Comprehensive Guide to Ecommerce Reports for Enhanced Business Performance

Every area of business has unique reports tailored to its specific marketing realities. Let's explore the most common reports used in e-commerce and retail.

Before you build reports, make sure you have two things:

• Quality data to analyze
• An attribution model that takes into account the peculiarities of your business

Note: This post was originally published in March 2020 and was completely updated in November 2024 for accuracy and comprehensiveness on marketing analytics.

An e-commerce report is a comprehensive analysis that provides insights into an online store’s performance by utilizing e-commerce data to track metrics such as sales revenue, customer behavior, website traffic, conversion rates, and product performance.

This assists business proprietors and marketers in grasping market trends, assessing the efficiency of marketing approaches, and employing data-driven insights to enhance operations, elevate customer satisfaction, and boost profitability. These reports are essential for strategic planning and operational improvements in the e-commerce sector.

Understanding the basics of e-commerce reporting involves grasping the key components and purposes of these reports to optimize an online business’s performance. Here are the main points:

• Performance Analysis: E-commerce reports provide a comprehensive analysis of an online store’s performance, including sales figures, revenue, and profitability over specific periods.
• Customer Insights: They offer valuable insights into customer behavior, such as purchasing patterns, product preferences, and demographic information, helping tailor marketing and sales strategies.
• Traffic and Conversion Rates: Reports analyze website traffic sources, visitor behavior, and conversion rates, identifying what attracts visitors and what turns them into paying customers.
• Product Performance: Detailed analysis of product sales, stock levels, and margins helps identify bestsellers and underperformers, guiding inventory management and promotional strategies.
• Marketing and Advertising Effectiveness: Reports analyzing the performance of marketing campaigns and advertising efforts reveal the most impactful channels and messages that drive sales and engagement.
• Financial Health: E-commerce reporting includes an assessment of the financial health of the business, tracking costs, revenue, and profitability to ensure long-term sustainability.
• Trend Identification: Reports help in spotting trends and seasonal variations in sales and customer behavior, allowing for proactive planning and strategy adjustments.
• Goal Setting and Performance Tracking: They are essential for setting realistic sales and growth targets, tracking progress, and making data-driven decisions to achieve these goals.
• Customer Service Insights: Analysis of customer feedback and support inquiries can highlight areas for improvement in product offerings and customer service.
• Competitive Analysis: Some e-commerce reports include competitor analysis, providing insights into how the business performs in the broader market context.

Understanding these points allows e-commerce businesses to leverage their reporting for strategic planning, operational improvements, and enhanced customer experiences.

E-commerce reports are crucial for the strategic management of online businesses, offering insights that drive informed decision-making. E-commerce sales reports are crucial for evaluating the performance of online businesses, revealing trends such as peak sales periods and successful marketing channels.

Here’s why they’re important:

• Comparison: They enable businesses to compare data across different periods or metrics, identifying trends and areas for improvement.
• Relationship Identification: Reports reveal how different data points, like page views and conversion rates, are interconnected, guiding strategy adjustments.
• Distribution Analysis: They show how outcomes are spread across segments, helping identify high-value areas or markets for targeted efforts.
• Composition Understanding: Reports break down key metrics, such as revenue sources, allowing businesses to allocate resources effectively and focus on profitable segments.

Thus, E-commerce reports provide a comprehensive view of business performance, highlighting opportunities for growth and optimization.

An effective e-commerce report provides a comprehensive overview of your online business’s performance, highlighting areas of success and opportunities for improvement.

Here’s what should be included in the sales report:

• Relevant Metrics and KPIs: Essential for tracking the health and progress of your e-commerce business. Key metrics often include:
• Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): The cost to acquire a new customer.
• Revenue: Total earnings from sales.
• Customer Count: Number of unique customers.
• Visits (Traffic): The number of visits to your site.
• Conversion Rate: Percentage of visits that result in a purchase.
• Average Order Value (AOV): The average amount spent per order.
• Marketing Report: Tracks and analyzes the effectiveness of various marketing efforts across different channels, providing insights on web traffic generated from campaigns and helping businesses optimize their marketing strategies.

The Conversion Funnel: This illustrates the journey customers take from discovering your site to making a purchase. It’s crucial to understand at what stages potential customers drop off and to identify areas for optimization to improve the overall conversion rate.

Abandoned Cart Data: Provides insights into customer behavior by showing what products were not purchased after being added to a cart. 

Key metrics include:

• Abandoned Cart Rate: The percentage of shopping carts that are abandoned before completing a purchase.
• Abandoned Cart Revenue: The potential revenue lost due to cart abandonment.

