Virtuemart Stores - 8 Website Metrics You Must Track (& Why?)

After developing and maintaining more than a few Virtuemart online shops, it became obvious that not all of them are producing the same results. Here are examples of some of my favorite Virtuemart shops:

alaskaflyfishinggoods.com
eveadams.com.au
bulletinbottle.com
bulletinbag.com
paintbrushcorporation.com
makeuptouch.eu
myfurnituremarket.com

If you manage one of them or you’re looking to build your own, here are some important metrics to keep in mind:

Monthly Revenue Volume. This is an obvious one. The more money you make within a single month, the better.

Customer Value. Not all customers are created equal. Some customers spend more than others and therefore, they are valuable to your business. From this, you may also be able to calculate the average customer value. The higher customer value, the more money you will make for your online business for an equivalent number of customers.

Order Frequency. Too often I see many businesses having too many one time customers. That’s too bad because obtaining new customers is always more expensive.

Geo Area. Where do your best customers live and operate? On purpose, we avoid marketing to customers in particular geographic regions and at least, it does make financial sense.

Virtuemart Checkout Option. In a recent experiment, we found that 70% customers like to checkout using the “Guest Checkout” option. If you’re asking customers to create user accounts with complex email verifications in place, you will for sure generate less orders and less money.

Payment Gateway. Based on our data, most US customers prefer onsite credit card processing with authorize.net or paypal pro. If you have an online US shop, international customers may prefer to pay with PayPal. Overall, most online shoppers want an easier way to pay which is an onsite secure credit card processing without redirections to 3rd party sites.

Traffic Sources. What traffic sources generated the most business (revenue, orders) & not just website visits for your business? In our experience, most orders are generated by visitors from search engines unless you have a very powerful brand where most visitors enter your name directly in the search box. I should note here that while it’s desirable to test paid ads for different keywords, you should never use this as a primary way of generating new customers and orders because it’s simply too expensive and not sustainable.

Keywords. Many keywords will drive traffic to your website. However, only a smaller percentage of them will result in orders or website leads. You should categorize keywords based on 1) brand keywords, 2) general interest keywords 3) informational keywords and 4) product specific keywords. This topic is more complex to explain but, for example, the more brand keywords are used to make online purchases on your site, the better brand loyalty you have. On the other hand, visitors may be searching for product specific keywords without knowing your brand name but if you satisfy their buying criteria, they will certainly order from you independent of your brand name.

Please keep in mind that for calculating some metrics above, you would have to export your Virtuemart or Google Analytics data into spreadsheets and do data analysis for yourself.

Have I missed something? I’m sure I have so please feel free to post your own metrics, comments and questions below! :-)