Many factors contribute to a business's overall standing, but some retail analytics categories carry more weight than others. Key performance metrics can be applied when developing new marketing strategies, choosing ecommerce software or improving the point of sale experience.

While there are many ways to market to potential and preexisting customers, email campaigns continue to prove useful for retailers. According to Practical Ecommerce, seven different KPIs are major players in developing an effective email marketing strategy – total sales, site traffic, bounces and the rates of conversion, clicks, unsubscribe and unique opens. 

Retailers should determine how much revenue resulted from prior email campaigns, between featured products and general sales increases following an email blast. By examining how many people read the messages and the change in sales, retailers can better align their strategies for the next email campaign to see better results.

For brick-and-mortar operations, Bindo suggested keeping track of how many people come into your stores daily, weekly, monthly and even yearly. This can reveal trends in shopping habits that may help retailers decide when to run sales and promotions. Merchants both on- and offline may also want to pay attention to not just the amount of transactions, but the number of items being purchased by individual consumers. If shoppers tend to buy three items at a time, running a "buy-three, get one free" promotion could effectively drive up sales.