Success in a business is judged according to a range of different factors – factors that vary from firm to firm. Key performance indicators, or KPIs, are an important way for businesses to keep track of these factors, and judge their progress.
What are key performance indicators ?
A performance indicator or key performance indicator (KPI) is a type of performance measurement. An organization may use KPIs to evaluate its success, or to evaluate the success of a particular activity in which it is engaged. Sometimes success is defined in terms of making progress toward strategic goals, but often success is simply the repeated, periodic achievement of some level of operational goal (e.g. zero defects, 10/10 customer satisfaction, etc.)
A KPI can follow the SMART criteria. This means the measure has a Specific purpose for the business, it is Measurable to really get a value of the KPI, the defined norms have to be Achievable, the improvement of a KPI has to be Relevant to the success of the organization, and finally it must be Time phased, which means the value or outcomes are shown for a predefined and relevant period.
For exemple here below there are some marketing Key Performance Indicators in ecommerce:
Site traffic
Unique visitors versus returning visitors
Time on site
Page views per visit
Traffic source
Day part monitoring (when site visitors come)
Newsletter subscribers
Texting subscribers
Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest followers or fans
Pay-per-click traffic volume
Blog traffic
Number and quality of product reviews
Brand or display advertising click-through rates
Affiliate performance rate
The following video introduces key performance indicators in an easy way:
