You are a PM for an e-commerce company. Due to some mistakes, the data team lost all key metrics. What are the metrics you will track as PM?

Question

You are a PM for an e-commerce company. Due to some mistakes, the data team lost all key metrics. What are the metrics you will track as PM?

Goal - Revenue. (List 10-15 metrics to track as ecommerce PM)

Asked at Amazon over a year ago

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Chetan Channa · Answer 1 · 2020-01-02T18:40:16+0000

This is a broad metrics question so let's make a few assumptions & then proceed.

As an e-commerce PM, apart from increasing Revenues, I need to make sure that we 'wow' the consumers as well. So apart from revenue, I would also capture consumer-centric metrics & not just business metrics. Also, we will focus just on the buyer side metrics & ignore seller side & logistics related metrics for now.

First, let's look at the Consumer journey

A user wants to buy something -> Searches on Google -> Visits the Product -> Browses the product for the item he/she wants -> Registers -> Adds them to cart -> Pays -> Browses for more items -> Reaches out in case of issues -> write reviews -> Comes back and starts all over again

Now let's look at each of these steps & figure out Consumer metrics

Searches on Google
1. Google Search Organic Impressions
2. Average Rank on Google SRP
3. CTR on Search Results
4. Search Paid Impressions (This is for marketing team)
5. CTR on paid Ads (This is for marketing team)
Visits the product
1. Total Users
2. Search Organic Users
3. Direct Users
4. Paid Users (This is for marketing team)
Browses the product
1. Bounce Rate
2. Pages/Session (This metrics need to be analyzed qualitatively as well)
3. Time on Site (This metrics need to be analyzed qualitatively as well)
4. Exit rate on Product pages
Registers
1. % of Logged In Users
2. % of New Signups
Add to Cart
1. # of items in cart per user
2. Cart Abandonment Rate
Pays
1. CLTV
2. AOV
Reaches out in case of issues
1. Return Rate
2. Refund Rate
3. Support calls in Call centre
Write reviews - We will skip this as on amazon ratings are generally for the seller or for the item & those are not a reflection on the product directly.
Comes back and starts all over again
1. Retention Rate
2. Frequency
3. Recency

So these are the customer metrics, I would track

On the business side, I would like to track Revenue & Cost

Revenue = # of Paying Customers * AOV

Cost = Customer Acquisition Cost

Shruti_K · Answer 2 · 2021-02-04T16:25:31+0000

Clarifying questions:

Which e-Comm website are we talking about here? - Assume Amazon.

By tracking, I assume we also mean which metrics will I prioritize as I may track many metrics but prioritize only a few as my goal metrics - Assume confirmed

Approach:

I will first layout what Amazon wants to achieve short and long terms
Will then determine the long term north star metric
Will then determine top level components contributing that North Star and representative top line metrics
Will then identify top counter metrics
Will conclude by identifying secondary metrics to track

OUTCOMES TO ACHIEVE

I would assume Amazon would want to be customers' first choice for a wide variety of lifestyle needs. For this it important to ensure customers are turning to Amazon and sticking with it over time. This in turn would translate to strong revenue and profitability over long term.

2. NORTH STAR METRIC

I would take Amazon's North Star to be Total Number of Purchases / Month as this would be a measure of Amazon's ability of satisfy customer need - the more they get what they need on Amazon, the more they will buy.

3. COMPONENTS / KEY TOP LINE METRICS

Key contributers to Total Number of Purchases / Month would be:

Number of Unique Vistors to Site / Month (top of funnel) X Base Conversion Rate (Conversion) X Avg # Purchases / Customer / Month (engagement / retention) = Total Number of Purchases / Month

These would be my 3 topline metrics.

4. TOP LINE COUNTER METRICS:

% Churn
Return Rate
Call Volume (customer service issues)

5. SECONDARY METRICS

I will go deep into each pillar:

Awarenesss or Top of Funnel:

Segment 1: Number of New Visitors to Site / Month
By Digital Channel: Web. Mobile
By Line of Business: for Amazon, it could be Whole Foods, Fresh, Fashion etc
By Source: Organic or Paid

Segment 2: Number of Existing Visitors to Site / Month
By Digital Channel: Web. Mobile
By Line of Business: for Amazon, it could be Whole Foods, Fresh, Fashion etc
By Source: Organic or Paid

Overall Origination:
Search Organic Impressions
CTR on Organic Results
Search Paid Impressions
CTR on Paid Ads

Conversion:

% Signups
% Logged In
Funnel Metrics

Engagement / Retention:

Repeat purchase rate
Frequency of purchases
%Users that perform some action unrelated to purchase - e.g. writing a review, adding to cart
CLV
Segment: by category

Revenue:

$Spent on platform

Profitability

Costs

By category

The above are all Buyer side metrics. I would also measure very similar metrics on Seller Side as well esp around Seller Acquisition, Engagment & Retention in terms of both number of sellers and type/quality and quantity of products listed.

Anga Raja · Answer 3 · 2021-09-30T17:17:48+0000

Clarifying the questions:

For what purpose are we trying to track the metrics again?