Lists of Frequency, Rank Order, or Popularity: These lists offer a snapshot of what’s working well and what’s popular among your customers. 

This could include:

• Top Products: The most sold or viewed products.
• Top Marketing Channels: The most effective channels driving traffic and sales.
• Revenue Per User: The average revenue generated per customer.
• Conversion Rate by Segment: Conversion rates for different customer segments or product categories.
• Average Lifetime Value (LTV): The average total revenue expected from a single customer throughout their relationship with your business.

Incorporating these components into your e-commerce report provides a comprehensive overview of your business’s performance. This enables you to make educated choices, nurturing expansion and elevating customer loyalty and contentment.

Monitoring the appropriate Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in your e-commerce analytics reports is essential for grasping your business’s well-being and steering strategic decisions. Here are essential KPIs to monitor:

• Revenue: The total income generated from sales over a specific period. It’s a primary indicator of business success.
• Gross Profit Margin: This computes the difference between revenue and the cost of goods sold (COGS), displayed as a percentage of revenue. It’s essential for understanding the profitability of your products.
• Conversion Rate: The percentage of website visitors who finalize a purchase. A critical measure of your website’s effectiveness in converting interest into sales.
• Average Order Value (AOV): The average amount spent each time a customer places an order. Raising the Average Order Value (AOV) is a fundamental tactic for increasing revenue.
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV): The cumulative revenue anticipated from a customer throughout their engagement with your business. It aids in deciding the appropriate investment for acquiring new customers and retaining current ones.
• Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): The total cost of acquiring a new customer, considering all marketing and advertising expenses. It’s vital for assessing the efficiency of your marketing efforts.
• Cart Abandonment Rate: The percentage of shoppers who add items to their cart but leave without completing the purchase.It highlights potential issues in the checkout process or customer hesitations.
• Traffic (Visits): The number of people visiting your site. Both the total traffic and the sources of traffic (organic, paid, social, direct) are important for understanding how customers find your site.
• Return on Investment (ROI) from Marketing Campaigns: Measures the profitability of your marketing campaigns, helping you to allocate your marketing budget effectively.
• Customer Retention Rate: The percentage of clients who return to make additional purchases. High retention rates are often indicative of customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Product Return Rate: The percentage of products returned by customers. This can indicate customer satisfaction with your products and the effectiveness of your product descriptions and images.
• Site Speed and Performance Metrics: Reduced site speed can adversely affect user experience and conversion rates, underscoring its importance as a critical technical KPI to track.
• Engagement Metrics: Including page views per visit, time on site, and bounce rate. These metrics provide insights into how engaging your content is and how effectively it keeps visitors on your site.
• Marketing Strategy: Evaluates the effectiveness of your overall marketing approach, including tracking funnels and understanding conversion rates, to refine and improve various aspects of your strategy.

Through monitoring these KPIs, e-commerce enterprises can acquire valuable insights into their operations, customer behavior, and financial well-being. This empowers them to make informed decisions that foster growth and enhance performance.

An overall report enables you to swiftly assess both the effectiveness of your marketing department and the performance of your online store. Set up this report to monitor your department's goals daily.

An overall report provides a quick view of your key metrics, allowing you to adjust actions in marketing and other sales channels according to current performance. It’s also ideal for presenting to non-marketing colleagues in meetings.

For an overall report, you must configure data collection from

• Google Analytics 4
• Advertising services
• CRM and call tracking systems

Which metrics and parameters should you focus on for this report? Find out in our article on essential indicators your business can’t do without.

The example report above offers a clear comparison of all marketing channel performances, enabling you to instantly evaluate traffic and lead growth driven by active campaigns.

One major benefit of such reports and dashboards is their ability to update automatically at the required frequency. This ensures that any sudden drops or rapid growth won’t catch you off guard at month’s end.

Online ads influence sales in physical stores—but do you know the exact impact? The ROPO indicator varies based on product type, region, and customer demographics.

To ensure you don’t unintentionally halt a successful online ad campaign that drives substantial offline traffic, use ROPO analysis. According to OWOX BI data, calculating the ROPO effect can increase return on ad spend (ROAS) by 30% to 70%.

The core of ROPO analysis is to connect users' online behavior on the website with their purchases in a physical store. To achieve this, you’ll need:

• Data on on-site actions of website visitors
• Data from your CRM system (orders, returns, transactions)

Additionally, a user ID is essential to link your customers' online and offline activities. You can read more about the data you need for ROPO reports in our Help Center.

