Analytics
Session recordings and heatmaps
A session recording is a replay of how one visitor used a site: where they moved the cursor, where they clicked, how they scrolled. A heatmap is a summary of such actions by many visitors on one page: where they click and how far they scroll. They show what…
LTV (customer lifetime value)
LTV (lifetime value, also CLV or CLTV) is the amount a customer brings to the store over the whole time of the relationship. For management decisions it is better to calculate it not in revenue but in margin: how much money the store keeps from all of the…
Incrementality and media mix models
Incrementality is the share of sales that advertising delivered on top of what the store would have received without it. If a person would have bought from you anyway, the ad added nothing with them, even though the report records them as a conversion. A…
CAC (customer acquisition cost)
CAC (customer acquisition cost) is the amount a store spends to get one new customer: all marketing and sales costs for a period divided by the number of customers who bought for the first time in that period.
Data warehouse
A data warehouse is a separate database into which data from all of a store's systems (site, analytics, advertising, CRM, warehouse, accounting) is regularly collected in a single format for reports and analysis. You need one when numbers from different…
ROMI (return on marketing investment)
ROMI (return on marketing investment, also MROI) is the profit that marketing spend brought in, relative to the spend itself. A positive ROMI means marketing earned more than it cost.
Gross margin and margin after advertising
Gross margin is the share of revenue left after subtracting the cost of goods sold. Margin after advertising is what's left when you also subtract the variable costs of selling: delivery, fees, returns, advertising.
Funnel analysis
Funnel analysis is counting how many visitors get through each step of the path to purchase (product page → cart → checkout → payment) and at which step the most of them "drop off." Its goal is to find the biggest loss and check why it happens.
Attribution: why ad reports don't match
Attribution is the rule that "assigns" a purchase to advertising touchpoints: a click, an impression, an email. Different systems (Google Ads, GA4, Meta, your CRM) apply different rules, so they show a different number of sales for the same period. This isn't…
Key metrics of an online store: what to watch daily, weekly and monthly
An online store's key metrics are a small set of indicators that let the owner see whether the store is selling, whether it earns on every order, and whether there will be enough money to grow. They are best arranged by rhythm: every day you look at what can…
Unit economics of an online store
Unit economics of an online store is a calculation of how much money the store earns or loses on one unit of the business: one order or one customer, after all variable costs. It answers a simple question: does the business become more profitable as sales…
GMV (gross merchandise volume)
GMV (gross merchandise volume) is the total monetary value of goods sold over a period. For a store, it is the average price of a product multiplied by the number of units sold.