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To stay competitive and ensure your online store is continuously growing, having a strong ecommerce strategy in place is critical.
And one of the main things that dictate the strategy is the constant changes in customer preferences and market behavior.
That’s why it’s more important than ever to keep up with the latest trends in the ecommerce industry – you can identify what’s currently working and then apply those things to your own business.
However, keeping pace with these changes is often easier said than done.
Pouring over industry reports to try and predict where the market is headed and comparing your current data with only your historical performances can only go so far.
Our latest research can help.
We talked to hundreds of marketers and ecommerce business owners, and compiled 20+ ecommerce statistics that can help move the needle in your online business in 2023.
Also, we pulled up some data from our Benchmark Groups that showcase how other e-stores are doing right now, and you can use it to see where you stand compared to industry peers.
The statistics are divided into 3 main groups:
Which channels should you focus on? What impacts conversions the most? How to set marketing goals?
These are just some of the marketing-related topics we talked about with our respondents.
To kick-start the journey, let’s check out some of the general ecommerce marketing statistics that can help you stay ahead of the curve in 2023.
To stay on top of your marketing strategy and make sure company resources are going in the right direction, you need to identify the channels that work best for your ecommerce business.
The results may vary depending on your specific online store, product, and ecommerce website goals. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution across all stores.
That said, we found that social media marketing has worked the best in the past 12 months for the ecommerce businesses we polled.
PRO TIP: Even if this sounds basic, you can still make the most out of social media by engaging with your audience. This means responding to comments and messages, encouraging conversations, and including them in the content you’re creating. Working on creating a personal connection with your ideal prospects will always pay off in the long run.
PPC advertising allows ecommerce brands to target specific audiences, have more control over their advertising budget, and track the success of their campaigns in real time.
And by following PPC management best practices, businesses can use this advertising channel to drive traffic, increase conversions, and achieve their marketing goals.
Now, when it comes to PPC, most ecommerce businesses run their ads on Google, Facebook, and Instagram.
PRO TIP: Before running PPC ads, make sure your website product page is properly optimized. Even if you nail the ads and generate lots of traffic, you won’t get many conversions with a weak product page that isn’t persuasive.
Understanding Facebook Ads metrics is crucial to further optimizing your campaign and making data-driven decisions.
And one of the first things you’ll need to look at is how much you’re spending and what you’re getting in return.
Now, while you can make assumptions about whether the numbers are “good” or “bad” based on industry reports or previous performances, more insight can be found in your competitors’ numbers.
According to data provided by Facebook Ads Performance Benchmarks for ecommerce, the median value of the amount spent on Facebook Ads in March 2023 was $2,473.12.
The median value of Purchase ROAS for the same month was 3.08. The image below shows that this value hasn’t fluctuated much in the previous six months. While most sources state that companies should aim for ROAS around 4 (even above 5), to set realistic goals, it’s recommended to take into account your industry’s specifics and business’s objectives.
PRO TIP: Why stop at amount spent and purchase ROAS? One of the best ways to make sure your performance is on par is to see how you stack up against the competition. Join the free Facebook Ads benchmark group now and check out how ecommerce businesses your size are performing on Facebook Ads.
In one of our previous stats, we saw that Google is currently the most dominant platform for paid advertising in the ecommerce industry.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the easiest one to see results on.
In fact, when it comes to reporting and analytics, Google Ads stands as one of the more technically complex platforms.
Not to worry. We pulled some useful benchmarks from our groups that you use for comparisons and see where you stand compared to similar-sized brands.
According to data provided by Ecommerce Google Ads Performance Benchmarks, the median value of the cost of Google Ads in March 2023 was $3,222.81.
The median value of the Conversion rate for the same month was 2.61%.
If you ever asked yourself:
Databox Benchmark Groups can finally help you answer these questions and discover how your company measures up against similar companies based on your KPIs.
When you join Benchmark Groups, you will:
The best part?
When it comes to showing you how your performance compares to others, here is what it might look like for the metric Average Session Duration:
And here is an example of an open group you could join:
And this is just a fraction of what you’ll get. With Databox Benchmarks, you will need only one spot to see how all of your teams stack up — marketing, sales, customer service, product development, finance, and more.
Sounds like something you want to try out? Join a Databox Benchmark Group today!
What are your main website goals?
From capturing leads and proper messaging to strategic signup forms and persuasive upsells, making sure your website is optimized on all fronts is crucial.
But in case you don’t know where to start, we asked our respondents about their most important ecommerce website goals and found that the top-rated goal for businesses is to optimize product pages for search engines.
