Shopify CRO: Key Metrics for Optimal Performance

You could spend hours, or even weeks, making your website look amazing for your product campaign. But here’s the cold, hard truth: If visitors show up and leave without doing anything, all that effort means nothing. 

That’s where conversion rate optimization (CRO) comes in. It’s the process of tweaking your site to encourage more actions such as clicking “Buy,” signing up, or completing a purchase.

In this article, we’ll unpack Shopify CRO and explain to you how it can support you to evaluate your website, make smarter improvements, and turn more visitors into paying customers.

What Are Shopiy CRO Metrics?

CRO metrics are key numbers that help you measure how well your website is encouraging visitors to engage and take action. They serve as a scorecard, revealing what’s working and what isn’t.

When it comes to Shopify, CRO metrics are specific data points that track how effectively your store is converting visitors into customers. These metrics offer valuable insights into your store’s performance, highlighting areas that are driving engagement and those that need improvement.

For example, if your Shopify store has a high bounce rate, it means visitors are leaving without interacting with your site. This could be due to slow load times, an unappealing layout, or other factors driving people away. 

Benefits of CRO Metrics

Gain Deeper Customer Insights

Shopify CRO allows you to gain a deeper understanding of your customers’ behavior. By analyzing data from your store, you can pinpoint what interests your visitors, what frustrates them, and what ultimately drives them to make a purchase. This insight refines your store’s design, content, and offers to better align with what your customers truly want.

Reduce Customer Acquisition Costs

Instead of constantly raising ad budgets or chasing new visitors, focus on converting the ones you already have. Optimizing your store ensures that every visitor has a better chance of becoming a paying customer, reducing your cost per acquisition. This lets you get more out of your marketing budget, leading to more sales without the need to attract new traffic.

Turn Existing Traffic into Loyal Customers

Why spend all your resources on bringing in new visitors when you can convert the ones you already have? Shopify CRO makes it easier for you to engage your current audience through strategies like personalized product recommendations and tailored content. These small adjustments can transform casual browsers into loyal buyers, maximizing the value of your existing traffic.

Learn More: 15+ eCommerce Conversion Rate Optimization Best Practice

Enhance Your Website’s Performance

Shopify CRO isn't just about improving your store’s look. It’s about making sure your site runs smoothly. Optimizing load times, improving navigation, and eliminating bugs ensures a seamless user experience. When your site functions flawlessly, visitors are more likely to stay longer, engage more, and convert at higher rates.

Boost Revenue and Maximize ROI

The primary goal of Shopify CRO is to increase your store’s profitability. Through continuous testing and fine-tuning of elements like product pages and checkout processes, you’ll find that small changes can lead to big results. These optimizations not only increase conversions but also ensure that your marketing spend delivers better returns, boosting both revenue and ROI.

Elevate SEO and Surpass Competitors

Apart from being undeniably effective at increasing conversions, CRO plays a pivotal role in strengthening your SEO. When you enhance your store’s user experience and keep visitors engaged, search engines notice, which can lead to better rankings. Shopify CRO also lets you fine-tune your content and target valuable keywords, bringing more organic traffic to your site. This means higher rankings, more visitors, and a better chance to beat your competition.

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Top Metrics for Tracking Shopify CRO

1. Conversion Rate

The conversion rate displays the percentage of visitors who complete a specific action on your website, such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or starting a free trial. 

With the global average eCommerce conversion rate at 2.86%, if your rate is lower than this, it may be a sign that some aspects of your website need to be reassessed.

Formula:  Conversion rate = Total conversions / Total website visits

Example: You own an online clothing store, and in December, your website got 5,000 visitors. Out of these visitors, 150 made a purchase.

To calculate the conversion rate:

Conversion rate = 150 purchases / 5,000 total visits = 0.03 or 3%

This means 3% of the visitors who came to your site ended up making a purchase. The higher this percentage, the more effective your website is at converting visitors into customers.

