12 E-commerce Metrics That Actually Matter (And How to Track Them)

Revenue is vanity. These 12 e-commerce metrics tell you whether you're actually building a profitable store — and how to compute them in seconds.

Revenue isn't the metric

Plenty of stores doing $1M/year are losing money. Gross revenue hides the truth. The metrics below show whether each order, each customer, and each channel is actually profitable.

The profit metrics

• AOV (Average Order Value): total revenue ÷ number of orders. Track by channel and cohort, not just blended.
• Contribution margin: revenue minus COGS minus variable costs (shipping, payment fees, fulfillment) per order. The real per-order profit.
• LTV (Lifetime Value): total contribution margin per customer over their lifetime. Compare to CAC.
• CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost): ad spend ÷ new customers. Must be well below LTV.
• LTV:CAC ratio: 3:1 is healthy. Below 1:1 means you lose money on every customer.

The retention metrics

• Repeat purchase rate: % of customers who order more than once. The single best predictor of long-term profit.
• Time between orders: median days from first to second purchase. Tells you when to send win-back campaigns.
• Cohort retention: % of each month's new customers still buying 30/60/90 days later.

The efficiency metrics

• Refund / return rate: by SKU and category. High returns silently destroy margin.
• Inventory turnover: COGS ÷ average inventory. Low turnover ties up cash.
• Channel ROAS: revenue ÷ ad spend per channel. Reallocate budget to the winners.
• Discount depth impact: margin with vs without promo. Discounts often buy revenue at negative margin.

How to compute all 12 in one upload

Export your Shopify/WooCommerce orders CSV (or connect Stripe) and ask Talon's E-commerce Analyst: "Compute AOV, LTV, CAC, repeat purchase rate, contribution margin and channel ROAS, broken out by month and channel."

Talon's deterministic E-commerce Metric Pack runs the same formulas every time — no hallucinated numbers — charts the trends, and flags which channels are below a 3:1 LTV:CAC ratio.

Bottom line

Track contribution margin and LTV:CAC religiously. Everything else is secondary. Talon computes them from a raw export in about 60 seconds.