When it comes to scaling your eCommerce business, it is important to consider the metrics that will be your 'north star' when making investment decisions to drive growth and ultimately profitability.
So what are the performance metrics you should consider when it comes to scaling?
Effort per order is the average number of minutes required to be spent by a human on processing each stage of the order from the moment the order is received to the moment it is fulfilled plus any subsequent customer support requirement due to mistakes or customer queries. This should be calculated on a sample of eCommerce orders which includes each day of the week, time of day the orders are placed, and seasonality (excluding crazy outliers like Christmas and BFCM).
You want to track this metric because human labour, in many eCommerce contexts, is usually one of the largest costs and thus opportunities to unlock additional efficiency through automation and systems integration.
