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E-retail strategy – 2011 Ecommerce strategy challenges and KPIs

Author's avatar By Dave Chaffey 01 Jul, 2010
Essential Essential topic

Defining the best KPIs for Ecommerce

Ecommera have recently published a useful piece of research reviewing the key issues in 2010 for Internet retail strategy which is part of their new Trading Intelligence Quarterly report. Here's my summary of the stand-out charts.

They have also  added a new post on 4 key ecommerce KPIs based around profitability (no longer available)

Their survey of 100 UK Ecommerce directors was completed during April 2010.

2011 E-retail strategic challenges

Looking at the chart below, it's reassuring to see that social media isn't one of the major concerns and more fundamental issues like growing the online business through customer acquisition and retention strategies are more important. Acquisition is seen as more of a challenge or priority than retention which is often a misplaced priority in my experience

It's a surprise that analytics and conversion optimisation is seen as a relatively minor concern, with driving traffic and increasing customer loyalty more important. But this perhaps shows that in the large companies surveyed, checkout optimisation has been working on. I'm sure incremental improvements are possible here though...

E-retail KPIs

Interestingly, the KPIs which the Ecommerce directors were asked didn't just cover the usual suspects of Revenue, Profitability and AOV, but also looked at lost opportunities.

It seems that lost demand and lost opportunity are not tracked by the majority, instead profitability and conversion  were tracked more often.It's surprising though that even these measures and customer satisfaction are only routinely tracked by around half of the retailers surveyed.

  • Download the full report on E-retail (no longer available)

 

Author's avatar

By Dave Chaffey

Digital strategist Dr Dave Chaffey is co-founder and Content Director of online marketing training platform and publisher Smart Insights. 'Dr Dave' is known for his strategic, but practical, data-driven advice. He has trained and consulted with many business of all sizes in most sectors. These include large international B2B and B2C brands including 3M, BP, Barclaycard, Dell, Confused.com, HSBC, Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, M&G Investment, Rentokil Initial, O2, Royal Canin (Mars Group) plus many smaller businesses. Dave is editor of the templates, guides and courses in our digital marketing resource library used by our Business members to plan, manage and optimize their marketing. Free members can access our free sample templates here. Dave is also keynote speaker, trainer and consultant who is author of 5 bestselling books on digital marketing including Digital Marketing Excellence and Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. In 2004 he was recognised by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of 50 marketing ‘gurus’ worldwide who have helped shape the future of marketing. My personal site, DaveChaffey.com, lists my latest Digital marketing and E-commerce books and support materials including a digital marketing glossary. Please connect on LinkedIn to receive updates or ask me a question.

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