PRO TIP: Following standard SEO best practices like proper keyword research and on-page optimization is a must for your product pages. But don’t forget the psychological aspect. Make sure your product page meets the customers at their point in the journey and that its intent aligns with what they’re looking for.
There are multiple different elements that impact an ecommerce store’s conversion rate and drive its success, including the website design, description copy, customer reviews, pricing, and checkout process.
But the main thing you should focus on if you want to improve your ecommerce conversion rate is the visuals.
In our study, we found that when it comes to conversion rates, high-quality images and videos are crucial for ecommerce businesses.
PRO TIP: High-quality images are a necessity for your product page – but don’t forget to add them to your cart abandonment sequences as well. Once you have the data on what product the customer is interested in, test different images to try to get them back to the funnel and complete the checkout.
When starting to build an ecommerce email list, one of the first things you’ll need to decide is which email marketing software you’ll use.
Different providers suit different industries, and some of the main things you’ll need to keep an eye on as are integration with your online store, how simple it is to include dynamic content, order tracking capabilities, etc.
And while there are several suitable platforms worth considering, our respondents voted MailChimp as the most useful tool for building an ecommerce email list.
PRO TIP: While the standard optin “bribes” like coupons and ebooks work great in ecommerce, you can take it to another level by adding more interactivity. One way to do this is through giveaways where customers need to provide their email to spin the wheel and win some sort of reward.
If you’ve been running ads for a while and have an audience that has shown interest in your product – but still hasn’t made that final step – Facebook remarketing can be a great strategy to nudge them over the edge.
Most ecommerce businesses have used the following Facebook remarketing strategies in the previous year: Retargeting based on engagement, Retargeting Email Custom Audiences, Shopping funnel retargeting, and Dynamic Retargeting on Facebook (DPA).
Want to make sure your Facebook ads are performing and trending in the right direction? There are several types of metrics you should track, from costs to campaign engagement to ad-level engagement, and so on.
Here are a few we’d recommend focusing on.
Tracking these metrics in Facebook Ads Manager can be overwhelming since the tool is not easy to navigate and the visualizations are quite limiting. It’s also a bit time-consuming to combine all the metrics you need in one view.
We’ve made this easier by building a plug-and-play Facebook Ads dashboard that takes your data and automatically visualizes the right metrics to give you an in-depth analysis of your ad performance.
With this Facebook Ads dashboard, you can quickly discover your most popular ads and see which campaigns have the highest ROI, including details such as:
And more…
You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.
To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:
Step 1: Get the template
Step 2: Connect your Facebook Ads account with Databox.
Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.
One of the main things behind a successful ecommerce Facebook Ads campaign is the ad format you use to showcase your products.
And depending on what you’re product is and how it works, you can narrow down the list of formats you’ll experiment with.
When it comes to our survey, almost three-quarters of ecommerce businesses use video ads and more than half of them use dynamic ads.
PRO TIP: Aside from engaging your audience and showcasing your product in more detail, video ads can also help you get more granular targeting. Since the iOS14 changes that limited customer tracking data, many marketers have turned to video view campaigns as a way to build more specific custom audiences.
There’s nothing more frustrating for ecommerce business owners than seeing high cart abandonment rates.
When analyzing high shopping cart abandonment causes, there are a few usual suspects that almost always come up – unexpected costs, complex checkout processes, lack of preferred payment options, pricing issues, technical issues, and more.
And according to our research, the most common reasons are checkout process issues and pricing issues.
PRO TIP: One overlooked way to optimize your checkout process is to allow guest checkouts. Rather than forcing your customers to log in or create a new account when they want to buy something, allow guest checkouts to get them to the finish line faster.
There are several ways you can mitigate high shopping cart abandonment causes, but one of the most popular ones is to set up triggered-based abandonment campaigns.
In other words, set up automated messaging campaigns that are triggered after a customer abandons their shopping cart without completing the purchase.
The campaigns usually include a reminder of the items left in the cart, along with incentives such as discounts or free shipping to encourage the customer to complete their purchase.
Shy of 40% of our respondents selected email shopping cart abandonment campaigns (right after trigger-based campaigns) as the most efficient way to solve the problem of an abandoned shopping cart.
PRO TIP: While most business owners focus on the creative, subject lines, and discounts when setting up these campaigns, one of the things that might slide under the radar is the sending time. Consider creating different automated sending times based on your audience segmentation data, and test variations until you find the optimal one for each demographic.
In ecommerce, personalization means tailoring the shopping experience for individual customers based on their unique preferences, behavior, and data.
