Get Ready for Holiday Shopping Surges: 9 Must-Know E-commerce KPIs

Black Friday is hands down the busiest day of the year for retailers—online and offline—and the data we collect on our conversational commerce platform every holiday season confirms this. Unsurprisingly, last year, November 24 topped the list as the most significant day for online traffic and conversation volume, closely followed by Cyber Monday. These events are major opportunities for e-retailers to supercharge website sales and expand their customer base. But, without a plan to track relevant key performance indicators (KPIs), determining success will be challenging when the time comes. Here are the essential KPIs you should be monitoring ahead of the holiday shopping season to effectively prepare for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and all of 2024’s other seasonal sales.

Conversion rate, average order value (AOV), retention rate, customer acquisition cost (CAC)—A KPI is a key metric used to measure the performance of business actions and strategies. By monitoring these indicators, you can do things like determine your site visitors’ interest and engagement level, evaluate strengths and areas for improvement, and optimize your e-commerce strategy for achieving sales and customer loyalty goals. 

Keep reading for our breakdown of the nine most important KPIs to track before, during, and after the 2024 holiday shopping season. These metrics are based on data collected from our conversational commerce platform after Black Friday 2023. Discover other other key online shopping statistics in this article. 

Revenue-Related KPIs During Seasonal Sales Events

1. Transactions

Interactions with users play a crucial role in an online business' conversion and sales. Pulling from 2023 first-party data, transactions following website conversations, particularly ones handled by an AI chatbot, tripled compared to an ordinary day that same year.

2. Conversion Rate

If you’re an e-commerce professional or have an online store, you likely monitor this KPI closely, especially during promotional and sales events. But, did you know that the conversations your brand has with shoppers can significantly impact this rate? 

On Black Friday in 2023, the conversion rate after conversations held on our platform between one of our clients and their customers reached 54%, compared to 32% the year before. Personalized conversations like these play a crucial role in the online buyer journey, and have been proven to increase conversions up to 10x! 

With the advancement of generative AI-powered conversational tech, like chatbots and virtual shopping assistants, it’s now possible to scale the impact your website’s customer experience quality has on your conversion rate. These AI tools allow for an unprecedented level of precision and accuracy in the responses they give online shoppers.

3. Revenue

An Adobe study on Black Friday 2023 sales found that spending far exceeded analysts' predictions, reaching a record $9.8 billion in the United States and achieving the highest annual increase seen in three years of 7.5%. Throughout the entirety of Cyber Week (the week between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday), this amount grew even more to $38 billion, an 8% increase from the year prior. 

As you can see, total revenue and revenue per visitor are important metrics to track for measuring the true amount of profitability that these days bring to your website. The insights you gain are invaluable for tailoring your e-commerce strategy to holiday shopping events—like, for example, adjusting advertising or launching an AI shopping assistant ahead of specific days, times, or sales periods. 

AI chatbots are not only capable of providing instant, accurate product information, but also of making personalized recommendations and offering intuitive question suggestions based on the product. These are features that remove purchasing barriers and turn more website visitors into satisfied customers.

4. Average Order Value

Another question you might ask yourself is: How much do customers spend when they buy from your site? How to increase average order value? Beyond providing valuable insight into consumer purchasing behavior, AOV allows you to measure the profitability of your brand’s promotional events.

68% of consumers worldwide last year planned to spend as much, or more, than the previous year on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The average spend reached $567 over that weekend. 

Shoppers, especially those that plan to splurge during these holiday events, are more likely than ever to seek out new tech-based shopping experiences to help them find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. These are tools like virtual assistants (+100% increase in interest vs 2022), virtual reality and augmented reality (+156% vs 2022), and chatbots (+188% vs 2022). 

While consumers love a good bargain, selling at lower prices doesn't always mean e-commerce retailers will increase their sales volume enough to keep up. This is where personalized product recommendations can make a big difference. The generative AI chatbot solutions available today make it possible to walk every customer through their unique buyer journey, without them needing (or wanting) to resort to a search bar and other self-service options.

5. Cart Abandonment Rate

Cart abandonment remains a major challenge for e-retailers, making it a metric you’ll want to monitor closely. We conducted a study with Ipsos at the end of 2023 and found that 50% of American consumers don’t complete their purchases due to a lack of or insufficient product information, and another 40% because of high or hidden shipping and delivery costs. 

