14 eCommerce KPIs Every Growing Brand Should Track

Your Shopify dashboard says sales are up. Your marketplace reports say something slightly different. Your accountant's numbers, which show up weeks later, tell a third story. When every channel reports its own version of the truth, it's hard to know which numbers to trust, let alone which ones to act on.

You're not alone in that. Online sales keep growing, and the U.S. Census Bureau's quarterly eCommerce report shows eCommerce made up 17.1 percent of U.S. retail sales in the second quarter of 2026, up 12.2 percent from a year earlier. More orders and more channels mean more data, but not necessarily more clarity.

This guide will walk you through the 14 eCommerce KPIs that matter most for growing brands, how to calculate each one, and how to keep them accurate as you add channels.

What Are eCommerce Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)?

eCommerce key performance indicators (KPIs) are the measurable numbers that show how well your online business is performing. They track how many visitors buy, how much each order is worth, what it costs to win a customer, and how efficiently you turn inventory into profit.

A metric becomes a KPI when it's tied to a goal and you'd change a decision because of it. Page views are a metric. Conversion rate is a KPI if you're working to turn more visitors into buyers.

How to Choose the Right KPIs for Your Brand

Tracking everything is the same as tracking nothing. Most growing brands do best with a short list, usually eight to 12 KPIs, spread across four areas:

• Sales and customers: Are people finding you, buying, and coming back?

• Profit: Are you making money on each order after every cost?

• Inventory: Are you stocking the right products in the right amounts?

• Fulfillment: Are orders leaving on time, arriving correct, and staying sold?

The 14 KPIs below are grouped the same way, with a simple formula for each one. Pick the ones that match your goals rather than tracking all of them at once.

Sales and Customer eCommerce KPIs

Sales and customer KPIs show how well you attract shoppers, turn them into buyers, and keep them coming back. The six that matter most for growing brands are conversion rate, average order value, customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value, repeat purchase rate, and cart abandonment rate.

1. Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is the percentage of site visitors who place an order.

Formula: Orders ÷ Website sessions × 100

Watch it by channel and device. A drop on mobile alone often points to a checkout problem rather than a demand problem.

2. Average Order Value (AOV)

AOV is the average amount a customer spends per order.

Formula: Total revenue ÷ Number of orders

Raising AOV with bundles, kits, or free shipping thresholds is often cheaper than finding new customers.

3. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

CAC is what you spend on sales and marketing to win one new customer.

Formula: Total sales and marketing spend ÷ Number of new customers

Calculate it by channel when you can. A blended number can hide one channel that loses money on every customer it brings in.

4. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

CLV estimates how much revenue, or better yet gross profit, a customer brings in over the whole relationship.

Formula: Average order value × Purchases per year × Years as a customer

Compare it to CAC. A common rule of thumb is that CLV should be about three times CAC, though the right ratio depends on your margins and cash flow. If you sell subscriptions, our guide to key metrics for subscription businesses goes deeper on retention.

5. Repeat Purchase Rate

Repeat purchase rate is the share of customers who've ordered more than once.

Formula: Customers with two or more orders ÷ Total customers × 100

It's one of the clearest signs of product fit, especially for consumables and replenishable products.

6. Cart Abandonment Rate

Cart abandonment rate is the share of shopping carts that never become orders.

Formula: (1 − Completed orders ÷ Carts created) × 100

High abandonment is normal. The Baymard Institute's cart abandonment research puts the average documented rate at about 70 percent across 50 studies, so focus on improving your own trend instead of chasing zero.

Profit eCommerce KPIs

Profit KPIs show whether growth is actually making you money. Revenue can rise while margins shrink, so gross margin and contribution margin belong on every eCommerce dashboard.

7. Gross Margin

Gross margin is the share of revenue left after the cost of the products you sold.

Formula: (Revenue − Cost of goods sold) ÷ Revenue × 100

Use your true product cost, including freight and duties, instead of the supplier price alone. Our guide to landed cost shows how big that gap can be, and our breakdown of inventory costing methods explains how your valuation method affects the number.

