The first metrics every new online store should track

Launching a new online store is exhilarating, but it quickly becomes overwhelming when you realize there are hundreds of metrics you could potentially track. Shopify dashboards, GA4 reports, and marketing platforms bombard you with data about sessions, bounce rates, click-through rates, and dozens of other numbers. As a new store owner, you might wonder which metrics actually matter and which are just noise. The truth is that focusing on the wrong metrics early on wastes precious time and clouds your understanding of what's really happening in your business.

This guide cuts through the complexity to identify the essential metrics every new online store needs to monitor from day one. These aren't vanity metrics that look impressive but don't drive decisions—they're fundamental indicators of business health that directly inform the actions you should take to grow. By focusing on these core metrics initially, you build a solid analytics foundation without getting lost in data overload. Let's explore what you absolutely need to track and why each metric matters for your store's success.

💰 Revenue and order count

Revenue is the most fundamental metric for any e-commerce business—it represents the total amount of money your store generates. Track your revenue daily, weekly, and monthly to understand your income trajectory. However, revenue alone doesn't tell the complete story. You also need to track order count, which shows how many transactions you're completing. These two metrics together reveal important patterns. If revenue is growing but order count stays flat, your average order value is increasing. If orders are growing faster than revenue, customers are buying more frequently but spending less per transaction.

For new stores, don't get discouraged by small numbers initially. What matters more than absolute values is the trend direction. Are you seeing growth week over week, even if modest? This growth trajectory indicates that your early efforts are working and provides motivation to continue optimizing. Set realistic targets based on your product prices and market—a store selling $20 items needs very different volume than one selling $2,000 products. Track these metrics in your Shopify or WooCommerce dashboard where they're prominently displayed and updated in real-time.

📊 Conversion rate

Conversion rate measures the percentage of visitors who complete a purchase, calculated by dividing orders by total sessions and multiplying by 100. If you had 500 visitors and 10 made purchases, your conversion rate is 2%. This metric reveals how effectively your store turns traffic into customers. For new stores, conversion rates typically range from 1-3%, though this varies significantly by industry, product type, and traffic quality.

Conversion rate is arguably more important than traffic volume for new stores with limited marketing budgets. Improving conversion from 1% to 2% doubles your revenue from existing traffic without requiring additional advertising spend. Focus early efforts on conversion optimization—improving product descriptions, adding customer reviews, simplifying checkout, and building trust signals. These improvements deliver immediate returns by maximizing the value of every visitor you attract.

Track conversion rate by device (mobile vs desktop) and traffic source (social media, search, direct) to identify where you're performing well and where improvement is needed. Many new stores discover that mobile traffic converts at half the rate of desktop, signaling that mobile experience optimization should be a priority. These insights guide where to focus your limited time and resources for maximum impact.

🛒 Average order value

Average order value (AOV) shows the typical amount customers spend per transaction. Calculate it by dividing total revenue by number of orders. If you generated $5,000 from 100 orders, your AOV is $50. This metric helps you understand customer spending patterns and reveals opportunities to increase revenue without needing more traffic or customers. Even small AOV improvements compound into significant revenue gains over time.

For new stores, establishing your baseline AOV is crucial for setting pricing strategies, creating product bundles, and determining free shipping thresholds. If your AOV is $45, consider offering free shipping on orders over $55 to encourage customers to add one more item. Track how promotional strategies impact AOV—does offering a discount code decrease AOV more than it increases conversion rate? These insights help you find the right balance between promotions and profitability.

Compare your AOV to industry benchmarks and competitor pricing to understand your positioning. Low AOV might indicate you're underpricing products or missing upsell opportunities. High AOV could mean you're successfully encouraging multi-item purchases or selling premium products. Either way, knowing your AOV and actively working to improve it is essential for building a sustainable business model.

🚦 Traffic sources and volume

Understanding where your visitors come from is essential for allocating marketing efforts effectively. Track traffic by major sources: organic search, paid advertising, social media, email, direct visits, and referrals. Most platforms including Shopify and GA4 categorize traffic automatically, making this easy to monitor. Each source typically has different characteristics—organic search often converts well, social media drives awareness, email delivers high engagement from existing customers.

Key traffic metrics to monitor include:

• Total sessions or visits: Overall traffic volume showing whether your marketing and content efforts are attracting more potential customers over time.

