In this guide
- Track conversion rate, average order value, customer acquisition cost, ROAS, POAS, lifetime value, repeat rate, refund rate, gross margin and blended ROAS.
- Revenue alone is a vanity number. Profit measures are the ones that decide whether to spend more.
- Trust only numbers you can check against orders. Server-side tracking helps your ad numbers match your store.
Every store has a dashboard full of numbers. Only a few of them change decisions. This page picks ten that do, with the formula for each, an example and a note on how to read it. They fit a typical online store. A subscription or lead-generation business will adapt some of them. For a deeper look at the profit measures see ROAS vs POAS and profit on ad spend.
The ten numbers
| KPI | Formula | Example | Look at it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conversion rate | Orders ÷ sessions | 120 ÷ 4,000 = 3.0% | Weekly |
| Average order value (AOV) | Revenue ÷ orders | $9,600 ÷ 120 = $80 | Weekly |
| Customer acquisition cost (CAC) | Marketing spend ÷ new customers | $4,000 ÷ 80 = $50 | Weekly |
| ROAS | Ad revenue ÷ ad spend | $9,600 ÷ $3,000 = 3.2 | Daily or weekly |
| Blended ROAS | Total revenue ÷ total ad spend | $30,000 ÷ $8,000 = 3.75 | Weekly |
| Gross margin | (Revenue − product cost) ÷ revenue | ($9,600 − $5,200) ÷ $9,600 = 46% | Monthly |
| POAS | Gross profit from ads ÷ ad spend | $4,400 ÷ $3,000 = 1.47 | Weekly |
| Lifetime value (LTV) | Average gross profit per customer over their life | $140 | Quarterly |
| Repeat purchase rate | Customers with 2+ orders ÷ customers | 28% | Monthly |
| Refund rate | Refunded orders ÷ orders | 4% | Monthly |
The example numbers are an illustration. Use your own.
Works with your stack
Grab a logo and throw it. These are the tools Open Tracked already talks to.
How to read them together
- Conversion rate and AOV show whether the site and the offer work. A rise in conversion with a fall in AOV may mean discounts are doing the work.
- CAC and LTV decide how much you can spend to win a customer. A common rule of thumb is that LTV should be several times CAC. Judge by profit, not revenue.
- ROAS, blended ROAS and POAS tell you how efficient the ads are. ROAS is a platform view, blended ROAS is the whole business, POAS includes cost of goods.
- Gross margin and refund rate show what is left after the product and the returns.
Break-even in one line
Break-even ROAS is 1 ÷ gross margin. At a 46 percent margin it is about 2.2. Anything above that pays for the product before overheads. If your campaigns run at 3.2 you have room, and at 1.8 you are losing money on each order before fixed costs.
Orders from your store, back to the ad that earned them
Your store sends the order once. Open Tracked passes it on to each ad platform, cleaned and deduplicated.
Getting the numbers right
KPIs are only as good as the data. If your ad platforms see 25 percent fewer orders than your store, the ROAS you read is wrong, and so is the CAC. Server-side events and good matching bring platform numbers closer to the truth. Open Tracked's analytics shows spend, revenue, ROAS, profit and new-customer cost side by side, from your own first-party data, and the POAS Data Feed (Pro) sends profit to GA4 and Google Ads. See ecommerce performance analytics.
A weekly routine
- Check sessions, conversion rate and AOV against the previous four weeks.
- Check spend, ROAS and blended ROAS by channel.
- Check new customers and CAC.
- Check POAS for the biggest campaigns.
- Write down one decision: spend more, spend less or change something.
A worked example
A store spends $10,000 a month on ads and sells $40,000, so blended ROAS is 4.0 and the dashboard looks healthy. Gross margin is 35 percent, so break-even ROAS is 2.9. The store has 1,000 orders, 700 of them from new customers, so CAC is about $14 per new customer on ads alone, but the average first order brings only $28 of gross profit. Each new customer costs more than the first order earns. The business only works because 30 percent of customers buy again within six months. The headline ROAS hid this. A weekly look at CAC, margin and repeat rate shows it quickly, and tells the team that retention, not more ad spend, is the next lever.
The numbers in this example are made up to show the pattern. What matters is the habit: put the ratios side by side and read them together, because any one of them can look good while another says the business is struggling.
Check your tracking in one pass
This is an example. Run the check on your own site to see where yours stands.
Frequently asked questions
What are the most important e-commerce KPIs?
Conversion rate, average order value, customer acquisition cost, ROAS, POAS, lifetime value, repeat purchase rate, refund rate and gross margin.
What is a good conversion rate?
It varies by industry and traffic. Many stores see 1 to 4 percent. Compare with your own history.
What is break-even ROAS?
1 divided by your gross margin. At 40 percent margin it is 2.5.
Which KPI should I watch daily?
Spend and ROAS by channel for active campaigns. The rest can wait for a weekly look.
Why do my platform numbers not match my store?
Lost events, attribution rules and overlapping credit. See how server-side tracking changes attribution.
Do I need spreadsheets to read my results?
No. Once tracking is live, the Open Tracked analytics shows spend, revenue, ROAS and profit, and you can ask Ari, the built-in AI assistant, questions about your own numbers in plain words. Ari's allowance depends on your analytics plan.
Is Open Tracked different from Open Track or Open Space Track?
No. Open Tracked is the official name of our server-side tracking platform, and the website is opentracked.io. Many people search for it as Open Track, OpenTrack or Open Space Track. All of them lead to the same product: server-side Google Tag Manager hosting, first-party analytics and a CRM pipeline.
Fix your tracking at the source
Open Tracked hosts your server-side Tag Manager, keeps first-party cookies alive and shows what each ad is really worth.
The Open Tracked team
We build Open Tracked: server-side tracking hosting, analytics and the tools around them, for stores that spend on ads. Questions about this guide, or an idea for the next one?
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