Read More: Shopify Conversion Rates - A Beginner Guide

2. eCommerce Conversion Rate

Building on the conversion rate, there's another important metric called the eCommerce conversion rate. It focuses specifically on how many visitors purchase on your site and is often referred to as the sales conversion rate.

Formula: eCommerce conversion rate = Number of orders / Total website visits

Example: You run a jewelry store online. Over a month, your website received 15,000 visitors, and 450 of them made a purchase. To calculate your eCommerce conversion rate:

eCommerce conversion rate = 450 orders / 15,000 visits = 0.03 or 3%

In this case, 3% of your visitors made a purchase, which is above the global eCommerce average of 2.86%. This suggests your website is effectively converting visitors into customers.

3. Micro-Conversion Rate

Micro-conversions are small actions that bring visitors closer to completing a purchase, such as adding a product to the cart or viewing a product page. Monitoring these actions reveals where visitors may be abandoning their journey before finalizing a purchase.

Formula: Micro-conversion rate = Micro-conversions / Total website visits

Example: 400 people visited your website, and 100 of them added a pair of shoes to their cart. To find the micro-conversion rate, you divide the number of people who added an item to the cart by the total number of visitors:

Micro-conversion rate = 100 added to cart / 400 total visits = 0.25 or 25%

Hence, 25% of the people who visited your site took the step of adding an item to their cart. This shows they’re interested and might be close to buying!

4. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Customer Acquisition Cost is a key metric that tells you how much it costs, on average, to get a new customer. It includes everything you spend on marketing like ads, promotions, sales team wages, and more. 

Basically, CAC reveals whether your marketing dollars are being spent wisely and if you're getting a good return on that investment.

Formula: CAC = Total marketing spend / New customers For a more precise calculation, you may want to consider the cost of producing the products you sell, known as the Cost of Goods Sold (COGS). This metric gives a fuller picture of how much it truly costs to acquire a customer, factoring in both marketing and production expenses. True CAC = (Total marketing spend + COGS) / New customers

Example: You spent $10,000 on marketing for a month and ended up gaining 500 new customers. To calculate your CAC, divide your total marketing spend by the number of customers you gained:

CAC = $10,000 ÷ 500 customers = $20

This means your CAC is $20 per customer, so for every new customer you acquire, you're spending $20 on marketing.

Assume that your total cost of goods sold (COGS) for the products is $5,000. To calculate your True CAC, you would add the $10,000 marketing spend to the $5,000 COGS, giving you a total of $15,000 in costs for acquiring customers.

Then, divide this by the 500 new customers you gained:

True CAC = ($10,000 marketing spend + $5,000 COGS) / 500 customers = $30

So your True CAC would be $30 per customer. This includes both the marketing costs and the expenses for producing the products you sell.

5. Bounce Rate

The next Shopify CRO metric is bounce rate. It shows the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing just one page. A high bounce rate indicates that the page didn’t meet the visitor’s expectations or wasn’t engaging enough.

Formula: Bounce rate = Single-page sessions / Total sessions

Bounce rates can vary depending on the type of site you have. For eCommerce sites, a good bounce rate is between 20%-45%.

Example: Your website attracts 1,000 visitors in a month and 400 of them leave after viewing only one page, the bounce rate is calculated as follows:

Bounce rate = 400 single-page sessions / 1,000 total sessions = 0.4 or 40%

In this scenario, your bounce rate stands at 40%, which is within the typical range for eCommerce websites.

6. Average Time on Site

Average Time on Site measures how long visitors usually spend on your eCommerce site during a single session. It’s a useful indicator of how engaging your website is - if people stay longer, they’re likely to explore more products or content, which can increase the chances of conversions.

For eCommerce sites, a good average time on site is normally between 2 and 5 minutes. If your average time is on the higher end, it suggests visitors are interacting with your site and browsing multiple pages.

Formula: Average time on site = Total time spent on site / Total sessions

Example: Your website gets 400 visits in a month, and the total time spent by visitors on your site comes to 1,200 minutes. To calculate the average time spent, you would use this formula:

Average time on site = 1,200 minutes ÷ 400 visits = 3 minutes.