The screenshot above presents a ROPO report. This dashboard helps you answer questions such as:

• Which online campaigns most motivate users to shop offline?
• What percentage of total revenue comes from ROPO sales?
• Which channels bring the most of ROPO revenue?

If an item isn’t selling well online, hold off on removing it from your store. First, review your ROPO report—it may be performing well offline. How you apply the insights from your ROPO analysis is up to you, but it will undoubtedly allow you to make more informed budget decisions by leveraging both online and offline data.

Read about how to assess the impact of offline advertising on online sales. With the Consumer Barometer from Google, you can learn about the prevalence of ROPO shopping in your region.

Different customer cohorts behave differently. Cohort analysis enables you to track how different groups of buyers, including repeat customers, behave over time. This insight helps you identify which segments to focus on, what to improve, and where to make strategic adjustments.

So your approach to them must be different. But first, it’s necessary to understand the differences between cohorts and how you can benefit from them.

Cohort analysis lets you observe how different buyer groups behave over time, helping you determine which groups to focus on, what areas to improve, and where to make strategic changes. With cohort analysis, you can:

• Better estimate the return on ad spend for businesses with a long sales cycle
• Predict and increase customer lifetime value (LTV)
• Evaluate A/B test results

For cohort analysis, you need to know:

• The criteria by which the cohort will be defined
• The time interval over which your cohorts will be defined: day, week, month
• The reporting period
• Which indicator will be key to the analysis (LTV, ROI, retention rate, etc.)

To build a report, you need to collect data from Google Analytics, advertising services, and CRM systems. We recommend using the OWOX BI Pipeline to collect user behavior data from your site.

In this example of a cohort analysis, we can see how the revenue for user attraction cohorts changes over time.

The simplest version of a cohort report can be made using Google Analytics 4 or Google Sheets. You can read more about cohort analysis on our blog.

How can you determine the total profit or sales value generated from your customers over time? And is it worthwhile to attract a new customer? To answer these questions, calculate customer lifetime value (LTV).

The LTV metric helps you forecast potential future revenue and indicates how much you can invest in a particular customer or customer group over their lifetime with your business. In e-commerce, customer lifetime refers to the period during which a customer makes purchases at your store.

Additionally, Forbes contributor Patrick Hull notes that the likelihood of selling to an existing customer is 60% to 70%, while the probability of a new customer making a purchase is only 5% to 20%.

There are three methods of calculating a customer’s lifetime value:

1. Historical
2. Predictive
3. Traditional

Depending on the method you choose, you’ll need data on:

• The number of customers for the selected period
• Total revenue for the selected period
• The average number of transactions per month
• Total returns per month
• The coefficient of outflow of customers
• ARPU (average revenue per user)
• The average cost of an order
• The average coefficient of profitability
• The average customer life cycle in months
• The average discount size

You can evaluate customer Lifetime Value (LTV) by audience in GA4 using the User lifetime exploration template in the Explore section. Simply remove the First user medium from the rows and add Last audience name to get insights into LTV by the audience.

We’ve demonstrated five easy ways to calculate the lifetime value of a customer. Choose the option that suits you!

An RFM (recency, frequency, monetary value) report helps you identify which customers drive the most revenue and profit across various sales channels. This report allows you to analyze customer behavior, including purchase frequency and spending levels. These insights are invaluable for developing personalized marketing strategies tailored to your business.

Customer behavior evolves over time, and recognizing these shifts allows you to capitalize on them. RFM analysis enables you to build a loyal customer base and create targeted communications for different customer segments.

For RFM analysis, you’ll need data on:

• Sales limitations (when purchases were made)
• Purchase frequency (how often customers purchase something)
• Revenue (total value of purchases)
• User ID

Identifying users can be challenging. The most effective approach is to use the anonymous OWOX User ID. Unlike the tracking code in Google Analytics, the OWOX User ID enables you to analyze audience overlap across domains and access data even if Google Analytics cookies have been deleted or replaced.

With User ID data, you can segment buyers into groups to better understand who is purchasing your products and how frequently. For example, customers may shop:

1. Often and a lot
2. Often and a little
3. Seldom and a lot
4. Seldom and a little

You can calculate RFM using either Google Sheets or OWOX BI. For detailed instructions, check out our article on performing RFM analysis.

Keep in mind that factors like stock levels, holidays, and seasonality significantly impact the data. Despite its low cost, an RFM report enables a personalized approach to customers, which can drive increased profits.

Every action a customer takes on your e-commerce site should ultimately lead to a purchase. You may have a successful ad campaign that drives targeted traffic, but if visitors aren’t adding items to their carts, there’s a disconnect.