This can include recommendations based on past purchases, targeted discounts, personalized emails, customized product suggestions, and more.
This strategy helps ecommerce businesses build stronger relationships with their customers and improve their overall shopping experience, which can lead to increased customer loyalty, higher engagement, and more repeat purchases.
But just how important personalization really is for ecommerce businesses and what strategies tend to be the most successful in this regard?
Let’s check it out.
If we take a look at some of the popular ecommerce personalization examples, we can notice that the most commonly used strategies include relevant product bundling, creating dynamic offers through banners, implementing one-click upsells, and personalized email campaigns.
But just how much of an impact can these personalization strategies have?
Well, more than half of our respondents think that an eCommerce business cannot be successful without personalization, while 43.14% of them think that customers are used to it and therefore expect a maximum level of personalization.
PRO TIP: Make sure you also have relevant upsells for each of your main products and set up the proper triggers. If someone buys a keyboard, they’re far more likely to add a mouse to their cart than a T-shirt.
Leveraging user behavior data to create specific offers for different segments is a great ecommerce personalization example for brands that have bigger audiences and a larger number of people to build a relationship with.
You can define different audience segments using your user behavior data and then build personalized offers that will cater to each group.
And while this isn’t the only strategy that you can use to deal with massive audiences, our respondents rank user behavior-based offers as the most efficient way to do ecommerce personalization at scale.
PRO TIP: You know that feeling when you walk into one of your favorite shops and the employees greet you by name? That’s the effect that personalized banners and pop-ups can have on your existing customers if you leverage their past shopping patterns, and come up with the right messaging.
What factors do you consider when segmenting your customers?
There are several types of customer segmentation and they can all bring different results based on the specific industry you’re in.
And when it comes to ecommerce customer segmentation, some of the more popular ways to do it are based on demographic characteristics, psychographic characteristics, or behavior.
Many businesses even use multiple types of segmentation and experiment with them until they identify the most successful one.
As for our respondents, almost 39% of them said that they prefer using behavioral customer segmentation for their ecommerce business.
PRO TIP: No matter what type of customer segmentation you implement, don’t forget to take into account their location. This detail is equally important in all segments. If you’re launching a new line of winter jackets, you don’t want to waste resources on advertising it to those battling a heat wave on the beach.
Targeting abandoned carts (and checkouts) is one of the most common ecommerce customer segmentation tips you’ll hear online nowadays.
And for good reasons.
According to General Ecommerce Performance Benchmarks, the median value of abandoned checkouts in March 2023 was 141.5.
In a best-case scenario, cart abandoners will only need a quick email reminder to nudge them over the buying edge. Other times, it might require discounts or more persuasive tactics.
Retargeting cart abandoners can also often be a cost-effective way to generate additional revenue, as it requires less effort and resources than acquiring new customers.
In our survey, cart abandoners are the most often targeted segment for 29.03% of respondents, followed by loyal customers.
PRO TIP: Don’t put all of your cart abandoners in one basket. Analyze their customer journey and identify at what point during the sales funnel most abandonments occur. You want to know whether there’s anything in that step that’s making people quit the purchase.
Consumer behavior and preferences are constantly changing.
By updating customer personas, businesses can gain a better understanding of their customers, and adjust their ecommerce personalization strategies and product offerings accordingly.
In a fast-paced industry like ecommerce, this is key to staying competitive.
But how often should you revisit your personas?
We found that companies update their personas every 1 to 4 years, while the top-ranked reason for revising personas is user base changes (composition, demographic data, etc.).
PRO TIP: If you notice sudden market shifts happening in the industry, don’t hesitate to update your personas earlier than scheduled. For example, if there’s a sudden shift in consumer preferences toward environmentally-friendly products, you’ll want to start tailoring your product offerings to meet this demand as soon as possible.
Our last set of ecommerce statistics data revolves around business stats and ecommerce performance tracking.
Let’s dig in.
Net sales is the key financial metric that represents the total revenue generated by an ecommerce business after deducting any discounts, returns, and allowances.
And tracking net sales over time is one of the best ways to get a sense of how your sales are growing or shrinking.
According to Shopify Benchmarks for All Companies, the median value of net sales in March 2023 was $51,633.26. However, net sales of the top quartile companies reached almost $200K in the same period.
PRO TIP: Boost net sales by taking advantage of user-generated content (UGC) such as reviews, ratings, and social media posts to build trust and credibility with customers. Incorporate this content strategically into product pages and social media posts to increase conversions.
Average order value (AOV) is another key metric ecommerce business owners have on the top of their checklists.
