10 eCommerce Performance Analytics & What They Really Mean

The eCommerce landscape has expanded rapidly, and it’s showing no signs of slowing down. In 2025, global eCommerce sales are projected to reach $6.83 trillion, and by 2027, online sales are expected to account for an impressive 41% of all retail sales worldwide. Clearly, the future is wide open for brands that embrace eCommerce!

But simply having an online presence is no longer enough. High return rates and inaccurate product content can take away everything you’ve built, damaging both your revenue and your customer relationships. 

Selling online brings scale, but it also brings complexity. That’s why it’s essential to understand not just what’s happening across your digital channels, but why. You need to be able to look back and identify what’s working, what’s not, and what needs to change, before small issues turn into costly setbacks, and that’s where eCommerce performance analytics become critical.

What are eCommerce Performance Analytics?

eCommerce performance analytics refer to the data that’s collected, measured, and interpreted in order to understand how your eCommerce store is really performing. It goes beyond tracking sales or traffic by helping you monitor key performance metrics that influence every stage of the customer journey, from product discovery and the product page experience to checkout and post-purchase interactions.

With the right eCommerce analytics tool, you can identify what’s driving growth and what’s holding you back. Whether it’s a high cart abandonment rate or inconsistent results across marketing channels, tracking the right analytics gives you the visibility needed to take action. By interpreting key data points and listening to customer feedback, you can adjust your eCommerce performance and create a more seamless, engaging customer experience across all your online stores!

eCommerce Performance Analytics That Brands Need to Track

Not all metrics are created equal. While there’s no shortage of data in today’s eCommerce platforms, focusing on the right performance metrics is what separates high-growth brands from overwhelmed ones. 

Here are the key analytics that every eCommerce business should track to gain meaningful insights and improve its eCommerce performance:

1. Conversion Rate

This is the north star for most online stores. Conversion rate tells you what percentage of visitors actually become customers. It reflects how effective your product pages, checkout flow, and overall customer experience really are.
To calculate a conversion rate, use this formula: 

(Total Number of Conversions / Total Number of Interactions) x 100

Small improvements to your conversion rate can really have a big impact on your revenue!

2. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Knowing how much it costs to acquire each customer helps you assess the efficiency of your marketing channels. Pair it with customer lifetime value (CLV) for a complete picture of whether your acquisition strategy is sustainable—or just expensive.

To calculate a CAC, use this formula:

(Total Cost of Sales and Marketing) / (Number of New Customers Acquired)

3. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

This metric estimates the total revenue you’ll generate from a customer over the course of their relationship with your brand. 

To calculate a CLV, use this formula:

(Customer Value) x Average Customer Lifespan

A healthy CLV means strong retention, quality engagement, and a product experience that keeps people coming back. Basically, all the great stuff needed for your business.

4. Average Order Value (AOV)

AOV tells you how much customers typically spend per transaction. Use it to evaluate upselling efforts and how persuasive your product content and pricing strategies really are.
To calculate a CLV, use this formula:

(Total Revenue / Total Number of Orders Placed)

5. Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate

Cart abandonment rate measures the percentage of shoppers who add items to their cart but leave the site before completing the purchase. A high rate signals problems in the final steps of the customer journey—whether due to surprise fees, slow load times, or even a lack of payment options. Fixing this can unlock revenue that’s already sitting in your cart.

To calculate a cart abandonment rate, use this formula:

 (Number of Completed Purchases / Number of Shopping Carts Created) x 100

6. Bounce Rate

If visitors leave your site after viewing just one page, it’s time to rethink your landing experience! High bounce rates often point to disconnects between your ads and product pages. It can also be a mismatch between what you offer and what your customers actually expect.

To calculate a bounce rate, use this formula:

(Total of Single-page visits / Total visits) x 100

7. Click-Through Rate (CTR)

CTR shows how effective your links, ads, or email campaigns are at driving interest. Whether you’re testing subject lines or optimizing calls to action, this metric keeps your marketing performance honest.