Customer experience quality and consistency are also key factors for today’s consumers when making an online purchase. 10% of Americans abandon their carts due to a lack of human interaction or poor customer service, while 10% cite difficulty navigating or using e-commerce platforms as their main reason. A generative AI chatbot can help reduce the frequency of these issues by providing immediate answers to customer questions in plain, natural language, reassuring hesitant buyers.

KPIs to Prep for Website Volume Surges

With Black Friday comes thousands upon thousands of visitors trying to nab the best deals your website has to offer. Where this heightened traffic is coming from is an important factor in analyzing your e-commerce performance during these events. Pinpointing the main ways visitors are coming across your products—whether it’s through organic traffic, social media, or advertising campaigns—helps retailers better target their consumers and assist them at the right moment in their buyer journey.

What can last year’s Black Friday teach us about the impact of this event on site traffic and engagement? E-commerce websites equipped with iAdvize AI tools recorded an impressive increase in browsing activity and shopper interactions, compared to any other day of that year. 

6. E-commerce Traffic

Traffic on e-commerce websites, especially those using iAdvize solutions, showed a massive uptick during Black Friday 2023. Our conversational commerce platform confirmed a 57% increase in website traffic and a 14% increase in message requests, compared to the previous year.

These numbers underscore the importance of adequately preparing your customer service to handle more requests, in ways like equipping agents with an AI chatbot to augment their work and limit burnout.

7. Conversation Volume

More site traffic also means more questions, whether handled through the automation capabilities of your site or by an agent. The volume of conversations managed by iAdvize increased significantly during Black Friday 2023, showing a 56% rise compared to an ordinary day.

2023 marked the rapid adoption of generative AI. In fact, one of our first clients to implement AI into their e-commerce operations saw fully automated conversations increase from 24% to 45% in November of that year. Since then, some of our clients have had this number reach as high as 80%. 

Generative AI allows for effective automation of responses to customer inquiries—like product information, return and exchange policies, and payment method-related questions—and better management of traffic spikes, while ensuring reliable, always-on, and high-quality support.

Post-Event Support KPIs to Keep an Eye On

Monitoring the results of a promotional event doesn't stop once it's over. On the contrary, there's much to learn in the days that follow. Here are some post-event indicators you can track to comprehensively evaluate its performance.

8. Return Rate

Your return rate is important to monitor after Black Friday because a high rate can indicate issues with your products or unmet customer expectations. In 2022, the cost of retail returns in the United States reached a staggering $817 billion, with a quarter of it stemming from online retailing. That year, out of the total $1.3 trillion in online sales, approximately 16.5% ended up as returns.

Using insights gathered from seasonal sales events will help you reduce this rate in the long term. An AI shopping assistant placed on your product detail pages (PDPs) can be beneficial here by giving personalized customer guidance, product details, and assistance to customers in choosing between options.

Especially for our clients in the fashion industry, returns are the most critical issue. You can address this problem through two AI copilot use cases:

• Product Information: Connect your copilot to your product catalog so that it can respond to customers with specific, tailored information about each item.
• FAQs: Connect your copilot to your frequently asked question page or documentation, like return policies and delivery options, to automate these low-impact recurring questions.

Instantly providing detailed product information results in fewer returns, higher customer satisfaction, and a higher customer lifetime value (CLV). 

9. Frequently Asked Questions

Analyzing your most frequently asked questions allows you to enhance the effectiveness of your FAQ page for future events. One easy way to do this is by connecting the info to your chatbot. AI tools like these are perfect for handling common, simple, and recurring requests, helping to reduce the workload of your support teams during peak traffic periods.

According to data from our platform, our clients’ websites receive a host of questions related to making an online purchase. The most common ones tend to be about:

• Product information
• Shipping and delivery details
• Payment methods
• Recommendations and advice

Are You Ready for Black Friday 2024? 

By identifying essential KPIs and using their insights to adopt the right conversational commerce technology ahead of the holiday shopping season, your e-commerce site will be ready to tackle the Black Friday shopping frenzy and achieve maximum results. 

iAdvize Conversational Commerce Platform: Results From Black Friday 2023

Kickstart your Black Friday e-commerce sales strategy with an AI-powered shopping assistant.