Selling online becomes fiercer every day with more competitors, more products, and more sales channels to be mindful of. Maintaining a competitive business and knowing that you’re on a trajectory to grow is not simple, but the right data and metrics can help.
When it comes to analyzing an ecommerce business, the larger your product catalog, the more sales channels you use, and the different technology you need to run it all can be overwhelming. Once you’ve consolidated your data, understanding what to measure and drawing insights is another challenge. I’ll be walking you through what all ecommerce brands are measuring and highlighting key metrics that can help you evaluate your fulfillment strategy to perform at the top of your game.
Standard ecommerce sales analytics offer meaningful insights into various aspects of the business, ranging from website traffic and customer behavior to sales trends and marketing efficiency. These include:
- Sales revenue
- Conversion rate
- Average order value
- Cart abandonment rate
- Customer acquisition cost
- Customer lifetime value
- Website traffic
- Return on advertising spend
- Bounce rate
- Customer retention rate
Sales revenue is the North Star for many businesses, but capturing average order value and customer lifetime value dive deeper into the revenue category. Next up is your overall conversion rate, and by drilling down, you can identify cart abandonment, bounce, and customer retention rates. Additional marketing metrics include calculating customer acquisition costs and return on advertising spend while measuring overall web traffic.
While those are all critical to know for your business, let’s take a close look at a few that deliver insights to optimize your fulfillment strategy.
Trending Sales to Take Action
It's not an overstatement to say that sales revenue is the lifeline of a business—without it, the business wouldn't exist. Therefore, it's crucial not just to generate sales revenue but to understand the trends within it, as this information is key to better planning and preparing your fulfillment strategy.
For instance, if you notice an upward trend in sales during a certain period, it's important to plan ahead by sourcing enough inventory to avoid stockouts and overselling, both of which can lead to customer dissatisfaction and lost sales. Similarly, by keeping a close eye on your sales revenue, you can quickly respond to market changes and competitor disruptions, allowing you to make necessary adjustments to your listings and maintain your market position.
While an easy adjustment can be made observing competitors’ listing prices, a less obvious factor among consumer behavior is the impact of fast and free shipping. One survey shows 71% of consumers are more likely to buy items if they come with free shipping. When evaluating slowing sales trends or your position among competitors, this can no longer be an afterthought.
Retaining Customers and Boosting Lifetime Value
Understanding your customer retention trends is equally vital. A stable or increasing customer retention rate indicates that you're meeting or exceeding customers' expectations, including their experience with the fulfillment process. It also means you can more accurately forecast future sales, leading to better inventory management and fulfillment planning.
However, a drop in this rate might signal a need to revisit your fulfillment strategy to ensure you're providing the experience your customers expect. In fact, according to Zippia, 72% of customers are willing to switch to a competitor after one bad experience. This emphasizes the value of a well-maintained fulfillment operation and the significant cost for every delay or wrong item shipped.
Making the initial sale is the hardest challenge in the journey, don’t let fulfillment woes hold you back. Whether you’re fulfilling orders in-house, outsourcing to a third-party logistics (3PL) provider, or executing a combination of both, having visibility across your operation can help you retain the sale and the customer. From accurate inventory counts to distributing inventory to offer fast shipping, insight offers you flexibility to adapt as you grow.
Assessing Order Values to Find Balance
From trending sales to retaining the customer, fulfillment matters. Or I should say, free shipping matters, and doing what you can on the backend to make it work is the real battle. Reported in Shopify’s Commerce Trends 2023, on average, customers order 25% more items and increase average order values by $22 with free shipping compared to brands who do not offer the inclusive fulfillment option. Your average order value is proven to be affected by flexible fulfillment options, but at what point does free shipping make sense?
Establishing successful profit margins by product is important, but when considering what shipping methods you can provide to your customers, the average order value is critical. Jungle Scout notes that during the peak of the pandemic, 66% of consumers expected free shipping for all online orders while 80% expected free shipping when ordering a certain dollar amount. Free shipping isn’t an available option for all businesses for every order, but finding a balance is always a great way to start. Assessing where you can potentially earn more sales while enduring more of the fulfillment cost can be a strategic way to acquire new customers, increase sales revenue, and grow your business.
Partnering with Extensiv to Scale
As your business grows and begins to scale, translating sales insights into fulfillment excellence shouldn’t be a nightmare. Knowing where your customers are located and how you can reduce the costs of last-mile delivery by expanding your distribution network can be a gamechanger. Strategically locating inventory closer to your customers by partnering with a 3PL may slightly increase the fulfillment costs overall, but the potential sales increase and shipping savings may well be worth it.
At Extensiv, we offer solutions to manage inventory, orders, and warehouses with ease so you can focus on uncovering insights and growing your business with the right technology. Learn more about how we can grow with you and refine your fulfillment operation by requesting a demo today. If you’re looking to grow, don’t miss out on the right partner and check out our Fulfillment Marketplace to connect with a 3PL that fits your needs.