To calculate a CTR, use this formula:

(Total Clicks / Total Impressions) x 100

8. Traffic Sources

Understanding where your visitors are coming from, be it social media, search, or direct, is key to optimizing marketing channels and allocating your budget where it matters most.

Some of the most common traffic sources:

• Organic search – Visitors who find your site via unpaid search engine results (e.g., Google).
• Paid search – Traffic from paid ads on search engines (e.g., Google Ads).
• Social media – Clicks from platforms like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, or TikTok.
• Direct – Users who type your URL directly or click a saved bookmark.
• Referral – Visitors who arrive via links from other websites or blogs.
• Email – Traffic driven by email campaigns or newsletters.
• GenAI – This is a newer traffic source, but delineates when traffic comes from LLMs like ChatGPT or Perplexity

9. Rate of Return & Refunds

These metrics offer a window into product satisfaction and fulfillment quality. High return rates often point to misleading content or post-purchase friction, problems that affect both profit and brand trust.

To calculate a return rate, use this formula:

(Final Value – Initial Value) / Initial Value x 100.

10. Churn Rate

Churn shows how many customers stop buying from you over a given period. When paired with retention efforts and sentiment tracking, it helps brands build a more loyal base and learn how they can improve their services.

To calculate a churn rate, use this formula:

(Total of customers lost / Total of customers at the start of the period) x 100

eCommerce Performance Analytics Tools

Tracking eCommerce performance requires more than a spreadsheet and hope. To truly understand what’s working (and what isn’t) across your eCommerce store, you need the right tools, ones that turn raw data into clear takeaways:

1. Google Analytics (GA4)

A staple for nearly every online store! Google Analytics offers deep insight into user behavior, traffic sources, bounce rate, conversion rate, and more. GA4 also brings in enhanced event tracking, making it easier to monitor key actions like cart adds and product views.

2. Shopify Analytics

For brands using Shopify, the built-in analytics dashboard provides a wealth of performance metrics. This includes AOV, cart abandonment rate, top products, and customer segmentation. It’s especially useful for tracking store sessions by device and marketing channels.

3. Hotjar

Hotjar adds a layer of behavioral data through heatmaps, session recordings, and its feedback and surveys. It helps you visualize how customers interact with your product pages and where pain points may be affecting the customer experience—especially when unfinished transactions are high.

4. Adobe Analytics

A more advanced enterprise-level tool, Adobe Analytics allows for deep segmentation, attribution modeling, and predictive analysis. It’s powerful for businesses with complex data needs and large-scale eCommerce platforms looking to scale with precision.

5. Mixpanel

Mixpanel focuses on user behavior over time, ideal for tracking CLV and product usage. It’s especially helpful for businesses offering subscriptions or multi-step customer journeys where engagement is key.

6. Glew.io

Tailored specifically for eCommerce businesses, Glew.io brings together sales, product, customer, and marketing data into a unified dashboard. It’s great for identifying high-performing SKUs and analyzing acquisition costs by channel.

How Akeneo Business Analytics Helps

While clean product data is essential, understanding how that data impacts your eCommerce performance is where real value is unlocked. Akeneo Business Analytics, part of the Akeneo Product Cloud, gives brands visibility into how product content quality drives results across their eCommerce platforms.

With a centralized dashboard, teams can monitor key performance metrics like total page views, conversion rate, revenue (and more) all across up to 10 digital and physical sales channels. This unified view replaces fragmented data silos and helps brands understand how product content is performing in both their online and physical retail channels. Whether your strength lies in eCommerce or in-store selling, you’ll have the insights needed to optimize the customer journey and build a more data-driven growth strategy!

Analyse Harder, Perform Better

As eCommerce performance becomes a defining factor in retail success, the ability to measure and act on data is a competitive necessity. Whether it’s optimizing a product page or lowering your cart abandonment rate, the right analytics turn insights into impact.

But performance doesn’t start with analytics—it starts with high-quality data. With solutions like Akeneo Product Information Management (PIM), brands can ensure their product information is not only accurate and consistent but also ready to drive smarter decisions across every stage of the customer journey. Because when your data works harder, your eCommerce business performs better.