A micro-conversion report helps you identify weak points in your website’s sales funnel. If buyers aren’t progressing to the next stage, you’ll know where to make adjustments. For instance, if a user completes a micro-conversion without making a purchase, you can follow up with personalized ads or emails to re-engage them.

Identify and track the specific micro-conversions customers can complete on your site. In e-commerce, these may include:

• Searching for an item in a category
• Adding an item to the cart
• Subscribing to mailings
• Reviewing goods
• Scrolling through pages

The report example above enables you to quickly identify and address drops in conversion activity on your site. This report is invaluable for both marketers and the development team.

Cost-per-action (CPA) advertising partners can drive up to 20% of site traffic. Although effective, CPA advertising carries a high risk of fraud. Reports on partner CPA activity can help protect your budget.

Analyzing CPA partners ensures complete transparency. This information allows you to assess the quality of traffic received and understand the impact of affiliate traffic on other sources.

For this report, you’ll need unsampled data on user behavior on your site. We recommend using OWOX BI Pipeline for data collection. Then, using OWOX BI Smart Data, you can generate comprehensive reports.

This report displays the number of transactions where source attribution changes for each campaign. A high number of these transactions may indicate source substitution. Pay close attention to partners with frequent source changes to mitigate the risk of potential misrepresentation.

For a complete list of reports to identify unscrupulous CPA partners, visit our Help Center. With these reports, you’ll be able to find out which sources and channels don’t bring value and which partners use brand requests in advertising. And, most importantly, you’ll find out who you should pay.

To make informed decisions about managing the advertising budget, marketers need a report that evaluates advertising effectiveness based on actual sales.

Users may place orders without completing purchases. To gain accurate insights, it's essential to analyze actual purchases.

To create an accurate report, you'll need complete, unsampled data on user behavior on your site combined with data from your company's CRM system.

This report enables you to boost the ROI of your advertising campaigns without raising costs.

This report is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of traffic to landing pages.

This report helps you identify which pages and content are most effective at converting visitors into buyers.

1. Cost data from different advertising services
2. Raw unsampled data on users’ behavior on your site
3. Data on purchases from your CRM system

Like micro-conversion and internal banner reports, landing page reports provide insights that help boost overall site conversions and increase revenue.

Read more about ROAS analysis in terms of campaigns and other parameters that are important to your business on our blog.

A Google Analytics E-commerce Report offers insights into product sales on your e-commerce website, tracking views, cart additions, purchases, and total sales for each item. It’s a detailed analysis tool for monitoring product performance and customer interactions.

This report is vital for identifying which products are performing well, understanding customer expectations and buying behavior, and optimizing inventory and marketing strategies. It empowers businesses to leverage data-driven insights for enhancing sales performance and refining the customer experience.

E-commerce purchase reports can be obtained from Google Analytics 4 (GA4), where you can access essential data, including items viewed, items added to the cart, items purchased, and item revenue.

This information helps in using customer metrics, refining marketing efforts, enhancing product offerings, and increasing overall sales efficiency.

In the fast-paced world of e-commerce, having the right reporting tools and techniques is crucial for understanding your online sales, customer behavior, and marketing effectiveness. These tools empower all e-commerce businesses to make data-driven decisions, optimize their strategies, and stay ahead of the competition.

Google Analytics stands out as a powerful tool for e-commerce reporting, offering a comprehensive suite of features to track and analyze your online sales.

With Google Analytics, you can monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) such as sales, revenue, conversion rates, and customer acquisition costs. This platform also provides deep insights into customer behavior, including demographics, interests, and purchasing patterns.

Some of the essential e-commerce reporting tools in Google Analytics include:

• E-commerce Tracking: This feature allows you to monitor online sales, revenue, and conversion rates, giving you a clear picture of your sales performance.
• Product Performance Reports: These reports offer detailed insights into product sales, revenue, and conversion rates, helping you identify your best-selling items and those that need a boost.
• Sales Performance Reports: Analyze your sales by product, category, and location to understand where your revenue is coming from and how to optimize your inventory.
• Marketing Reports: Evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns by tracking conversion rates, click-through rates, and return on investment (ROI).

By leveraging these tools, businesses can gain a holistic view of their e-commerce performance and make informed decisions to drive growth.

