Ecommerce KPI definitions: the numbers worth reviewing every week

Sessions, users and channel mix show how people arrived. They do not prove commercial value on their own. Watch for sudden shifts in paid, organic, email, referral and direct traffic, then check whether a tracking change or campaign launch explains the movement. Consistent campaign tags make this much easier; use the UTM Builder and UTM Parser before activity goes live.

Track conversion rate, orders, revenue, average order value and, where appropriate, add-to-basket and checkout completion. Define conversion rate once—usually orders divided by sessions for a trading view—and keep the definition unchanged when comparing periods. Segment important differences by device, new versus returning customer, product group and channel.

Revenue is not a profit KPI. Include gross margin or contribution, returns, discount depth, shipping subsidy and advertising spend where data is available. For paid activity, review ROAS alongside the break-even target, not in isolation. The ROAS Calculator is useful for checking the headline ratio, but the business must supply realistic cost assumptions.

For each significant movement, write one sentence for what happened, one for the likely driver and one for the decision. For example: “Paid social revenue rose 18%, driven by a higher conversion rate on the new laptop landing page; keep budget flat until we have another week of margin-adjusted results.” This prevents a dashboard from becoming a collection of unexplained numbers.