Benchmarking your retail performance
| by Lynn Switanowski
When It Comes to Retail Store In today’s highly integrated and customized digital marketplace, successful retailers understand it’s not wise to use a one-size-fits-all methodology when developing marketing strategy. What has proven successful for others will not achieve the same results for all. Neither can they fall back on just the old tried-and-true traditional marketing practices that had been effective at one time. “If you build it, they will come” has been relegated to the old way of doing things. More than likely they won’t come, as they can easily find a competitor who is willing to give them exactly what they want – a customized experience.
Yet, successful retailers often diagnose the general health of their stores by using a one-size-fits-all traditional benchmark of same-stores growth when measuring true retail performance. Often, retailers will use this benchmark to determine chain improvement over a set period of time, while ignoring other important variables that must be factored in. Or, it will be compared to an average of publicly traded retailers, which can be distorted by the scarcity of data from the small pool it represents.Although store past performance has its place as a diagnostic tool, when used in isolation, it will only give an incomplete analysis of true retail health. And, in today’s highly competitive retail landscape, incompleteness cannot be tolerated.By using cutting-edge technology to understand those factors that drive a store’s success, retailers now have
, at their disposal
, a system of in-depth business analytics to expand the scope of their analysis beyond same-stores growth. By going outside of the box, they are now able to uncover and specifically focus on those factors leading to actionable insights. No longer are they tied to store past performance to make decisions, they can now analyze real-time shopper traffic within the right context by using the right benchmarks to make the right decisions.ShopperTrak provides a store performance matrix through our people counter technology to not only help retailers identify how their stores compare to one another, but determine which actions will increase same-store sales. This matrix allows retailers to accurately assess those variables tied to increased conversions. As ShopperTrak understands, the traditional use of same-stores sales alone can only point to what has happened in the past. However, business analytics will help predict what can happen in the future for successful store performance.6 essential benchmarks for Shopify stores
Understanding how your website performs versus similar sites is the best way to prioritise what to improve. In this post we take a look at 6 top benchmarks for optimising Shopify store performance.Accurate benchmark data is especially useful to the increasing number of ecommerce companies using web performance benchmarks, such as bounce rates and home page reliance, as core elements of their sales and marketing KPIs. Understanding benchmarks is a key to success.
To put together this new benchmarking report, we analysed current data from 470 Shopify retailers. If you’re wondering how you compare, check out our Shopify analytics app.Average order value
Average order value (AOV) or Average revenue per paying user (ARPU) is the total monthly revenue divided by the number of users which transacted that month. It is a measure of how well you are up-selling and cross-selling your products, depending on your product mix.What is a good average order value for Shopify stores? The benchmark is $69.The average is slightly lower ($63.50) if you are a smaller Shopify store. More than $120 AOV would put you in the top quartile, and one of our top-performing stores in the luxury ecommerce sector is averaging $2,080 per order!If your Shopify store has a lower AOV than the benchmark, you might try increasing your average checkout value by cross-selling other products, offering free shipping above a minimum threshold or increasing pricing on selected products.Ecommerce conversion rate
Ecommerce conversion is the number of purchases divided by the total number of sessions. Most visitors will take more than one session to decide to purchase, but this is the standard measure of conversion rate. It is a measure of how good a fit your traffic is for your products, and how well your site converts this traffic into customers.What is a good ecommerce conversion rate for Shopify stores? The benchmark is 1.75%.Larger stores have pushed this to 1.85%, and if you are more than 2.8% you are in the top quartile. The highest conversion rate we’ve seen on Shopify is 8%.Can you increase the conversion rate with more attractive product displays, or improving the checkout process? Enhanced ecommerce tracking will help you identify exactly where the blockers lie.Bounce rate from mobile search
Since more than 60% of Google searches are now done on mobile, ensuring your site design works on a small screen is important for branding and sales. Bounce rate is the percent of visits of only one page – and will be high if your landing pages do not engage.Google will even adjust your mobile ranking for a given keyword depending on what proportion of visitors stick on your page – a good indication that your link was useful.What is a good bounce rate from mobile search for Shopify stores? The benchmark is 47.5%.The biggest Shopify stores have got this below 40%, and overall large retailers have 38% mobile bounce rate. So it’s not a problem with the Shopify platform, so much as a problem with the store theme – or how the options and products are displayed on a smaller screen.Can you improve the first impressions of the landing pages, put key content higher up the page, or decrease the page load speed to reduce that bounce rate?Delay before page content appears
The delay between a page request by the user and them being to read or click on that page. This is more important than full page load speed for AJAX / lazy loading sites (also called the ‘DOM Interactive Time’).What is a good delay time before page content appears? The benchmark for Shopify stores is 2.75 seconds.Even larger retailers have this down to 2.8 seconds, so Shopify sites do well on this score. Anything less than 3 seconds is generally acceptable.Internet users are increasingly intolerant of slow sites. Your developers could look at Google PageSpeed Insights for more details. Often the delay will be down to extra scripts which could be delayed or removed.Server response time
This is the part of the page load speed which is entirely outside of your control – and due to the speed of the servers your site runs on.What is a good server response time for Shopify stores? The benchmark is 322ms.The average for larger ecommerce is 542ms – so Shopify’s server infrastructure is serving you well here.Reliance on the homepage
This is the percent of visitors who land on your homepage. If this is below 40% you rely heavily on your homepage to capture brand or paid search traffic. Google increasingly rewards sites with a greater volume of landing pages targeting more specific keyword phrases.What is a good reliance on homepage percentage for Shopify stores? The benchmark is 32%.Larger Shopify stores, with many more landing pages, have reduced this to 7.3% of traffic landing on the homepage on average. Can you build out product landing pages and inbound links to copy their advantage?Ready to benchmark your own website, stop playing guessing games and start scaling your ecommerce business? Our Shopify reporting app is the easiest way to get accurate benchmarking.Install Littledata today and you’ll get instant access to up to 20 relevant industry benchmarks for ecommerce sites, plus the tools you need to fix your analytics for accurate tracking, so you’ll always know for sure where your website stands. It’s all about smart data that helps you focus on making changes that drive revenue and increase conversions. We’re here to help you grow!Performance, One Size Does Not Fit All
Wednesday, July 11, 2018
Store performance benchmarking
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