An ecommerce business must make decisions based on data to thrive, and reports are a great way to do that. More specifically, ecommerce reports give valuable insights into user behavior, industry trends, performance tracking, and other important metrics your online store must consider to improve sales and retain customers.
Let’s dive deep into it and learn how it can supercharge your sales growth.
Ecommerce reports every business should monitor
There are so many reports to choose from that knowing which ones to monitor can be overwhelming. To this end, let’s explore the key ones that provide you with invaluable insights for your business (these must not be ignored).
#1 Overview and Performance
An overview and performance dashboard can aggregate information about your online store’s performance in terms of sales, conversion, traffic, and customer acquisition and present it all in a single report without the need to navigate through different platforms and individual reports.
Therefore, a centralized dashboard that offers you the key performance metrics, or KPIs, ready to view at a glance is extremely useful. You can view data in charts, graphs, interactive widgets, and other data visualization techniques, making it easier to extract valuable insights.
#2 Sales and Revenue Analysis
Information about sales and revenue is crucial for any ecommerce business, and analyzing it provides great insights into where to allocate resources to expect the highest return. There are various areas within a sales report that can help you make informed decisions, such as:
Channel: This report provides data on which channel made what percentage of sales. For example, it displays sales data on purchases made via websites, mobile apps, social media, or third-party sites. It gives you valuable information about which channels have the most customer engagement, the best ROI, where marketing efforts should be put, and how to optimize different channels for better reach.
Product: These reports can reveal your best-selling and underperforming products, helping you identify which products your audience is most attracted to.
Demographic: This report displays sales data based on age, location, gender, etc. It allows you to find your target audience by identifying high-value customers with the most purchases within a specific age group or location.
#3 Traffic and Acquisition
The key to growing your business sustainably is by studying the traffic and acquisition reports because this is the area that’s bringing people to your online store. Imagine it as a store's CCTV but for clicks and scrolls. In other words, these reports are important because, like in a physical store, you want to know which sources are leading them to you.
For instance, performing SEO, running targeted ads, being active on social media, sending out emails, and creating content that resonates with audiences from different channels can attract your ideal customers and improve customer acquisition.
#4 Customer and Behavior Insights
Lifecycle segmentation and cart analysis reports are like the ultimate cheat codes for ecommerce businesses, as they give you a peek into your customers' shopping habits and stages. Understanding them is the key to ensuring your audience has a positive shopping experience without any barriers to purchase.
Lifecycle Segmentation: This is the process of categorizing users into segments based on their current stage in the customer journey. New customers are put into a different box than returning ones. This information is important to develop better targeting tactics and roll out attractive promotions.
Cart Analysis: The goal of this report is to understand customers' behavior while creating their carts, which includes actions like adding items, removing them, and successfully making purchases. With this information, you can address issues and simplify the checkout process. Moreover, according to a report, additional costs like shipping, taxes, and fees are the main reasons people abandon their carts, [1] so you must ensure you’re transparent with your pricing.
#5 Product Performance and Inventory Management
Balancing supply and demand is essential in running an ecommerce business smoothly. You want to avoid running out of your winning products or overstocking the ones that aren’t in demand.
The below reports help keep things in motion:
Inventory Management: These reports inform you whether your inventory is stocked and ready to ship. They include inventory on hand, stock movement, status, inventory aging, and backorder reports.
Sell-Through Rates: This report shows the rate at which a certain item is sold compared to its availability in your stocks. Hence, you can see what items sell faster or slower and how often they must be restocked.
ABC Analysis: This segregates items into three categories: A, B, and C. Category A contains high-value goods generating the most revenue, category C has the lowest revenue, and category B is right in the middle. This report makes inventory management easier, as you can prioritize restocking of high-value items and stock levels of the other items as needed.
#6 Shipping and Fulfillment Insights
No pun intended, but your business must not fail to deliver. To this end, ensuring a smooth order-to-delivery process is important for your online store to reach new heights, provide customer satisfaction, and gain loyalty.
You can track several areas within the shipping and fulfillment insights, such as:
Shipping Time: Delays in delivery lead to unhappy customers who aren’t likely to make a return purchase. Therefore, tracking your shipping times can help you determine the efficiency of your systems, as it can account for dips in delivery time and problematic shipping routes.
Order Fulfillment: From order processing, packaging, and picking up to shipping, all of it can be accounted for in this report. It allows you to address issues and streamline the process for improved processing times.
Delivery Efficiency: Incidents of delays, lost packages, and inaccurate deliveries are all tracked here. Mistakes here can cause a hefty amount of damage, so ensuring on-time deliveries, the safety of packages, and tracking capabilities can improve customer satisfaction, leading to higher sales and fewer replacements/returns.
Tip: Offer free delivery whenever possible, as according to AppMySite, most people shop online because of 24/7 availability or for free delivery.
#7 Conversion Optimization
Every online store aims to convert visitors into customers. Conversion reports inform you how well your conversion methods work and what you must do to turn the tide if required.
These reports include:
Conversion Rate: This is the number of people performing the desired function, like purchasing. The higher this rate is, the better your methods are performing. It signifies that your store is attracting visitors and enticing them to buy. It also indicates that your product selection, store design, and promotional tactics work well for your target audience.
User Behavior Analysis: This report uncovers the “why” and “how” behind your visitors' actions. Do they spend a lot of time on certain pages but bounce out of others? What's the journey of a visitor who makes a purchase compared to the one who leaves without buying? It goes beyond surface-level metrics to give you a detailed picture of how users interact with your store.
