The Ecommerce KPIs Every Store Owner Should Track

Who it is for

Store owners who want numbers that lead to actions

Time needed

An hour to set up, 20 minutes a week

What you need

Shopify admin access and cost data

Shopify's admin will happily show you dozens of numbers every morning. The trouble is that most of them don't lead to a decision. A store owner sees sessions dip on a Tuesday, worries for an hour, and changes nothing, because the number never pointed to a cause.

This guide sets out the ecommerce KPIs I track for the stores I work on, what each one tells you, the formula, where to find it in Shopify, and a simple weekly routine so the numbers turn into actions. Report names and definitions come from Shopify's Help Center, as checked on 7 November 2026.

How to choose your KPIs

A KPI is only useful if a change in it would make you do something differently. I group store KPIs under four questions, in this order, because each one depends on the one before:

1. Traffic: are the right people arriving?
2. Conversion: are they buying?
3. Order economics: is each order worth having?
4. Retention: do customers come back?

Pick one headline number for the business, usually gross profit or contribution per month, and use the rest to explain why it moved.

The core ecommerce KPIs to track

To find any of these, go to Analytics > Reports in your Shopify admin and use the Category filter. Shopify's pricing page lists "200+ real-time reports, plus custom analytics" on Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus.

Traffic KPIs

Sessions on their own say little. What matters is where they come from and where they land. Use Sessions by landing page to see which pages bring people in, and the acquisition reports to split traffic by channel and referrer.

The question to ask each week: did the channels that convert best grow or shrink? A jump in sessions from a viral post that converts at a tenth of your normal rate isn't progress. Tag links you control, such as email and social bios, with UTM parameters so they show up clearly.

Conversion KPIs and the funnel

Shopify defines conversion rate as "the percentage of sessions that resulted in a purchase". The Conversion rate breakdown report splits it into steps, each shown as a share of all sessions:

1. Sessions with cart additions: sessions where a customer added a product to a cart.
2. Sessions that reached checkout: sessions with user input during checkout.
3. Sessions that completed checkout: sessions where a customer purchased.

This is where the funnel earns its keep, because each drop points to a different fix:

• Low add to cart rate: product pages, pricing, images or traffic quality.
• Carts that don't reach checkout: surprise shipping costs, a confusing cart or a missing express checkout button.
• Checkouts that don't complete: payment options, unexpected costs, or trust.

Baymard Institute's research, updated 28 October 2026, puts the documented average cart abandonment rate at 70.22%, based on 50 studies, with extra costs (40%) and slow delivery (20%) the top checkout-specific reasons. My Shopify CRO audit checklist walks through the fixes for each step.

Order economics KPIs

Revenue tells you how busy you are. Margin tells you whether it's worth it.

• Average order value (AOV). Total sales divided by orders. Raise it with bundles, free shipping thresholds and relevant add-ons.
• Gross margin. Shopify calculates margin as (net sales − cost) ÷ net sales × 100, in its profit reports such as Gross profit by product. It only counts items that had a cost recorded when they sold, so fill in Cost per item on every product.
• Contribution per order. Gross profit minus payment fees, shipping you absorb and marketing cost per order. This isn't a standard Shopify report, so I keep it in a simple spreadsheet.

For quick what-if checks, the profit margin calculator helps, and my guide to pricing products for profit shows how to fix a thin margin.

Retention KPIs

• Returning customer rate. The share of customers in a period who had bought before. Find it in the customers reports.
• Repeat purchase interval. The typical number of days between first and second order. Time your follow-up emails to land just before it.
• Customer lifetime value. Average gross profit per customer over a set period, such as 12 months. Compare it with customer acquisition cost: if it costs more to win a customer than they're worth in a year, growth makes you poorer.

Retention KPIs move slowly, so read them monthly, not weekly.

Operations KPIs

These rarely make dashboards, but they drive reviews and repeat orders:

• Refund and return rate, overall and by product. A single product with a high return rate usually has a sizing, description or quality problem.
• Time to ship, from order to fulfillment.
• Stockouts on your top 20 products, from the inventory reports.
• Searches with no results, a Shopify behavior report that shows what shoppers wanted and couldn't find.

A weekly, monthly and quarterly routine

Keep it to 20 minutes a week. Write down one sentence on what changed and one action you'll take. Over a quarter, those notes become more useful than any dashboard.

Which KPIs matter most at each stage

The same ten numbers matter at every size, but the one you should obsess over changes as the store grows.

On a brand-new store with a few hundred sessions a month, conversion rate swings wildly from week to week because the numbers are small. Add to cart rate settles sooner, so it's the better early signal. Once you have a few thousand sessions a month, the full funnel becomes reliable enough to act on.

Set up your KPI dashboard in Shopify

1. Enter cost per item on every product and variant, in the Pricing section of each product.
2. Open the reports. Go to Analytics > Reports and filter by category: Behavior, Sales, Profit margin and Customers.
3. Save the reports you use. Customize the date range and columns, then save them so your weekly review takes one click.
4. Add UTM tags to email, social and partner links.
5. Record contribution and acquisition cost in a spreadsheet each month, using your ad and app invoices.

Common mistakes

• Tracking revenue only. Revenue can grow while profit shrinks.
• Chasing someone else's benchmark. Conversion rates vary hugely by product, price and traffic source.
• Reading daily swings. Use weekly totals and compare with the same week last year where you can.
• Blank cost fields, so profit reports show nothing useful.
• No action attached. If a KPI never changes what you do, drop it.

KPI checklist

• One headline number chosen for the business.
• Traffic tracked by channel and landing page.
• Conversion funnel reviewed weekly.
• Cost per item entered, and gross margin reviewed monthly.
• Contribution per order and acquisition cost tracked in a sheet.
• Returning customer rate and lifetime value reviewed monthly or quarterly.
• Refund rate, time to ship and stockouts checked monthly.
• One written action after every weekly review.

Next steps

Set up the reports this week, then do your first 20-minute review next Monday and write down the biggest drop in the funnel. That drop is your next project. If you'd like help finding why it happens, my Shopify CRO service starts from $500, and I'm happy to review your store for free first.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Behavior reports, Shopify Help Center
2. Profit reports, Shopify Help Center
3. Default reports, Shopify Help Center
4. Shopify pricing, Shopify
5. Cart abandonment rate statistics, Baymard Institute

Related services and work

Written by Ashraf Siddik

I'm a Shopify developer and CRO specialist. I have built and improved Shopify stores since 2018, completed more than 1,000 projects, and hold a 4.96 average rating across 719 client reviews.

About me · Client reviews