It represents the average amount a customer spends in a single transaction, but can also provide insight into customer behavior, marketing efficiency, inventory management, and revenue growth.
According to Google Analytics Benchmarks for ecommerce, the Average order value in March 2023 was $125.30.
On the other hand, the median value of the ecommerce conversion rate was 1.22% in the same period.
PRO TIP: Set a minimum order value that qualifies for free shipping. This encourages customers to add more items to their cart to reach the threshold and directly increases the AOV.
Any ecommerce business worth its virtual shopping cart knows the importance of properly tracking KPIs to get the full data picture and see what’s going on beneath the surface.
They also know that the best way to stay on top of ecommerce KPIs is to make a list of those that they’ll primarily focus on – going too broad can cause more harm than good.
Now, there are several KPIs that usually make their way onto this list, including CLV, retention rate, conversion rate, average order value, net profit, and more.
But for the ecommerce businesses we spoke to, even though there are plenty of important KPIs to monitor, the conversion rate comes on top.
To improve the performance of your online store, it’s vital to have access to useful and actionable data. But, with so many metrics available to track, it may be hard to determine which ones will actually help you move the needle.
That’s why we have created a concise dashboard template that only tracks the most important metrics for analyzing the core elements of your ecommerce businesses, such as:
Now you can benefit from the experience of our Google Analytics 4 experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template showing the most important KPIs for monitoring your online store’s performance. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in ecommerce reports, and best of all, it’s free!
Step 2: Connect your Google Analytics 4 account with Databox.
The frequency of ecommerce performance reporting can vary depending on the business’s specific needs and goals.
In general, it’s recommended that marketers report on performance at least monthly, and in some cases, even more frequently.
Some of the main reasons you should create ecommerce reports more frequently are to identify issues early, track progress toward goals, optimize marketing spend, and more.
In our survey, we found that most marketers report on ecommerce performance at least once a week.
PRO TIP: Are you tired of manually checking performance each week and logging into multiple tools just to get your hands on the data? With Databox scheduled snapshots and scorecards, you can automate performance updates of your most important metrics to your whole company, individual departments, or even just a couple of people.
When it comes to thorough ecommerce tracking and getting a comprehensive understanding of your online store’s performance to make data-driven decisions, there aren’t many tools that can go toe-to-toe with Google Analytics.
And in our survey, we found that all the eCommerce businesses we talked to use Google Analytics to track their e-shop’s performance.
About 30% of them use Shopify and/or WooCommerce besides Google Analytics, while 22% use ecommerce reporting software like Databox.
PRO TIP: Sometimes, ecommerce GA configurations might have certain holes that can only be revealed with real data. To make sure this isn’t the case, create a dummy profile that you can use to test a purchase or a funnel.
In today’s competitive world of ecommerce, business owners need to be on a constant lookout for the latest trends, hot markets, and strategies that are currently bringing results in the industry.
Furthermore, to cater to your store and personalize it for ideal prospects, you also have to be on top of how your customer’s online shopping habits and patterns are changing over time.
There’s a thin line between hyper-successful e-stores and the ones that are barely managing to break even, and it often comes down to how well you’re tracking data and whether you understand your performance.
And this is no easy feat – especially if you’re still doing everything manually (organizing spreadsheets, pulling out data, creating reports, etc.).
So why risk falling behind your competition?
With Databox dashboards, this is no longer a worry.
You have 100+ dashboards and reports, 1,000+ metrics, 70+ integrations, and a full arsenal of visualization and automation features to make your performance tracking and reporting easier than ever before.
Everything from store conversions and average order value to cart abandonments and inventory turnovers, all in one place.
You can either build a dashboard from scratch or download one from our gallery and customize it in a matter of minutes.
Connect data from a source, drag-and-drop the metrics you need, and transform them into stunning visuals with a single click – that’s it.
Sign up for a free account now and make performance-tracking stress a thing of the past.
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At Databox, we’re obsessed with helping companies more easily monitor, analyze, and report their results. Whether it’s the resources we put into building and maintaining integrations with 100+ popular marketing tools, enabling customizability of charts, dashboards, and reports, or building functionality to make analysis, benchmarking, and forecasting easier, we’re constantly trying to find ways to help our customers save time and deliver better results.
Marketing Research Analyst at Databox. Being an experienced Strategic and Creative Planner, with more than 15 years of practice, Nevena is passionately dedicated to untying the knots and entanglements of marketing, sales, and human behavior in order to deliver understandable, useful, and actionable insights for businesses.
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