Omnichannel Retail Guide Chapter 5
Omnichannel KPIs
Implementing an omnichannel strategy means you have a huge load of data. Without the ability to extract meaningful insights, these data will be wasted and your next move is lost. Hence, you need updated Omnichannel KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to measure the omnichannel performance and its progress towards your objectives. This chapter will provide omnichannel measurement metrics to track your omnichannel efficiency.
In business, the “gut feeling” of the marketer is important, but not that much in the digital era.
In this ever-changing market, no genius mind can sense accurately the business performance via a ton of data across channels.
That is why setting and tracking KPIs is very important, especially in an omnichannel business.
The company must handle information from many touchpoints, which are highly integrated with each other.
Without linked and systematic KPIs to track, there is no way to measure the effectiveness of omnichannel performance.
For example, an increase in online revenue can be resulted from a “catchy” promotion in stores.
Typically, in the first stage of omnichannel execution, KPIs are vital for retailers to measure omnichannel performance i.e. whether the strategy fits their businesses, or which are the most effectively invested channels.
In addition, without omnichannel KPIs, misunderstanding can easily happen due to the complexity of customer behavior and internal procedure.
Obviously, some previously-preferred KPIs become outdated because they do not consider the interactive ecosystem of all channels. This results in wrong traction and decision.
Hence, tracking KPIs in omnichannel businesses is a more complicated task, which requires a new set of omnichannel measurement metrics.
As retailers are now empowered by technologies, a new key performance indicator (KPIs) system with various tools and omnichannel data-centralized management is now promising for efficiency.
Discuss the movement of tracking KPIs
With previous business models, companies have been recommended to build KPIs focusing on sales-based metrics.
These metrics are often aligned with the revenue–cost–margin model with corresponsive KPIs such as monthly revenue, revenue growth, cost of goods sold, cost of acquiring customers, marketing cost, gross margin, etc.
However, these transaction records can hardly tell the whole truth about omnichannel retailing with integrated channels.
For example, omnishoppers are unlikely to commit themselves to just one channel in their buying journeys.
In another case, the increase in sales of online channels can be resulted from a successful grand opening of a new store on the main street.
Similarly, there are many cases where activities of a channel interfere with the transactional records of one another. It can be a deviation from returning goods, the inter-influence of cross-channel marketing, or the re-allocation of inventory between channels.
Moreover, if only final transactional KPIs are taken into consideration, the drivers of customers’ decisions during the whole process cannot be explained.
For those reasons above, new omnichannel KPIs must capture the performance of the business on all channels in an interdependent relationship with each other.
New KPIs in omnichannel (Omnichannel KPIs)
As stated above, omnichannel KPIs will track down the customers’ buying process, including awareness, engagement, conversion, and loyalty.
Each stage has its own typical KPIs that must be highly focused on.
For example, Al Sambar from Managing Partner Retail and Consumer Group suggests the following flow and relevant KPIs.
Awareness
- Traffic generation
- Activation or visit rate
Engagement
- Product recommendations and offers per visit
- Conversion rate on product recommendations
- Conversion rate on product offers
- Length of visit
Trial
- Product tried per visit
- Conversion rate on product trial
Conversion
- Cross-channel conversion rate
- Cross-channel basket rate
Loyalty
- Advocacy
- Lifetime customer value
- Revisit rate
- Revisit frequency
Integrating a POS system – for example, a Magento-native POS or a POS that integrates with Shopify – allows you to centralize sales, orders, inventory, and other data, helping to calculate key tracking metrics across all stages, especially in the conversion and loyalty phases.
Awareness
Typical omnichannel KPIs for this stage are traffic generator and visit rate.
Traffic generator records the numbers of unique visitors to a website, store, social channel, and so on.
Visit rate, on the other hand, calculates how many times one unique visitor views those channels in a period of time.
In the age of the multi-channel approach, these key performance indicators are recorded separately.
However, with omnichannel retailing, the store owner demands to know the behavior when a customer visits and revisits touch points before she or he makes another action.
Engagement
There are many key performance indicators that can demonstrate how successful a customer engagement strategy is.
As recommended by Al Sambar, some KPIs worth applying are Product recommendations and offers per visit, Conversion rate on product recommendations, and Length of visit.
First, to attract customers to not only one, but many items in the catalog, suggestions are widely used in today’s eCommerce. Length of visit is another simple indicator to reflect the level of involvement a customer expresses to a channel.
However, the major factor that omnichannel retailers should strongly focus on is the Conversion rate of product recommendations or offers.
It shows how suitable and customized the content is to each individual shopper.
One important feature of this indicator is that it can show the conversion rate from one channel to another one. For example, a customer received a discount code for a nice dress after finishing a purchase in a webstore.
However, she doesn’t buy it immediately but goes to the nearby store to check if it fits her body.
If the retailer in this situation is operating a multi-channel strategy, that person will be a completely new customer when going to try the dress on.
Conversely, an omnichannel retailer can identify that customer, based on her account. In this situation, the conversation rate among channels is well performed.
Conversion
Some typical omnichannel KPIs to measure the success of this stage are Cross-channel conversion rate and Cross-channel basket size.
The conversion rate from visitors to customers is the most common and consistent indicator for any e-commerce business.
However, in omnichannel marketing, the focus point is on “cross-channel”.
With this business model, omnichannel retailers can track what is the real contributors to final purchasing decisions and the pattern of their habits.
Loyalty
Retention rate is more than just a simple formula. To have accurate retention among channels, it needs a solid omnichannel tool and process.
There are other domains of KPIs that an omnichannel business can adopt, including supply chain management, channel performance, other alternative channels, and pricing. The standard KPIs vary according to the businesses’ goals and products.
Retention Rate = ((CE-CN)/CS)) X 100
CE = number of customers at end of period
CN = number of new customers acquired during the period
CS = number of customers at the start of a period
Advocacy is a KPI showing the satisfaction of customers.
This can be scored through ratings of customers via many channels.
Lifetime customer value (LTV) is another indicator, showing the total revenue of a customer in his “lifetime”.
To simplify, this key performance indicator calculates the sum of all purchases that he can make.
Therefore, higher LTV means that customers re-purchase many times in their life.
While the Lifetime value of customers can indicate the loyalty of one customer, the customer retention rate is a KPI showing generally the loyalty of all customers. It is calculated as the ratio of remaining customers after a period.
To sum up, the key differences between omnichannel KPIs and other approaches are:
- Customers centricity
- Qualitative measurement metrics
- Consideration of interdependence of many channels
- Differences across industries
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