• Traffic by source: Breakdown showing which channels drive the most visitors, helping you double down on what works and fix or abandon what doesn't.

• Conversion rate by source: Not all traffic is equal—some sources bring visitors who convert at 5% while others convert at 0.5%, revealing quality differences.

• Traffic trends over time: Week-over-week and month-over-month growth showing whether your audience is expanding and marketing is gaining traction.

For new stores, organic traffic often starts near zero and builds slowly over months as you publish content and build SEO authority. Paid traffic delivers immediate results but requires ongoing investment. Social media can spike dramatically from viral posts but rarely sustains consistently. Understanding these patterns helps set realistic expectations and informs where to invest your marketing energy.

📉 Cart abandonment rate

Cart abandonment rate measures the percentage of shoppers who add products to their cart but leave without purchasing. This metric is calculated by dividing abandoned carts by total carts created. If 100 people added items to cart but only 30 completed checkout, your abandonment rate is 70%. While this might sound alarming, 65-75% abandonment is actually normal across e-commerce—most visitors aren't ready to buy immediately.

For new stores, high abandonment rates often indicate friction in the checkout process, unexpected shipping costs, limited payment options, or trust concerns. Monitor abandonment rate closely during your first few months and actively work to reduce it through improvements like showing shipping costs earlier, simplifying forms, offering guest checkout, and displaying security badges. Even small reductions in abandonment rate directly translate to increased revenue from the same traffic.

Set up cart abandonment email sequences that automatically remind customers about items they left behind. These recovery emails typically convert 5-15% of abandoned carts, representing pure upside from visitors you already attracted. Track recovery rate as a sub-metric to understand how effectively your follow-up campaigns work. Most e-commerce platforms including Shopify offer built-in abandonment tracking and email automation, making this easy to implement even for complete beginners.

⏱️ Getting started: your first analytics dashboard

Rather than trying to track everything at once, create a simple dashboard that displays these six core metrics in one place. Use your e-commerce platform's built-in analytics as your starting point—both Shopify and WooCommerce provide clear displays of revenue, orders, conversion rate, AOV, and traffic without requiring external tools. Check this dashboard daily for the first few weeks to become familiar with your baseline performance and normal variation.

Establish a weekly review ritual where you spend 15-20 minutes examining these metrics, noting any significant changes, and identifying one action to take based on what you discovered. Perhaps conversion rate dropped and investigation reveals a broken checkout button. Or maybe traffic from Instagram is converting exceptionally well, suggesting you should invest more time in that platform. These regular reviews build your analytical intuition and ensure you're staying connected to your business performance.

Essential steps for new store analytics:

• Verify that tracking is configured correctly by making a test purchase and confirming it appears in your analytics within 24 hours.

• Set up a simple spreadsheet or use your platform's reporting to track your six core metrics weekly for at least the first three months.

• Enable GA4 if you haven't already to gain deeper insights into traffic behavior and sources beyond what your e-commerce platform provides.

🎯 When to expand beyond the basics

These six foundational metrics should sustain you through at least your first 3-6 months of operation. Only after you've mastered understanding and acting on these basics should you consider expanding to more advanced metrics like customer lifetime value, customer acquisition cost by channel, repeat purchase rate, or detailed cohort analysis. Trying to track everything immediately leads to overwhelm and paralysis rather than insight and action.

You'll know you're ready to expand when you can glance at your dashboard and immediately understand what's happening in your business, when changes occurred, and what might have caused them. This fluency indicates you've built the foundational analytical skills needed to interpret more complex metrics. Until then, resist the temptation to add complexity and instead focus on truly understanding these fundamentals and using them to guide concrete improvements.

Starting with the right metrics creates a strong foundation for data-driven decision making as your store grows. Revenue, orders, conversion rate, average order value, traffic sources, and cart abandonment tell you everything you need to know about your store's health and where to focus improvement efforts. Master these basics before worrying about advanced analytics, and you'll build the skills and intuition that serve you throughout your e-commerce journey. Remember that even the most sophisticated stores still monitor these same core metrics—they're fundamental because they work. Ready to track your essential metrics without complexity? Try Peasy for free at peasy.nu and get clear insights designed specifically for new store owners.