Many e-commerce operations personnel always talk about UV and PV. Although these two metrics are important, spending all your energy on them is somewhat only focusing on the surface.
With the advancement of refined e-commerce operations, more and more in-depth operational metrics are becoming particularly important. Bounce rate, browsing user ratio, visitor engagement index, etc. Have you incorporated these terms into your daily operational reference metrics system?
This chart starts from the two major dimensions of "business" and "content" to sort out the key metrics in website operations for you.
1. Content metrics in website operation data analysis
Website conversion rate Take Rates (Conversions Rates)
Calculation formula: Website conversion rate = visits that performed the corresponding action / total visits
Metric significance: Measures how attractive the website content is to visitors and the effectiveness of the website's promotion.
Metric usage: When you test news subscriptions, download links, or member registrations in different places, you can use different link names, subscription methods, ad placements, paid search links, pay-per-click (PPC) ads, etc., to see which approach keeps the conversion rate rising. How can the relevance between visitors and website content be enhanced? If this value rises, it indicates that relevance has strengthened; conversely, it has weakened.
Repeat Visitor Share
Calculation formula: Returning visitor ratio = number of returning visitors / number of unique visitors
Metric significance: Measures the attractiveness of website content to visitors and the usefulness of the website. Does your website have interesting content that makes visitors return to your website?
Metric usage: Based on the visit duration setting and the time period for generating reports, this metric can vary greatly. Most websites want visitors to return, so they want this value to keep rising. If this value is declining, it means that the quality of the website's content or products has not been strengthened. Note that once you have selected a duration and a time period, you should use the same parameters to generate your reports; otherwise, comparison becomes meaningless.
Heavy User Share
Calculation formula: Active user ratio = users who visit more than N pages / total visits
Metric significance: Measures how many visitors have a high level of interest in the website's content.
Metric usage: Determine the size of N based on your website's content and size. For example, content-based websites usually set it at about 11 to 15 pages, while e-commerce websites can set it at about 7 to 10 pages. If your website targets the right audience and is easy to use, you should see this metric continuously rising.
Committed Visitor Share
Calculation formula: Number of users with visit time over N minutes / total number of users
Metric significance: Same significance as the previous metric, except that dwell time is used instead of the number of pages viewed. Depending on the website's goals, you can use either one or combine both.
Metric usage: N here is also defined by the type and size of the website. For example, large websites usually set it at about 20 minutes. If used alone, this visitor metric is difficult to reflect its value; it should be used together with other website operational data metrics, such as conversion rate. Overall, a longer visit duration means users like to stay on your website, and a high loyal visit rate is of course better. Similarly, the visit duration can be set according to different needs.
Committed Visitor Index
Calculation formula: Loyal visitor index = number of page views over N minutes / number of visitors over N minutes
Metric significance: Refers to the average number of pages viewed per long-duration visitor. This is an important metric that combines page count and time.
Metric usage: This index makes a finer distinction on the website through pages and time. Perhaps the visitor just left for a meal. If this index is low, it means there is a longer visit time but fewer pages viewed. Usually you want to see a higher value for this index. If you modify the website, add functions and content, and attract more loyal visitors to stay and browse, this index will rise.
Committed Visitor Volume
Calculation formula: Loyal visitor volume = page views over N minutes / total page views
Metric significance: The proportion of pages viewed by long-duration visitors among all pages viewed.
Metric usage: Websites usually attract users through publicity and promotion, so the significance of this metric becomes particularly important because it represents the overall quality of page views. If you have 10,000 page views but only a 1% loyal visitor rate, it means you may be attracting the wrong visitors. These visitors have little value; they just take one look at your webpage and leave. At this point, you should consider whether there are problems with your promotion and publicity methods.
Visitor Engagement Index
Calculation formula: Visitor engagement index = total visits / unique visitors
Metric significance: This metric is the average session per visitor, representing the trend of multiple visits by some visitors.
Metric usage: Unlike the returning visitor ratio, this metric represents the intensity of returning visitors. If a very accurate target audience keeps returning to the website, this index will be much higher than 1; if there are no returning visitors, the index will approach 1, meaning every visitor has a new session. The level of this index depends on the website's goals. Most content-based and commercial websites hope that each visitor has multiple sessions per week/month; however, pages or websites such as customer service, especially complaints, prefer this index to be as close to 1 as possible.
Bounce Rate (All Pages)
Calculation formula: Bounce rate (all pages) = single-page visits / total visits
Metric significance: Represents the ratio of visitors who see only one page.
Metric usage: This metric is very important for the top entry pages, because traffic is generated from these pages. Therefore, when planning and designing the website, especially when architecting the navigation or layout design, you need to pay particular attention to this parameter. Overall, you want this ratio to keep declining.
Reject Rate/Bounce Rate (Homepage)
Calculation formula: bounce rate (homepage) = number of visits that visit only the homepage / number of all visits that start from the homepage.
Metric significance: This metric represents the ratio of visitors who started from the homepage but only viewed the homepage, out of all visitors who started from the homepage.
Metric usage: This metric is the most important among all content-related metrics. We generally consider the homepage to be the top entry page (of course, if your website has other higher-traffic entry pages, such as promotional ads, you should also include them in the tracking targets). For any website, we can imagine that if visitors merely glance at the homepage or the most common entry page and move on, it indicates a problem in some aspect of the website's planning. If the targeted market is correct, it means visitors cannot find what they want, or there is a problem with the webpage design (including page layout, network speed, link text, etc.). If the website design is feasible and easy to use, and the website content can be found easily, then the problem may lie in the quality of the visitors—that is, a market problem.