This means visitors are spending, on average, 3 minutes on your site, suggesting that they’re engaging with your content and taking the time to explore what you offer.

7. Pages per Session

Pages per session tells you how many pages a visitor views in one session on your site. It’s a great way to see how engaged people are with your content. If they’re exploring multiple pages, it usually means they find your site appealing or valuable.

Based on an analysis of 3,698 sites by Littledata, the average number of pages per session ranges from 1.8 to 4.4.

Formula: Pages per session = Total pageviews / Total sessions

Example: Your site has 500 visits in a month, and those visitors look at a total of 800 pages.

To calculate pages per session, you’d do:

Pages per session = 800 pageviews ÷ 500 sessions = 1.6 pages per session

On average, each visitor views 1.6 pages per visit. It might indicate that visitors aren’t finding what they’re looking for or are bouncing quickly. As a result, you need to improve site navigation or content relevancy.

Learn More: 7 Essential Metrics for Comprehensive eCommerce Success Measurement

8. Click-Through Rate (CTR)

This Shopify CRO metric tracks the percentage of people who click on a particular link, ad, or call-to-action versus the total number of people who view it. It’s a key indicator of how well your content, ad, or link captures attention and motivates visitors to take action.

For the eCommerce industry, the average click-through rate would be 5.50%.

Formula: Click-through rate = (Number of clicks / Number of impressions)

Example: You run a Facebook ad campaign for a shoe sale and it gets seen by 10,000 people (these are the impressions). Out of those, 500 people click on the ad to visit your website.

To calculate the click-through rate:

CTR = (500 clicks / 10,000 impressions) × 100 = 5%

It means your click-through rate is 5%, 5% of the people who saw your ad clicked on it. This percentage helps you understand how effective your ad is at driving traffic and whether adjustments to its design or targeting might be needed.

9. Exit Rate

Exit rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your website from a particular page after browsing it, regardless of where they entered. It identifies which pages may not be holding visitors' attention and could benefit from changes to improve engagement.

Formula: Exit rate = Number of exits from a page / Total visits to that page

For eCommerce sites, a healthy exit rate typically falls between 20% and 45%.

Example: You run an eCommerce site and you're looking at the data for your checkout page. In a month, the page received 1,000 visits, but 300 of those visitors left after viewing it.

To figure out the exit rate, use this formula:

Exit rate = (300 exits / 1,000 visits) × 100 = 30%

In this case, your checkout page has a 30% exit rate. It seems like some visitors are leaving before completing their purchase. Thus, you should review the design, navigation, or any issues in the checkout process to reduce the exit rate and encourage more people to complete their purchases.

How to Measure Shopify CRO Success

Now that you’ve gone through the 9 Shopify CRO metrics, you might feel a bit overwhelmed trying to keep track of them all for the best optimization. Don’t worry -  the solution is simple. Just stick to the benchmarks! We’ve mentioned them as we went over each metric, but we’ll list them again here for easy reference.

• Conversion Rate: Higher than 2.86%
• eCommerce Conversion Rate: Higher than 2.86%
• Micro-Conversion Rate: As high as possible
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): As low as possible
• Bounce Rate: Between 20-45%
• Average Time on Site: Between 2-5 minutes
• Pages per Session: Between 1.8-4.4 pages
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): Higher than 5.5%
• Exit Rate: Between 20-45%

That’s the theory. Now, let’s put it into practice. To easily fine-tune every detail of your website, try GemPages, the most user-friendly page builder for Shopify stores. 

With GemPages, you don’t need coding skills to create high-converting, custom pages. This app is perfect for turning those CRO insights into real, tangible improvements, helping you enhance user experience, boost conversions, and drive more sales.

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The Bottom Line

To conclude, Shopify CRO is not just about tracking numbers. It's about using these insights to supercharge your growth, streamline your processes, and stay ahead of the competition. 

Want to turn more visitors into loyal customers? These metrics hold the key.