Beyond Google Analytics, there are several other e-commerce reporting software and tools that can provide valuable insights into your e-commerce metrics, online sales, and customer behavior. Here are some popular options:

• Shopify Reports: This tool offers comprehensive insights into your online sales, customer behavior, and marketing effectiveness. It helps you track sales, analyze customer data, and evaluate the performance of your marketing campaigns.
• Magento Reports: Magento provides robust reporting capabilities, allowing you to monitor sales, customer behavior, and marketing effectiveness. It offers detailed reports on product performance, sales trends, and customer insights.
• BigCommerce Reports: With BigCommerce, you can access a range of reports that provide insights into your online sales, customer behavior, and marketing effectiveness. It helps you track key metrics and optimize your marketing strategies.
• Salesforce Commerce Cloud Reports: This tool offers advanced reporting features to track online sales, customer behavior, and marketing effectiveness. It provides detailed insights into sales performance, customer segments, and marketing campaigns.

These tools offer a variety of features, including:

• Sales Tracking: Monitor your online sales, revenue, and conversion rates to understand your business’s financial health.
• Customer Behavior Analysis: Gain insights into your customers’ demographics, interests, and purchasing behaviors to tailor your marketing efforts.
• Marketing Campaign Analysis: Evaluate the performance of your marketing campaigns by tracking conversion rates, click-through rates, and ROI.

By utilizing these e-commerce reporting tools, businesses can gain a deeper understanding of their performance and make data-driven decisions to enhance their online sales.

To maximize the benefits of e-commerce reporting, it’s essential to follow best practices that ensure your reports are accurate, relevant, and actionable. Here are some key practices to keep in mind:

• Set Clear Goals and Objectives: Before diving into e-commerce reporting, define clear goals and objectives. This will help you focus your efforts and ensure you’re tracking the right metrics that align with your business objectives.
• Use Relevant Metrics: Track metrics that are most relevant to your e-commerce business, such as sales, revenue, conversion rates, and customer acquisition costs. These metrics provide a clear picture of your performance and areas for improvement.
• Present Data Clearly: Use charts, graphs, and tables to present your data clearly and concisely. Visualizing data makes it easier to understand and communicate insights to stakeholders.
• Regularly Review and Update Reports: E-commerce is a dynamic field, so it’s important to regularly review and update your reports. This ensures that your data remains relevant and helps you stay on top of trends and changes in your business.

Dynamic e-commerce reports can provide deeper insights and more actionable data. Here are some tips for creating dynamic, e-commerce analytics reports:

• Use Interactive Charts and Graphs: Interactive elements allow you to drill down into your data and explore it in more detail. This can help you uncover hidden insights and make more informed decisions.
• Use Real-Time Data: Real-time data provides up-to-the-minute insights into your e-commerce performance. This allows you to respond quickly to changes and make timely decisions.
• Use Segmentation: Segment your data by different criteria, such as demographics, interests, and behaviors. This helps you understand different customer groups and tailor your strategies accordingly.
• Use Predictive Analytics: Predictive analytics can help you forecast future performance based on historical data and trends. This allows you to anticipate changes and plan proactively.

By following these tips, you can create dynamic e-commerce reports that provide valuable insights into your online sales, customer behavior, and marketing effectiveness. This, in turn, helps you make data-driven decisions that drive growth and improve your overall e-commerce performance.

To effectively analyze e-commerce data and harness its full potential for business growth, consider these strategic tips:

• Maintain Consistency in Data Analysis: Ensure you consistently use the same metrics and KPIs to track performance over time for a reliable comparison and deeper insights.
• Focus on Checkout Conversion Optimization: Pay attention to your checkout process and identify where potential customers are abandoning their carts. This can highlight opportunities for streamlining the process and improving conversion rates.
• Investigate Zero-Result Searches: Regularly review searches within your site that yield no results. This can help you identify missing product opportunities or areas where your site's search functionality needs improvement.
• Deep Dive into Customer Purchase Patterns: Analyze individual customer behaviors and segment them based on their purchasing patterns. This approach can reveal actionable insights for personalized marketing and customer engagement strategies.
• Explore Advanced Reporting with Third-Party Apps: Don't limit yourself to built-in analytics tools. Third-party apps can offer specialized reporting features that provide deeper insights into specific areas of your e-commerce business.

Incorporating these tactics can greatly amplify your capacity to make informed choices, refine your marketing endeavors with precision, and ultimately foster growth for your e-commerce platform or venture.

Before creating any report, ensure you have all necessary data, that the data is reliable, and that you understand the nuances of your chosen attribution model. Start by answering a few key questions:

• What attribution model am I currently using?
• Do I understand the risks of using Google Analytics (Last-click attribution)?
• Do I understand all the disadvantages of using the model I’ve chosen?

A detailed overview of all the attribution models on the market will help you choose the one that’s best for you. And if you want to understand what attribution means in marketing, read our next article.

Want the reports you saw in this article? Try OWOX BI. You'll see how you can use it to solve your marketing analytics problems.