Welcome to Glew Starter – a free forever analytics product for new and growing brands to leverage their data for business growth and better performance.
Why did we build it?
Glew was founded to help ecommerce merchants access data insights to drive performance and online growth. Our flagship product, Glew Pro, does exactly that. As a company, we’re never done learning so one question we asked ourselves, “does a robust product like Glew Pro fit the need for everyone? And specifically, smaller online merchants?”
We concluded we needed to create a product designed specifically for small businesses. One that is accessible, actionable, and delivers on-demand value every day. To that end, our team is proud to release Glew Starter!
Starter is a solution for the small business owner selling online. It’s quick, easily consumable, and delivered to your inbox daily. Starter provides the key metrics that help you understand the health of your business, so you can make informed decisions every day.
With that goal in mind, we’d like to introduce you to the metrics that make up Glew Starter, our free ecommerce analytics solution!
Sales Metrics
Revenue
Why this matters
Revenue is the primary driver of the business. No Revenue, means no income. But, it’s also important to keep track of revenues relative to costs and profit. A declining profit margin (or increase in cost of goods sold) without offsetting revenue increases can spell trouble for your business.
Profit Margin
Why this matters
Profit Margin is a key indicator of product profitability. If your profit margin is too low, you may need to increase your selling price. A good gross profit margin for online retail is around 45.25%, according to Shopify.
Profit
Why this matters
Like the profit margin metric, Gross Profit is how much revenue you take home after paying for the products that you sold. Without a healthy profit, you may find it difficult to pay for operating expenses, like ad spend, that go into selling your product.
Net Profit
Why this matters
Your Net Profit is the amount you take home after accounting for the cost of selling and operating. According to Shopify, as a general rule of thumb, a 10% net profit margin is deemed average, while a 20% margin is deemed high and 5% low. That means your Net Profit should be between 1/5th to 1/20th of your Revenue.
Order Metrics
Orders
Why this matters
The trend of orders is a great indicator of popularity and growth. Generally, if your orders are going up, your revenue and profit metrics should, too. If your revenue isn’t increasing, you might want to make sure your average order value isn’t declining. If your profit margin is declining, your inventory costs might have increased. If your net profit is declining, it could be inventory costs or increased advertising spend.
Average Order Value
Why this matters
Average order value is one of the easiest ways to capitalize on existing buyers, without needing to increase your audience size. Amazon itself claimed that over 35% of its revenue growth certain years was due to increasing their AOV. Most often, increasing your AOV means getting consumers to add more items to their cart during a purchase. Upselling, cross-selling, bundling, and free shipping thresholds are all great ways to improve your AOV.
Refunds
Why this matters
A significant amount of refunds can highlight potential issues with product quality, shipping expectations, and pricing. According to Shopify, a quarter of all consumers return between 5% and 15% of the items they buy online. It’s important to note that different retail categories have different return rates, so it’s best to know where you fall in-line with your industry.
Items Sold
Why this matters
If you’re selling more items, you should see more revenue. This metric can really help you see the impact of your cross-selling and up-selling campaigns if you’re trying to increase your AOV. The number of total orders may be the same, but if your AOV is increasing, it could be because you’re selling more items per purchase.
Customer Metrics
Lifetime Value
Why this matters
The lifetime value of a customer gives you a frame of reference for how much you can spend to acquire a customer. Lifetime value in Glew can also be calculated across channels and sources, so you can see where your high-value customers are coming from.
Customer Status
Why this matters
Keeping track of your customer status distribution let’s you know the health of your existing clients. In a perfect scenario, 100% of your customers would be listed as “Active”, but this is unlikely to happen, even if you’re a subscription business. The goal should be to target users approaching their lapse point (At-Risk) with campaigns to draw them back and make purchase, while running reengagement campaigns for those customers considered lost (Lost Customers)
New vs Repeat Customers
Why this matters
This metric helps you understand the makeup of your customers during the period. Were you acquiring more new customers, or reselling to existing customers?
Top Customers
Why this matters
Understanding your top customers allows you to identify your top advocates and fans. Leverage them for product releases, surveys, feedback, and reviews.
Product Metrics
High Volume Products
Why this matters
Understanding which products have sold the most during a period allows you to see trends in buying behavior. The highest volume products are the most popular ones. This can be leveraged for promotions, advertising, or future inventory modeling.
Most Reordered Products
Why this matters
These are your products that make your brand sticky. This table can shed light on which products customers like the most. Repurchase behavior also side steps first-purchase advertising/promotional campaigns, which might drive high order volume of a particular SKU, but doesn’t necessarily reflect your stickiest products.
Most Refunded Products
Why this matters
Refunds cost your business money. Understanding which SKUs are frequently returned might allow you to uncover production or quality issues with certain items. You could also run a campaign for those who purchased the item to gather more feedback on a problematic product. For certain industries, like apparel, returns are more frequent, often due to sizing issues. It’s important to understand how your business benchmarks against others in your industry
Highest Velocity Products
Why this matters
Sell-through rate is an important gauge of how well you're managing supply and demand. A higher sell-through rate means you’re not keeping inventory long before you sell it, which is generally a good thing.
Acquisition
Visits
Why this matters
An improvement in visits means you have more chances to capitalize on a potential purchase. This metric coincides with your Conversion Rate to determine what percentage of your visits result in purchases. You can increase visits through marketing, brand building, paid search and advertising.
Conversion Rate
Why this matters
Improving conversion rates is one of the quickest ways to increase revenue, because it focuses on making a more compelling experience for your existing audience. You can increase conversion rates by shortening the purchase path, providing a faster website, and improving the usability of the site.
Top Channels
Why this matters
It's important to understand where your revenue is coming from, and how much a customer from each channel is worth. With our two attribution models, you can ultimately see which channels drive new customers and their subsequent purchases (First-Order) and which channels prompted the most recent purchases (Last-Click).
Top Sources
Why this matters
It's important to understand where your revenue is coming from, and how much a customer from each source is worth. With our two attribution models, you can ultimately see which sources drive new customers and their subsequent purchases (First-Order) and which sources prompted the most recent purchases (Last-Click).
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