8. Contribution Margin

Contribution margin is what's left from each order after product cost and the costs that rise with every sale, like shipping, payment processing, packaging, and marketplace fees.

Formula: (Revenue − Variable costs) ÷ Revenue × 100

This is where many brands discover that a channel or product isn't as profitable as it looked.

Inventory eCommerce KPIs

Inventory KPIs show whether your cash is working or sitting on a shelf. Inventory turnover, sell-through rate, and stockout rate together tell you if you're buying the right products in the right amounts.

9. Inventory Turnover

Inventory turnover is how many times you sell and replace your inventory in a period.

Formula: Cost of goods sold ÷ Average inventory value

Low turnover ties up cash in slow-moving stock. Our guide to inventory turnover covers how to calculate it and what good looks like.

10. Sell-Through Rate

Sell-through rate is the share of inventory you received that actually sold in a period.

Formula: Units sold ÷ Units received × 100

A low sell-through rate is an early warning sign of dead stock, so check it before you reorder.

11. Stockout Rate

Stockout rate is how often customers try to buy something you don't have.

Formula: Orders that couldn't be filled ÷ Total orders × 100

Stockouts on best sellers cost more than the lost sale. They push shoppers to competitors, and marketplace listings can lose visibility. Better inventory visibility across channels is usually the fix.

Fulfillment eCommerce KPIs

Fulfillment KPIs show whether you're keeping the promises you make at checkout. Perfect order rate, on-time shipping, and return rate affect reviews, repeat purchases, and retailer chargebacks.

12. Perfect Order Rate

Perfect order rate is the share of orders delivered complete, on time, undamaged, and with the correct paperwork.

Formula: Perfect orders ÷ Total orders × 100

It rolls several fulfillment checks into one number, which makes it a strong headline KPI when you sell to wholesale and retail partners.

13. On-Time Shipping Rate

On-time shipping rate is the share of orders that leave your warehouse by the promised ship date.

Formula: Orders shipped on time ÷ Total orders shipped × 100

Track it by channel, since retail and marketplace partners often set their own shipping deadlines and penalties.

14. Return Rate

Return rate is the share of units customers send back.

Formula: Units returned ÷ Units sold × 100

Break returns down by reason and product. A spike on one product usually points to a description, sizing, or quality issue you can fix.

Why eCommerce KPIs Break Across Channels

eCommerce KPIs break when each channel tracks its own numbers. Shopify, Amazon, wholesale orders, and your accounting system all count sales, costs, and inventory a little differently, so the same KPI can show three different values depending on where you look.

Common culprits include returns that hit one system but not another, marketplace fees that never make it into product cost, and inventory counts that update hours apart. When your team spends the first week of every month reconciling spreadsheets, the numbers are already stale by the time anyone acts on them.

How an ERP System Keeps eCommerce KPIs Accurate

An ERP system keeps eCommerce KPIs accurate by pulling orders, inventory, costs, and financials from every channel into one database. Because every KPI is calculated from the same data, your margin, turnover, and fulfillment numbers match across teams and update as orders flow in.

With your storefronts, marketplaces, and wholesale orders connected to Acumatica, your team will be able to build dashboards that show sales, margin, inventory, and fulfillment KPIs side by side. Product costs can include freight and duties, so gross margin reflects what you actually paid, and inventory updates as orders ship from any channel.

During deployment, we help members decide which KPIs belong on each team's dashboard, so the numbers leaders see are the ones they'll actually use.

Track the eCommerce KPIs That Drive Better Decisions

If you've ever looked at three reports and gotten three different answers, you're asking the right questions about your data. The right eCommerce KPIs show whether you're attracting customers, making money on every order, buying the right inventory, and keeping your promises. As you grow, each new storefront, marketplace, or wholesale account adds another place for those numbers to drift, and decisions made on drifting numbers get more expensive every quarter.

So what's next on your journey? Read our blog on multichannel order management and how it keeps orders and inventory in sync, since every KPI on this list depends on it. If you're ready to determine whether your current systems can give you one reliable set of numbers or it's time to graduate, take our ERP Readiness Quiz below.