· Do they want us to track to get a brief idea of the issue?

· Do they want us to track metrics afresh so that we can start working again?

So I assume that the task is to create new metrics so that we can start afresh.

There are two sides to the story: The buyer side and the seller's side. For now, I will concentrate on the buyer's side.

Buyer side:

Awareness: How are the people getting to know about our platform

· Number of Impressions through ads: Number of times our ad has been visible to customers

· Number of organic impressions: Number of times users have searched for our e-commerce site on various search engines

· Click through rate CTR: we measure the click-through rate of our ad campaign on various websites

· Click through rate on search results

Acquisition: Represents the number of users that are interested in the services that are provided

· Number of Sign-ups/day

· Conversion Rate: Number of people who have signed up/number of visits to the website

o This metric shows that the number of interested people whom we were not able to convert

· Customer Acquisition Cost: The amount that is spent on every user to signup to the product

Activation: This is a single-time action, which represents how effective our product is to the customer. We can consider the creation of a cart, wish list, or placing an order as an activation criterion.

· First cart created on the same day of signing up

· First order placed successfully

· Activation rate

· Activation time

Engagement: E-commerce companies depend mainly upon repeated orders, and hence engagement of the users with the platform is critical.

· Number of products in wish list per user

· Number of products ordered from wish list

· Daily Active Users

· Daily total number of orders and transactions

· % of orders returned

Retention: Retaining old customers and making brand loyalty is cheaper than acquiring a new customer, and hence retention takes an important place.

· Number of repurchases

· User reviews

· % good rating for returned products

· MAU

Revenue: Revenue is the driving factor of any e-commerce company, and this could be a valuable metric to describe the growth of the company

· Frequency of the orders

· Average revenue/user

· Revenue generation via ads

Zeel Shah · Answer 4 · 2022-11-03T09:07:34+0000

In India, there are many e-commerce companies but for this conversation, I would like to consider Flipkart because in India Flipkart has the largest market share.

Flipkart is the biggest e-commerce provide many services like the game, feed, and video but I would like to focus only on e-commerce. In any e-commerce, there is main two entity: Buyer and Seller. For simplicity, I would like to focus on the Buyer. Buyer journey is divided into two parts Pre-Order and Post Order journey

Pre-Order Journey

Open APP (Via google search result, social media ads, notification)--> Browse banner page --> search product -->Browse list of product --> product page --> ad to cart (or ignore browse again or wish list) --> payment -->Order placed.

Post Order journey

Track order --> shipped --> RTO return or delivered --> accepted or return --> review

Targeting metrics

Google search organic impression
Google search paid impression
CTR on search result
CTR on paid ads
CTR on different campaigns(PN,Email,WhatsApp,SMS)

Activation

# of sign-ups/ # of downloads

Adoption

# of users who completed at least one order / # of signups

Engagement

# of order per user(weekly,monthly,daily)
Average session time per user
CTR on product recommendation below the product page
bounce rate
cart abandonment rate
drop rate on product page
# of product order vs # of add to cart
repeat purchase rate
frequency if purchase
# of products purchased from the wish-list

Return flow

% of RTO order return rate
% of Order return rate
% of a negative review
% of compliant raise

Referral

NPS
Play store rating

Revenue

Average order value per user
CLTV

Among all # of order per user is north start metric to track.

Amit J · Answer 5 · 2021-11-27T03:12:05+0000

Clarifying questions:

E-Commerce - Amazon is a leader in E-commerce with >30% market share. I will assume key metrics for Amazon as PM.

Data team lost the metrics - What does it means? - Does it means they lost data to grade key metric or they lost what were key metrics itself - For sake of simplicity since question mentioned provide what metrics a PM will track, i am assuming data team lost all the key metric itself and in order to track success , we need to define new metrics.

I divide Amazon Business into 5 sub-parts:

1) Direct Selling - Goods sold by Amazon directly (flat to negative operating margin)

2) 3rd party selling services - Goods sold through Amazon e-infrastructure platform and fullfilled by Amazon. (Positive Operating margin and growing)

3) AWS - Highest growing segment and funding other segments with >30% OM

4) Devices - Echo products, Ring, Alexa, Kindle etc

5) Subscriptions - Prime and Video, e-Book

6) Advertisement and Other

Would you like me to deep dive in a particular segment - Lets do for Devices segment for Alexa/Echo.

I would like to use RACE (Reach, Acquire, Conversion and Engagement) framework to come up metrics for Alexa/Echo products. Before doing so, lets study Echo/Alexa user journey:

User gets aware about about Echo/Alexa -> Makes a purchase -> Engage with Echo/Alexa for Music, Amazon purchase, Alexa skill-set -> Become a passive user (return or low usage) or Active user (continue to use in daily life)

Below will be my list of metrics for each of step of user journey:

1) Reach / Awareness - My key metric under this category will be :

- % of positive awareness on Social Media platform

- % of email marketing opened by users

- % of web/mobile based search made by user on Echo/Alexa products

- % of Click through advertisement by users

2) Acquire - My key metric under this category will be:

- % of new Echo/Alexa buyers through Amazon / non-Amazon platform

3) Conversion - My key metric under this category will be:

- % of users converted from non-prime to prime through Alexa/Echo

4) Engagement/Retention - My key metric under this category will be:

- Avg purchase through echo in a month

- Avg echo purchase vs amazon.com purchase, is it increasing or decreasing or cannibalizing

- Music subscription

- Other alexa skill services - top 10 skills, avg revenue by skill per month, avg time by skill per month.

