Ecommerce KPIs Dashboard in Excel + FREE TEMPLATE

In today’s overwhelming landscape for any manager or business owner, focusing on the right metrics is essential to driving growth and making data-driven decisions.

Something I’m always telling our clients and partners is: if everything is important… then NOTHING is important.

An Ecommerce KPIs dashboard serves as a central hub for monitoring and analyzing key performance indicators (KPIs) to manage not only your team, but all the agencies and professionals that work for your online business.

Having the right metrics in that dashboard will help you avoid (or at least reduce) any tendency to micromanage your teams.

Let’s dive into this topic!

What is an Ecommerce KPIs Dashboard?

An Ecommerce KPIs dashboard is a tool designed to monitor the most important metrics of your online store.

Its purpose is to let the important things rise to the top.

It’s that simple.

By using this dashboard, you can track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as revenue, conversion rates, customer acquisition costs (CAC), and customer lifetime value (CLV), giving you in a single view what matters most.

This centralized file helps decision-makers quickly set goals and outcomes for teams and collaborators, providing alignment for everyone and highlighting what matters most: RESULTS.

Using a results-oriented dashboard will reduce the amount of redundant reports you receive from your team, ad agencies and digital marketing experts, allowing you to reduce micromanagement by leading through outcomes (or goals).

This approach ensures that you stay focused on the numbers that truly drive growth, helping manage teams and external collaborators more efficiently.

Ecommerce KPIs Dashboard Best Practices

A good KPIs Dashboard should highlight the important outcomes or goals expected from your team.

Remember its purpose: “to let important things rise to the top” – that being said… not ALL KPIs dashboards are good.

Let me share, based on my 20+ years of experience in Digital Marketing, the best practices for creating one:

1. Focus on Key Metrics

As I usually say, in this overwhelming world in which we live, “less is more”… which means: the fewer metrics you add, the more you can see at a glance.

Why? Because when you overcrowd your dashboard with hundreds of metrics… then nothing will stand out due to lack of focus. It becomes overwhelming.

If you just focus on your top 5 metrics, then all the focus goes into them as if you were using a magnifying glass.

For a healthy Ecommerce, the metrics that matter the most are:

• Revenue
  
• % of new visitors
  
• Paid Ads (segmented by channels:  Meta Ads, Google Ads, etc.)
  • New Email Sign ups
  • ROAS 
  • % Of total revenue vs Ads revenue
  • Ads Customer Acquisition Cost (or Ads CAC)
  • Sometimes this is a difficult number to get due to recent changes in GA4 over Google Universal, so you can change this metric for: Order Acquisition Cost (OAC)
    
• Email Marketing:
  • Open Rate
  • Click Rate
  • Total New Email Sign ups
  • % Of total revenue vs Email Marketing  revenue
    
• SMS Marketing:
  • # New Subscriptions
  • % Of total revenue vs SMS Marketing  revenue
    
• Social Media (segmented by each platform: Facebook, Instagram)
  • Organic Traffic
  • New Email Sign ups
  • % Of total revenue vs Email Marketing revenue
    
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  • % clicks vs previous year
  • % impressions vs previous year
  • % of non-branded clicks vs total clicks

Even though this looks like a lot… it isn’t.

By using these metrics, you can manage each team, agency or professional working on your Ecommerce without having to resort to the damaging practice of micromanagement.

2. Don’t use graphics… go with numbers and comparisons

Avoid cluttering the dashboard with complex or flashy charts.

Remember the purpose of a KPIs dashboard: “to let the important things rise to the top”.

If you flood the dashboard with graphics, colors, images and icons… nothing will “rise to the top” and stand out.

Make sure the most important KPIs are highlighted and easy to see at a glance.

3. Compare Apples with Apples

Comparing the current month with the previous one is a classic mistake.

Why? Because some months have more days than others, and there might be seasonal factors that will affect performance.

For example, you can’t compare August with July. Why? In August, people are usually on vacation; while in July online stores run “4th of July” sales campaigns. You can’t compare these two!

The only comparisons you should focus on, in my experience, are:

• Current month vs the same month of the previous year
  
• Current quarter performance vs the same quarter of the previous year

And while this might not follow best practices, you will need it:

• Current quarter vs previous quarter
  Like I mentioned, there are seasonal factors at play… but you need some kind of current year comparison to know if you are growing or not. Month-by-month is not compatible… so let’s compare quarters, which are not 100% compatible but it’s the best we have.
  
