If you have traffic but few orders, the problem is almost always on the site: buying is inconvenient, trust is missing or visitors lack the information they need to decide. Here is what to check:

• Checkout. Cut the form down to the fields you really need, allow guest checkout without registration, and show shipping costs early rather than only at the final step.
• Payment methods. Customers expect to pay by card, and depending on the market and niche, also with Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, buy-now-pay-later services such as Klarna, or local options like iDEAL in the Netherlands or MB WAY in Portugal.
• Mobile. In small stores most purchases start on a phone. Walk through the journey on a mobile device: button sizes, a numeric keyboard for the phone field, a checkout page that loads quickly.
• Product page. Good photos from several angles, a clear description with dimensions and materials, delivery times and a visible returns policy.
• Trust. Genuine reviews, company details, a phone number and a WhatsApp button, terms and conditions and a privacy policy.
• Accessibility. In the EU, the European Accessibility Act now covers many online shops. A site built to WCAG guidelines is not only easier to keep compliant but also more comfortable for every shopper.

For more on how to structure a page that converts, see our guide to landing page design.

Traffic sources: where your buyers come from

You need to understand where your customers come from: Google Ads, organic search, Facebook and Instagram, WhatsApp messages and newsletters, referrals from other sites or direct traffic. The dangerous situation is when most of your sales depend on a single channel. All it takes is a paused campaign, an algorithm change or a spike in cost per click, and revenue collapses.

Once a week, check for each channel:

• how many orders it brought in;
• the average order value from that channel;
• its conversion rate;
• where advertising pays for itself and where it does not.

To make this data reliable, tag every link in your ads and newsletters with UTM parameters, link Google Ads to GA4 and set up the Meta Pixel together with the Conversions API. Without that, a large share of your sales will show up as "direct" or "unknown". We explain how to bring all sources into a single picture in our guide to end-to-end marketing analytics.

If one channel suddenly drops, act straight away: check the campaign settings, test an additional channel and strengthen whatever does not depend on ad spend. The goal at the early stage is diversification: ideally, at least two or three channels bring in sales on a regular basis.

Channels worth developing in parallel

• Google Shopping and Performance Max. Product ads with an image and price, powered by a product feed in Google Merchant Center.
• Organic search. Category and product pages with good content, clean structure and structured data bring traffic that does not disappear when the budget runs out. It is a slow channel, so start early. Our SEO services also cover optimisation for AI search.
• Your own customer list. A newsletter and a WhatsApp broadcast list, built with customers' explicit consent, give you a channel you control, one that does not depend on anyone else's algorithm.

Returns and repeat purchases

Return rate

Returns are a sensitive indicator of business quality. They reflect not only product quality but also how accurate your product descriptions are, how orders are packed and how delivery works.

Return rates vary a lot by niche. In fashion and footwear they are naturally high, because customers order several sizes and send back whatever does not fit. For consumables or digital products they are much lower. So compare your rate with previous months for the same store, and check it per product and per category: quite often a single product is responsible for a large share of returns.

Analyse this metric once a month, because returns have a delayed effect: customers send items back days or weeks after buying. In the EU, consumers generally have a 14-day right to withdraw from distance purchases, so make sure your returns policy is clear and in line with the rules in the markets you sell to. This is not legal advice; check the details with a professional for your specific case.

If your return rate is high:

• review your photos and descriptions again. Do they create expectations that reality cannot meet?
• add accurate size charts, specifications and photos that show scale;
• check what condition products arrive in and what happens to them in transit;
• ask every customer who returns an item why, and record the answers in a spreadsheet or your CRM.

Returns eat directly into profit: shipping both ways, a product that cannot always be resold and your team's time. You cannot afford to ignore them.

Repeat purchases

If a customer buys once and disappears, the business has to pay again and again to bring in new customers. Repeat purchases, on the other hand, make the model stable, because you have already paid to acquire that customer.

Measure the percentage of customers who place another order within a fixed period, for example one to three months. Choose the period based on the product: cosmetics and pet food are bought again quickly, furniture much less often. Again, there is no single right number for every niche, but a falling rate, or a very low one in a category where people should come back, is a sign of a problem.

Checking once a month is enough. If customers are not coming back:

• start a newsletter or WhatsApp messages for customers who have opted in;
• offer a perk or a discount on their next order;
• send a reminder around the time the product is likely to run out;
• ask for a review after the purchase, which also brings the customer back to the site.

We wrote about channels such as WhatsApp and Instagram in our messenger marketing guide. Keep in mind that in the EU, marketing emails and messages generally require prior consent under the GDPR and the ePrivacy rules, and your customer database has to be handled in line with data protection law. Again, this is not legal advice.

Your customer base is an asset. It is often forgotten in the early stage, yet it is exactly what reduces your dependence on advertising.

Cost-to-revenue ratio: what you actually keep

This is the last metric on the list, but one of the most important strategically. It shows how much money is left after all expenses.

Add up your spending on advertising, shipping, payment and platform fees, packaging, rent, salaries and tool subscriptions, then divide by revenue. If costs eat up almost all of your revenue, the store is running on a razor-thin margin, and any small drop in sales will push it into a loss.

