Published · Updated · 5 min read · By the FCAnalytics team
WooCommerce KPIs to track: the 9 numbers that actually move revenue
These are the WooCommerce KPIs worth tracking every week. WooCommerce ships with a reports screen, and most stores also have Google Analytics installed. Between the two you can see hundreds of numbers. Very few of them change what you do on Monday morning.
This guide is about the nine that do. Each one answers a question an owner actually asks: are we growing, is it profitable, where are we losing people, and who is worth more to us. If your WooCommerce analytics setup tracks these nine well, you can safely ignore most of the rest.
1. Net revenue, not gross
Gross sales in WooCommerce include orders that were later refunded, cancelled, or failed. Net revenue is what you actually kept after refunds and before costs. Track net revenue by day, week, and month, and compare each period with the same period a year earlier where you have the history.
Why it matters: a store can show rising gross sales while refunds quietly climb. Net revenue catches that early.
2. Order count and average order value
Revenue is just orders multiplied by average order value (AOV). Watching both separately tells you which lever moved. More orders at the same AOV means acquisition is working. The same order count at a higher AOV means merchandising, bundles, or shipping thresholds are working.
- AOV falling while orders rise often means a discount campaign brought in smaller baskets.
- AOV rising while orders fall can mean a price increase is pushing away lower-value buyers.
3. Conversion rate, by stage
A single site-wide conversion rate hides where the problem is. Split it into the stages of the funnel: sessions, product views, add to cart, checkout started, purchase. A store with a strong add-to-cart rate but a weak checkout completion rate has a very different problem from one where nobody adds anything to the cart.
WooCommerce only records the last two stages (checkout and purchase) on its own. To see the earlier stages you need a small tracking snippet on the storefront. If you want the full picture, that snippet is worth the five minutes it takes to install.
4. New versus returning customer revenue
Count how much of each month’s revenue comes from first-time buyers and how much comes from people who have bought before. Healthy stores that sell consumables or seasonal ranges usually see returning revenue grow as a share over time. If returning revenue is flat or shrinking, you are renting customers from ad platforms rather than building a base.
5. Customer lifetime value
Lifetime value (LTV) is the total net revenue a customer generates over their relationship with you. For small stores the simplest useful version is average order value multiplied by average orders per customer. Group customers by the month they first bought (a cohort) and watch how each group’s LTV develops. This tells you whether this year’s customers are better or worse than last year’s, which no monthly revenue chart can show.
6. Net profit per order
This is the number most WooCommerce analytics setups never calculate, and it is the one that decides whether the store survives. Start with net revenue per order and subtract product cost, payment processing fees, shipping cost, and the ad spend attributable to the period. What remains is contribution profit per order.
Stores that only look at revenue regularly scale a loss. A campaign can double order volume while every order loses two dollars. Track profit per order and per channel so you can see this before the credit card bill arrives. FCAnalytics builds this view for you from your WooCommerce orders plus the product costs, fees, and monthly ad spend you enter; the features page walks through how the profit report is put together.
7. Product margin and return rate
Revenue by product tells you what sells. Margin by product tells you what is worth selling. Put them side by side with return rate. A product with high revenue, thin margin, and a high return rate can be a net loss even though it tops every best-seller list.
What to look for
- High margin, low volume: a candidate for more promotion.
- High volume, low margin: check whether price or supplier terms can move.
- Any product with a return rate far above your store average: look at sizing, photos, and description accuracy.
8. Abandoned cart rate and recovered revenue
Most carts are abandoned. That is normal. What matters is the trend and the recovery. Measure the share of started checkouts that do not turn into orders, and measure how much revenue your recovery emails bring back. If you have never looked at your abandoned carts, this is usually the fastest win in the whole list, because the shopper has already told you exactly what they want.
9. Revenue and profit by source
WooCommerce records order attribution: the source, device, and campaign that led to each order. Use it. Revenue by source shows where customers come from. Profit by source shows which channels are actually worth the money. A channel that drives a lot of revenue at a loss is not a growth channel; it is a subsidy.
This is also where UTM discipline pays off. If your campaign links are tagged inconsistently, the attribution report becomes a long list of near-duplicates and tells you very little.
How to put the nine together
You do not need to watch all nine every day. A workable rhythm looks like this:
- Daily: net revenue, order count, and any sync or payment errors.
- Weekly: conversion by stage, abandoned cart rate, AOV, and revenue by source.
- Monthly: net profit per order, product margins and returns, new versus returning revenue, and cohort LTV.
The weekly and monthly numbers are where decisions get made. The daily ones are mostly there to catch breakage.
What you need in place
- Clean order statuses in WooCommerce. Refunds should be recorded as refunds, not deleted orders.
- Product costs entered somewhere, even approximately. Margin without cost data is a guess.
- Payment fee rates and shipping costs you can defend.
- Monthly ad spend per channel, entered once a month.
- A storefront tracking snippet if you want the top of the funnel.
None of this requires a data team. It requires choosing a small set of numbers and keeping them honest.
If you want these nine without building them yourself
FCAnalytics connects to a WooCommerce store with read-only API keys, imports your order, customer, and product history, and keeps it in sync every 15 minutes. The overview, funnel, customers, products, profit, attribution, and abandoned carts screens cover the nine numbers above. You can look at it with sample data in the live demo, or start a 14-day trial with no card required. If you would rather build the same views in a spreadsheet, this article is a reasonable checklist for that too.
Related guides
Written by the FCAnalytics team, the people who build the product. Definitions and formulas in this article are the ones FCAnalytics uses in its dashboards; see how net profit is calculated and the FAQ.