Scanning Visitor Share
Calculation formula: Browsing user ratio = number of visitors with less than 1 minute / total visits
Metric significance: This metric measures the attractiveness of a webpage to a certain extent.
Metric usage: Most websites want visitors to stay for more than a minute. If the value of this metric is too high, you should consider whether the webpage content is too simple and whether the website navigation menu needs improvement.
Scanning Visitor Index
Calculation formula: Browsing user index = number of page views with less than 1 minute / number of visitors with less than 1 minute
Metric significance: The average number of pages viewed by visitors within one minute.
Metric usage: If this index is also close to 1, it means visitors are less interested in the website; they just glance at it and leave. This may be a navigation problem. If you make significant improvements to the navigation system, you should see this index rise; if it is still declining, there may be problems with the website's target market and functionality, which should be addressed. Combining the browsing user ratio and the browsing user index can show whether users are browsing useful information or leaving out of boredom.
Scanning Visitor Volume
Calculation formula: Browsing user volume = page views with less than 1 minute / all page views
Metric significance: The ratio of page views completed within one minute.
Metric usage: Depending on the different goals of the website, there are different requirements for the level of this metric. Most websites want this metric to decrease. For ad-driven websites, having this metric too high is detrimental to long-term goals, because it means that even though you attract many visitors through ads and generate a high number of page views, the quality of the visitors is not high, and the revenue that can be generated will also be affected.
2. Business metrics in website operation data analysis
Average Order Amount (AOA)
Calculation formula: Average order amount = total sales / total number of orders
Metric significance: Used to measure the quality of the website's sales performance.
Metric usage: Converting website visitors into buyers is certainly very important, and equally important is encouraging buyers to purchase more products on each visit. Tracking this metric can help find better improvement methods.
Conversion Rate (CR)
Calculation formula: Order conversion rate = total number of orders / total visits
Metric significance: This is a relatively important metric that measures the website's sales performance for each visitor.
Metric usage: Through this metric, you can see that even small changes can bring huge changes to the website's revenue. If you can also distinguish orders generated by new and old visitors, you can refine this metric and conduct separate statistics for new and old customers.
Sales Per Visit (SPV)
Calculation formula: Sales per visit = total sales / total visits
Metric significance: This metric is also used to measure the website's marketing efficiency.
Metric usage: This metric is similar to the conversion rate, only expressed differently.
Cost per Order (CPO)
Calculation formula: Cost per order = total marketing expenditure / total number of orders
Metric significance: Measures the average order acquisition cost.
Metric usage: The marketing cost per order is very critical to the website's profitability and cash flow. Different people have different standards for calculating marketing costs; some allocate the annual website operating expenses into monthly costs, while others do not. The key is to see which is most suitable for your own situation. If you can improve the conversion rate without increasing marketing costs, this metric should decline.
Repeat Order Rate (ROR)
Calculation formula: Repeat order rate = number of existing customer orders / total number of orders
Metric significance: Used to measure the website's appeal to customers.
Metric usage: The level of this metric is closely related to customer service. Only satisfactory user product experience and service can improve this metric.
Cost Per Visit (CPV)
Calculation formula: Cost per visit = marketing expenses / total visits
Metric significance: Used to measure the website's traffic cost.
Metric usage: This metric measures your marketing efficiency. The goal is to lower this metric while increasing SPV. To do this, you need to cut ineffective marketing expenses and increase effective marketing investment.
Order Acquisition Gap (OAG)
Calculation formula: Order acquisition gap = cost per visit (CPV) - cost per order (CPO)
Metric significance: This is a metric that measures marketing efficiency and represents the difference between the visitors the website brings in and the visitors who convert.
Metric usage: The value of this metric should be negative; it measures the cost of acquiring customers from non-visitors. There are two ways to reduce this gap. When you strengthen the website's sales capability, CPO will decline and the gap will narrow, indicating that the website's ability to convert existing traffic has been enhanced. Similarly, CPV may rise while CPO remains unchanged or declines, and this gap will also narrow, indicating that the traffic attracted by the website has a high conversion rate. This situation usually occurs when a PPC (pay per click) plan is enabled.
Order Acquisition Ratio (OAR)
Calculation formula: Order acquisition ratio = cost per order (CPO) / cost per visit (CPV)
Metric significance: Reflects marketing efficiency in another form.
Metric usage: Expressing it in ratio form is often easier for management, especially financial staff, to understand.
Contribution per Order (CON)
Calculation formula: Contribution per order = (average order quantity X average marginal revenue) - cost per order
Metric significance: The net cash increase brought to you by each order.
Metric usage: The company's CFO is always interested in this metric; it represents how much money you spent to earn how much money.
Return on Investment (ROI)
Calculation formula: Return on investment = contribution per order (CON) / cost per order (CPO)
Metric significance: Used to measure the return on investment of your advertising.
Metric usage: Compare the return rates of your ads, and allocate money to the ads with the highest return rate. However, this return rate should have a time period constraint. For example, "25% ROI/week" and "25% ROI/year" are very different.
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