- % of Alexa skill set growth

Retention:

- From day to day, month to month, what fraction of the same users in a cohort use Echo?

- From month to month, what fraction of the same users in a cohort use Echo to make at least one purchase?

- From month to month, what fraction of the same users in a cohort use at least one skill?

- Per month, how many days does it take on average for the a user in a cohort to reuse Echo a second time?

- Per month, how many days does it take on average for a user in a cohort to make an Amazon purchase using Echo since the beginning of the month?

- Per month, how many days does it take on average for a user in a cohort to reuse Echo to listen to music?

- How many Echoes are returned per month? Is it increasing or decreasing?

Now, i would like to prioritize my key metric in each of my User step Journey which matches with Amazon mission/Vision which is "to offer our customers the lowest possible prices, the best available selection, and the utmost convenience."

Following will be my North-Star metrics for Echo/Alexa products

1) % incremental increase in Revenue using Echo/Alexa products (Direct/3rd party Goods)

2) % increase in Prime members subscription - (Prime Subscription segment)

3) % Churn rate

sbansal · Answer 6 · 2020-05-03T13:41:17+0000

We should start this question by clarifying few things to narrow down the objective as it is a broad problem:

1. Clarification: are we looking for any platofrm specific metirces (app, desktop,) or generic, assuming generic. Is this ecommerce firm specialized into one product like nykaa (for beauty products) or generic marketplace such as amazon, assuming generic

2. Users: Buyers, sellers, assuming we need to list only buyer side metrices

3. Start explaining the user journey:

User opens app/ website
User searches and finds desired products
User compares products and chooses one in cart
User completes cart and proceeds to checkout
User adds payment method and complete buying
User receives product and checks quality
User either returns or accepts product thus completing the transaction (assuming no exchange for simplicity)
User provides feedback

Taking into account the goal of the product: lets assume its revenue growth

Metrices:

1. Acquisition side:

# new sign ups, growth over wow/mom
new app installs, grwoth over wow/mom

2. Activation side:

# completed sign ups
#new buyers
#digital payment options saved: as it is an important step in telling us that person now trusts the platform and indicates intent for repeat purchase
#new product cateogries browsed/ user/ day/week/ month: as it will help us understand are our buyers expanding their purchase
#new product categoriers bought/ user/ day,week,month

3. Engagement side:

# sessions/ user/ day,w,m
Total time/ session/ user
Bounce rate
#searches/ user
#successful searches/ user: this will give us idea on product catalog explansion need
avg. searches/ purchase/ active buyer: to get new users to that level
# searches for new product category/ user: to see if buyers are exploring new markets
# comparisons/ purchase/ user
#saved carts

4. Retention side

# logins/ day/ week/ month
# purchases/ user/ day/ week/ month

5. Revenue side:

avg cart value/ new user
avg cart value/ 6 month old user/ 1 year old user, etc
avg no of unique items in cart: Growth of unique items in cart wow, mom
Avg profits/ order: growth over wow/mom
# abandoned carts
# referrals/ user
# return/ 1000 order
# returns/ user

ignoring business and seller side metrices lets choose some primary metrices to follow which align with revenue goals. Evaluating metirces on user impact, revenue impact potential we can priortize following metrices:

# digital payment options saved: as it tells us repeat purchase
# new buyers: as it benefits in revenue ultimately
# purchases/ user/ day/ week/ month: ultimately the purchase will give us profits
Avg profits/ order

prashantso · Answer 7 · 2020-03-27T22:11:07+0000

Quest - You are eCommerce PM. Due to some goofup; data team lost all the key metrics. What all metrics will you track as a PM.

As the question is very broad, we should consider only high level metrics that would define the current health of the product, in case higher level metrics are as not as expected,then we should drive deeper into other low level metrics.

More over, amazon is a market place i,e it has a supply side and demand side, as its a demand constrained business focussing on demand side of it only.

As a PM of amazon, i should be focussed on

- current growth of amazon

- current transactions of the amazon

- future growth of the amazon

Given above i would measure -

Total # of visits to amazon ( to check how many visits are made to amazon on a daily basis0
% paid visit and % organic visit (eventually % organic visit should improve with time )
# daily new user sign ups (current growth)
Over all conversion rate (current status)
Daily Total # of orders (current status)
Total GMV (current status)
Average ticket size (current status)
% Return Orders (current status)
Over all Retension Rate (future growth)
NPS (future growth)
# Tickets/calls to support

These metric would define the current heath of amazon, if needed we can go furher scope out the lower level metrics to get deeper to find the reasons of any goof ups.