What is a KPI?

A KPI (Key Performance Indicator) is a high-level metric selected by a business to track performance against core commercial objectives.

While a store collects hundreds of raw data points, only a select few qualify as true KPIs.

Core Ecommerce KPIs

  1. Conversion Rate (CVR): Percentage of sessions converting into orders.
  2. Average Order Value (AOV): Average dollar amount spent per transaction.
  3. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): Total marketing spend divided by new customers acquired.
  4. Customer Lifetime Value (LTV): Total gross margin generated by a customer over their entire relationship.
  5. Cart Abandonment Rate: Percentage of carts created that fail to complete checkout.

Developer Takeaway

Dashboard Instrumentation: Build real-time analytics aggregation pipelines that calculate top-line KPIs cleanly without executing expensive live SQL queries across millions of raw order rows on page load.