12 E-commerce Metrics That Matter (And How to Track Them)

Profit is the metric

Plenty of stores doing seven figures a year lose money. Gross revenue hides the cost of getting and fulfilling each order. The metrics below show whether each order, each customer and each channel earns its place.

The profit metrics

• AOV (average order value). Total revenue divided by the number of orders. Track it by channel and by cohort as well as blended.
• Contribution margin. Revenue minus product cost and the variable costs of the order: shipping, payment fees, fulfillment, discounts. It is the real per-order profit.
• LTV (lifetime value). Total contribution per customer over their lifetime. Compare it to CAC.
• CAC (customer acquisition cost). Ad spend divided by new customers. It has to sit well below LTV.
• LTV to CAC ratio. A ratio of 3 to 1 is a common healthy target. Below 1 to 1, you lose money on each customer.

The retention metrics

• Repeat purchase rate. The share of customers who order more than once. It is the strongest single predictor of long-term profit.
• Time between orders. The median days from first to second purchase. It tells you when to send a win-back message.
• Cohort retention. The share of each month's new customers still buying 30, 60 and 90 days later.

The efficiency metrics

• Refund and return rate. By product and category. High returns destroy margin.
• Inventory turnover. Product cost divided by average inventory. Low turnover ties up cash.
• Channel ROAS. Revenue divided by ad spend, per channel. Move budget toward the winners.
• Discount depth impact. Margin with and without a promotion. Discounts often buy revenue at a loss.

The same metrics on a sample store

The Analyst's sample file is an order export from Cascade Supply Co.: 24,623 orders over 180 days. Here is what six of the twelve look like on it:

The gap between 53.8% gross margin and 41.4% contribution is the lesson in one line. Shipping, fees and discounts take 12.4 points of every sales dollar, and that is before any ad spend.

The other six, LTV, CAC, the LTV to CAC ratio, time between orders, cohort retention and inventory turnover, need columns the sample file does not carry, such as ad spend, stock levels or enough follow-up time. They are not in the table because there is no sample figure for them.

Channel ROAS on a sample client

For channel ROAS, a sample marketing export for a sample client, Ridgeway Coffee, shows the pattern. It spent $78.3K, brought in $216.8K and logged 2,055 conversions at $38.10 each, a blended return of 2.77x. By channel, Klaviyo Email returns 6.87x, Google Ads 3.20x and Pinterest 0.69x on $11.1K of spend. That is a budget meeting in three numbers: Pinterest costs more than it returns, and email is the efficient channel to protect.

How to compute them from one export

Export your orders as a CSV with order date, customer ID, product, amounts, discount, shipping and status. Add ad spend by channel from your ad platforms if you want CAC and ROAS. Then ask a question that names the metrics and the breakdown you want, for example: "Compute AOV, contribution margin, repeat purchase rate and return rate, by month and by channel."

The Analyst's e-commerce metric pack runs the same calculations on the same file every time, so the numbers match from one run to the next. It charts the trends and flags channels or products that fall below the targets you set.

Which ones to watch weekly

You do not need all twelve every week. Track contribution margin and repeat purchase rate weekly, because they move with decisions you are making now. Review LTV to CAC and cohort retention monthly. Look at inventory turnover and the return rate by product each quarter. If one number must carry the whole dashboard, make it contribution margin, because it is the one that falls when discounts, shipping or ads get away from you.

Try it

Open the sample file to see the Analyst compute these on the Cascade orders without signing up. The AI e-commerce analytics page covers what else it reads from a store export, and the LTV calculator gives a quick estimate when you only have averages. For the marketing side of the same questions, read blended ROAS versus CAC. ProfitFalcon computes these from your own store export, with a 14-day trial.