5 Metrics to Strengthen your Multichannel Sales Strategy

For many e-commerce companies, measuring multichannel sales performance is a challenge. And as your organisation expands to new sales channels like marketplaces, your own brand web stores, and social commerce channels, the complexity for measuring their performance increases.

So, you may end up being confused on which KPIs to track, or end up tracking every known KPI out there. To avoid this, we have listed some of the most prominent KPIs that can help you critically analyse your multichannel sales strategy:

1. Measuring Channel Performance

Let’s start with the most obvious one first. Channel-wise sales performance is a significant multichannel sales metrics, to begin with.

For this, you need to be consistent in the data collection and calculation techniques for all your sales channels. You can compare the performance of each sales channel based on:

• No. of orders generated

• GMV over a period of time (try measuring it on a quarterly basis)

• Generated Revenue

• Proportion of visitors vs. customers

Based on the above metrics you can inspect the best-converting channels and build sales and promotion plans for each channel.

2. Tracking Different Conversion Rates

Another important KPI to track and which almost every e-commerce retailer fears the most is the cart abandonment rate. It is formulated as the percentage of shoppers who place product(s) in the basket but fail to complete the checkout process. It is an intuitive indicator that can help you understand the shopping behaviour of your website visitors and your subscribers.

It is calculated as –

To simplify, let’s consider the following example:

You have generated 400 orders this month, and 1200 shopping carts were created. So 400/1200 gives you 0.33. Now multiply it by 100 that will give you 33%. Next, subtract this from 100 and you will get 66.

So, by this calculation, 66% is your final cart abandonment rate. On average, the cart abandonment rate falls between 60% to 80%. But, it also depends on the device through which the process has been initiated and the industry you belong to. Likewise, you can follow industry benchmarks to track, test and adjust your sales strategy.

If you get successful in reducing this rate, it will automatically increase your overall conversion cycle and help you to enhance your sales performance.

3. Monitoring Consumer Experience

Offering seamless transitions between devices and delivering the right experience each time the customer lands on any of your sales channels is very critical. In fact, according to Harvard Business Review, 9 out of 10 global shoppers consider this as a tipping point when shopping online.

But, how do you measure if your consumer experience is good or if it needs any improvement?

In order to completely understand this KPI, you need to track the feedback of your shoppers and analyze it accordingly. Once the shopper has given their feedback on how likely would they recommend your products/ services, depending on their response, categorize them into three classes

• Promoters (score as high as 9-10): They are most likely your brand advocates.

• Passives (7-8): This group of shoppers although have a satisfactory experience, they can easily switch to competing brands or retailers.

• Detractors (6 or below): These shoppers are highly dissatisfied with your service and can openly voice out their opinion.

Once you have had a substantial score to grade, subtract the number of detractors from promoters and you will get your Net Promoter Score (NPS). On average you need to maintain NPS above 50 which is considered excellent.

Although this metric is not directly related to the sales strategy, it will give you a clear picture of how your customers perceive your service. The ease and simplicity of the metric define how to alter your consumer experience capabilities which are essentially important to drive more sales in your multichannel e-commerce operations.

4. Calculating Gross Margin 

Essentially when you track Gross Margin as a financial metric, it helps you to understand profit after product sales and gain insight into how sustainable your growth is.

It is calculated as –

Gross Margin = Revenue – Cost of Goods Sold (COGS)

And the rate of Gross Margin is  – Gross Margin Rate = (Gross Margin/Revenue)* 100

A higher gross margin rate means you have a highly profitable business.

Having a high gross margin rate allows you to invest more in your business. So you can make a decision if you should add more channels to further strengthen your position in the market or carry on with the existing ones.

5. Checking Customer Lifetime Value

Customer Lifetime Value is the value or amount of revenue you can expect from a customer during the course of your business relationship. 

Make sure you monitor this metric from a specific point of time as this is the single most important element of the metric.

To track this KPI, first, you need to calculate some underlying values such as:

Based on these four values you can deduce the customer lifetime value. CLV gives you a clear understanding of the total revenue you can reasonably expect from a particular customer. The longer a customer continues to keep ordering, the greater their lifetime value becomes. This metric can help you identify significant customer segments that are most valuable to you. So you can promote loyalty campaigns or even compare CLVs for different customers across different channels.

Let’s understand how to measure this value with the following example –

You generated a revenue of $SGD 3,00,000 in one month. And the number of orders generated for that month were 5000. The no. of customers you have 20000. The customer ordered twice in one month 7 days apart.

So, A = 300000 / 5000 = 6

B = 5000/ 20000 = 0.25

C = 0.25/6= 0.04

D = 7

Therefore the CLV would be —

C*D= 0.04* 7 = 0. 28

To translate it into a simple statement, the customer has generated a revenue of $SGD 0.28 in this month.  

So, depending on the above calculations, start determining customer wise CLV and monitor it, by keeping a constant check on the above four values.

If you wish to succeed in your multichannel strategy, you need to think about all these metrics holistically and put customer experiences, sales activities and channel behaviour at the heart of your strategy. 

By measuring these KPIs, you can understand how useful your multichannel efforts have been, and what you can expect in the future. Once you start regularly monitoring them, you will also be able to determine your own benchmarks and make the necessary improvisations.

Sources and References:

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6