While Average Order Value, Repeat Purchase Rate, Average Customer Purchase Latency, and Average Lifetime Value are the important business metrics you should monitor, there are dozens more of varying usefulness.
Three really big one you shouldn't ignore are:
- Order volume
- Revenue
- Profit
Order volume will tell you how many orders you're getting. Order volume can be influenced (it's just marketing and acquisition) but it's tricky and gets into traffic generation and conversion rate optimizations (huge subjects on their own). Just be aware that changes in order volume can have major impact other metrics, especially in the short-term.
Revenue is one of the two most important metrics. Everything you do in business is designed to improve revenue (and profit, the next metric). You want a better AOV because if customers spend more in each order, you make more revenue. Ideally revenue will grow as you're optimizing metrics but it can vary wildly in the short-term.
Profit is the second of the most important metrics. All the revenue in the world is worthless if you don't make any profit. Sometimes you might use and track margins instead of profit but at the end of the day, they are similar in principle.
Other metrics and Three Letter Acroymns can be useful at times but only when you're optimizing where they have an impact. If you're not working to improve your customer acquisition costs, tracking your Cost to Acquire a Customer is wasted time.
Eric Davis
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