It is worth tracking two numbers separately:

• Customer acquisition cost (CAC). How much it cost on average to bring in a new customer: ad spend in a channel divided by the number of new customers from that channel.
• ROAS. How much revenue each euro of advertising brought in. A high ROAS does not guarantee profit if your product margin is low.

Analyse this ratio once a month, together with your accountant or using reports from your accounting software. If the number is critical:

• review your prices and your free-shipping threshold;
• pause campaigns that do not pay for themselves;
• remove products you do not make money on from promotions;
• compare rates from courier companies and payment providers.

How to measure: tools and tracking setup

Metrics are only useful if the data is correct. Before you draw any conclusions, make sure your tracking is set up properly.

Your store platform

Shopify, WooCommerce, Webflow Ecommerce and Wix all show revenue, orders, average order value and usually conversion rate and returning customers as well. This is the most reliable source for sales numbers, because it is based on the orders themselves.

Google Analytics 4

GA4 shows your traffic sources and how visitors behave. To make it work for a store, you need to set up the recommended ecommerce events: view_item, add_to_cart, begin_checkout and purchase, including the value and the products. That way you can see at which step buyers drop off. Most platforms offer a built-in integration or a plugin, and you can also work through Google Tag Manager. Full instructions are in Google's official documentation.

Advertising platforms

Google Ads and Meta measure conversions themselves, and their numbers almost never match GA4 or your store platform exactly. That is normal: each system uses its own attribution model. Pick one source of truth for your decisions and check the others against it.

One report for all metrics

When you have several sources, it helps to bring everything together in a single Looker Studio dashboard or a spreadsheet that updates automatically. The connections between your store, CRM, ad platforms and report can be built in n8n, Make or Zapier. As the business grows, you can move to a full BI system, as we explain in our guide to business intelligence systems.

Review routine: what to check every week and every month

For metrics to work, you have to look at them regularly, not only when something seems wrong. Here is a simple routine.

Every day, in five minutes

• revenue and number of orders compared with yesterday and with the same day last week;
• that campaigns are running and the site and payments are working.

Every week

• average order value and its trend;
• conversion rate, including a breakdown by device;
• traffic sources: orders, AOV and return on ad spend for each channel.

Every month

• return rate by product and by reason;
• repeat purchases;
• the cost-to-revenue ratio and customer acquisition cost.

For every review, write down what you saw and what you decided to change. After a few months, this log will become your most useful tool for understanding what really works in your store.

Common mistakes in measuring an online store

Looking only at revenue

High revenue does not mean profit. A store can grow its revenue while losing more on every order, if advertising and shipping are too expensive.

Comparing yourself with other people's averages

Averages published online are collected from other stores, in other markets and other niches. They can give you a general sense of direction, but the most important metric is your own store's trend.

Making decisions on too little data

Ten orders a week are not enough to decide that one campaign is better than another. Wait until you have enough data before you pause a channel or change your prices.

Not checking that tracking works

A purchase event recorded twice, a thank-you page without a tracking code or a payment on an external page that breaks the source attribution will skew every report. Place a test order after every change to the site and check that it was recorded correctly.

Measuring everything at once

Dozens of metrics create noise, and in the end nobody looks at any of them. Start with the eight metrics in this guide and add new ones only when they answer a clear business question.

How RJL Studio helps online stores measure and grow

At RJL Studio we build online stores on Webflow, WordPress and Wix and set up proper tracking from day one: GA4 ecommerce events, Google Tag Manager, the Meta Pixel with the Conversions API, UTM parameters and a Google Merchant Center connection. We connect your store to your CRM and WhatsApp, build Looker Studio reports and set up repeat-purchase automations in n8n, Make and Zapier.

Want to know what is really happening in your store? Read about our automation and integration services or get in touch and we will get back to you.

Frequently asked questions

Which metrics matter most for a new online store?

In the first months, eight metrics are enough: revenue, number of orders, average order value, conversion rate, traffic sources, return rate, repeat purchases and the cost-to-revenue ratio. Together they show whether there is demand, whether the site converts, whether customers are satisfied and whether the business is profitable.

What is a good conversion rate for an online store?

There is no single number that fits everyone. Conversion rate depends on your niche, product price, channel and device, and expensive products convert less often than cheap ones. It is better to compare your store with itself over time and improve the steps where buyers drop off.

How do you calculate average order value?

Divide total revenue for a period by the number of orders in the same period. For example, €45,000 from 150 orders gives an average order value of €300. Check it once a week and compare it across traffic channels as well.

Is the store platform's report enough?

For counting sales and orders, the reports in Shopify, WooCommerce, Webflow or Wix are the most reliable source. To understand where buyers come from and where they drop off, you also need Google Analytics 4 with ecommerce events and correctly configured pixels on your ad platforms.

How often should you check your metrics?

Check revenue and orders briefly every day. Review average order value, conversion rate and traffic sources once a week. Look at returns, repeat purchases and the cost-to-revenue ratio once a month, because changes in them show up with a delay.