Funnel Analysis: This provides information about where a customer drops off in the conversion funnel to improve that area and lead them to complete the purchase. It's like tracking the journey of a relay race where the baton is passed from one stage to another. However, if the baton gets dropped at any stage, you'll want to know why. It raises questions about areas like checkout length, product variation options, payment processors, and additional shipping costs. By identifying these areas, you can tweak them just enough to reach the finish line.
Two other insightful reports within conversion optimization are customer journey analysis and A/B testing. These help you monitor customers across every touchpoint and compare multiple business strategies.
#8 Marketing Effectiveness and ROI
The success of your marketing strategies can be calculated by considering several reports and your return on investment. The key metrics you must focus on include customer lifetime value (CLV), customer acquisition cost (CAC), and campaign ROI.
These reports help you identify the revenue customers generate throughout their time with your business, the cost of acquiring new customers through different channels, and the effectiveness of your various marketing channels in converting customers and driving traffic, respectively.
Best tool for ecommerce reporting
Using the right tools for ecommerce reporting can make data readily available, which would otherwise require a lot of human resources and time. If there’s a single tool you need to use for reporting purposes, it must be Google Analytics.
It’s the most complete and useful reporting tool that tracks customer behavior, conversion rate, traffic, bounce rate, and more. It gives you access to a robust reporting system and the ability to create dashboards with real-time monitoring to observe key metrics at a glance.
If your online store is integrated with Google Analytics, there’s absolutely no need for another tool. It comes with all the metrics you’d want to track to grow your ecommerce business. And on top of that, it’s completely free to use.
The integration process for Google Analytics should be pretty simple, depending on your ecommerce platform. For example, if you’re using Shopware, you can simply go to the Storefront tab under Sales Channels on the dashboard and paste your tracking ID. Then, turn on the Activate Google Analytics button, and you’re good to go.
Best practices for ecommerce reporting
Data alone won’t be sufficient if you don't utilize it properly. Several strategies can help you best utilize ecommerce reports and improve your overall performance.
Here are some of them:
#1 Consistency
KPI reporting isn’t a one-time task. It needs regular upkeep, usually weekly or monthly. For optimum results, create a reporting schedule and stick to it. Consistency is the name of the game.
#2 Monitor checkout funnel
The checkout funnel must be optimized to increase sales and revenue. Monitor reports, including cart abandonment rate, conversion rate, and average order value. See where the customers' drop-off points are and make the required changes accordingly.
#3 Segment data
It is much easier to analyze segmented data than a whole cluster. Hence, for effective marketing efforts, segment users based on their demographics, geographical location, purchasing history, and more.
#4 Technical improvements
Look for areas for improvement that can enhance the customer experience. Use reports to find non-responsive pages, long loading times, and bounce rates. Moreover, with the help of the findings, you can optimize product pages and simplify the checkout process to tick the important boxes. The key is to identify areas of improvement, implement changes where required, and continue with successful strategies.
#5 Personalized recommendations
According to Invesp, 49% of customers bought a product they didn’t intend to buy because they received a personalized product recommendation. This shows the power of it. That is why you should tailor your marketing strategies around reports on user behavior, purchasing history, time spent on a page, and preferred delivery methods. This will ensure you’re well aware of your customers, allowing you to make laser-targeted recommendations and drive more sales.
#6 Competition monitoring
Competition analysis can provide great insights into competitors’ pricing and marketing strategies. You can get this data using benchmark tools and available reports and use it to stay competitive and do better than others.
#7 Product selection
Use ecommerce analytics reports to see which products and categories perform best. Modify your assortment of products based on industry trends, user behavior, best-selling items, and slow-moving items to clear out the inventory.
#8 Marketing optimization
Marketing reports across channels give you insights into which channels drive the most traffic and have the highest conversion rate. Utilizing this data, you can allocate resources accordingly and improve your marketing strategies.
Use Shopware to grow your ecommerce business
Shopware is D2C, B2C, and B2B ecommerce software that offers comprehensive solutions using an open commerce platform. As an online store owner, you’ll get unparalleled flexibility, scalability, and expert support throughout your journey – from setting up your store to closing sales. Plus, our platform offers total data ownership and code access, meaning you have full transparency over your business and can operate it on your terms without any limitations.
Shopware also focuses on creating brand experiences that leave an impact. This is achieved using innovative storytelling, customer engagement techniques, and ecommerce automation tools that can turn visitors into loyal customers.
In addition, our API-first and headless approach ensures any online store can scale up and adapt quickly to market changes. You can take a product tour right away to explore all the features and learn how we can take your business to new levels.
Conclusion
Ecommerce reporting is instrumental in unlocking insights into user behavior and performance, ultimately guiding sales growth. To this end, key areas to monitor encompass sales, traffic, customer behavior, and marketing ROI. Leveraging tools like Google Analytics and implementing strategies for regular analysis can significantly enhance user experience and marketing efforts, streamlining the process of ecommerce reporting and growth.
FAQs
What are the best ecommerce reporting practices?
Various ecommerce reporting practices should be leveraged to make important decisions. Some key practices include defining your business’s goals, segmenting data, running A/B test campaigns, and selecting metrics that align with your goals.
What is the best ecommerce reporting tool?
Many ecommerce reporting tools are available, but one that stands out is Google Analytics. In addition to the usual reporting functionalities, it has a dedicated ecommerce feature called Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce with advanced features.
How often should I check my ecommerce reports?
While there’s no set rule for this, it’s a good practice to check your ecommerce reports once a week or every two weeks to monitor KPIs effectively.