• Get our free Digital Campaign Checklist

Ecommerce KPIs Dashboard Examples: What Works and What Doesn’t

Let’s put all these best practices in place, and see a few bad and good examples:

Bad KPIs Dashboard examples

These are the three most common mistakes:

1. Too many metrics

This is a classic!

One of the most common mistakes in Ecommerce KPIs dashboards is overloading it with too much data.

This usually happens because each team (SEO, Social, Email Marketing, etc) will try to prove their value, and fill the Excel or Google Sheet with dozens of KPIs… which don’t necessarily provide any value.

Remember: “when everything is important… then NOTHING is important”.

Another phrase of mine is: “The less, the better”.

All those metrics are important, for sure… but NOT for you!

Let’s say that the Email Marketing channel or team is performing poorly. Why? It might be due to the main outcomes or goals in your KPIs Dashboard not being good!

There are two ways to handle this>

• The “micromanagement road”
  You might take a close look at the Email Marketing Dashboards and reports, and dig in to try and find a solution for the specific drop or problem.
   
• The “leading through outcomes road”
  In which you will just ask your team to reach the goal or outcome you have in your KPIs Dashboard for the next month or quarter.

Whatever road you choose, you DON’T NEED to have all the Email Marketing metrics in your Ecommerce KPIs Dashboard.

Again: 
“the less, the better!”

2. No Unified Overview

With all the software and tools available these days, like Google Looker Studio, everybody wants and loves a very visual dashboard. Am I right?

Well, that’s a mistake.

You wonder why? Because graphics and fancy tables make them very long, and comparisons are not good.

With all the visual clutter, comparing the metrics that matter most (numbers from this and the past year, and comparisons between this period with previous period) becomes nearly impossible!

Also, goals or outcomes are not clear, next to fancy charts.

Let’s take a look at this example:

Now compare with what you see in a single view with our Excel Ecommerce KPIs dashboard:

If you love numbers, then Excel or Google Sheets will be your best friends.

Fancy reports will not fulfill the purpose of why we use this dashboard: 
“to let the important things rise to the top”

3. Lack of Focus on What Matters Most

This is less common, but it happens… and more than you think!

Goals or outcomes MUST be highlighted next to the metrics: at a first glance, anyone needs to be able to know if the ecommerce business is doing well or not.

Take a look at this example:

How is this ecommerce performing? Not sure… right?

Now take a look at out dashboard:

Looks better, right? This Ecommerce is not doing well at all!

Ecommerce KPIs Dashboard in Excel Template

Below you can find our Ecommerce KPIs Dashboard as an Excel Template:

It’s a Google Sheet, and you can convert it into the following formats:

• Microsoft Excel (.xlsx)
• OpenDocument (.ods)
• PDF (.pdf)
• Web Page (.html)
• Comma-Separated Values (.csv)
• Tab-Separated Values (tsv)

There are also two files:

• One it’s empty, so you can use it from scratch.
  
• Another one it’s with demo data, so you can use it to play around.

Key features of the template:

1. It’s focused on Key Metrics (to let the important things rise to the top).
   
2. It sports a unified overview of all numbers that matter, without charts or graphics that distract and clutter.
   
3. Compares Apples with Apples, necessary to monitor progress and trends.
   
4. It has customizable metrics: you can fill them in the white cells. The gray ones have formulas, so don’t mess with those unless you know what you’re doing! :) 

How to create an Ecommerce KPIs Dashboard

Here’s a step by step guide:

1. Download our Ecommerce KPIs Dashboard sheet
   
2. Make a copy and name it
   
3. Start finding your sources by channel:
   1. Strategy: usually your ecommerce software (Shopify, Magento, Woocomerce).
   2. Meta Ads: your Ads Account on Facebook.
   3. Google Ads: your Google Ads account.
   4. Email: your email marketing software (Klaviyo, Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Active Campaign)
   5. SMS: your SMS marketing software (Klaviyo, Attentive, Postscript)
   6. Facebook: your Facebook Insights.
   7. Instagram: inside your Facebook Insights, selected from the dropdown Instagram.
   8. SEO: your Google Search Console account.
      
4. Once you have all your data sources, you need to start logging in your previous year information (2023) on the “2023” tab.
   
5. Once you finish with your last year information, fill your current year information.
   
6. Start digging into the numbers…!

Any questions you might have, please comment below, and I will answer them ASAP!

Also, if there’s anything you’d like to improve or if you disagree with something, feel free to let us know in the comments as well.