The KPIs that matter in ecommerce in 2022 are not the ones that mattered in 2018. The unit economics of customer acquisition have tightened, the major channels have become more expensive, and the brands that are still growing profitably are running a different reporting stack than the one most ecommerce teams inherited from the original DTC playbook.
Eight metrics now matter more than the others.
1. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Blended and By Channel
CAC has been the single most-watched ecommerce metric for the past five years for good reason — it is the input that most directly determines whether a customer relationship is profitable. The 2022 discipline is to track CAC both on a blended basis (across all marketing spend) and on a per-channel basis (Facebook vs. Google vs. TikTok vs. email vs. organic vs. retail).
The brands getting this right are also tracking incremental CAC — the cost of acquiring the marginal customer, not the average — because the marginal cost is what determines whether to scale up or pull back on a given channel.
2. Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
LTV is the partner metric to CAC. The LTV:CAC ratio has been the working approximation of unit economics health in ecommerce for years. A 3:1 ratio is the rough industry target. Brands operating below 2:1 are usually losing money on customer acquisition and don't know it yet.
The discipline here is to measure LTV by cohort rather than as a brand-wide average. A 2021-acquired cohort behaves differently from a 2019-acquired cohort. Averaging across them obscures the actual trend in the business.
3. Repeat Purchase Rate
The single best leading indicator of LTV is repeat purchase rate inside the first 90 days. The brands with healthy unit economics tend to have 25-40% of first-purchase customers repeat-purchasing within the quarter. The brands with poor unit economics tend to be under 15%.
This metric is also one of the easier ones to influence operationally — through email and SMS nurture sequences, subscription mechanics, and replenishment-category product extensions.
4. Average Order Value (AOV)
AOV is the lever most directly under the merchandising team's control. Bundling, cross-sells, threshold-driven free shipping, and tiered subscription offers all move AOV. The 2022 discipline is to monitor AOV per channel — paid social converts at a different AOV than organic search, which converts differently from email — and to optimize each channel's offer mix to its actual AOV pattern.
5. Return Rate and Return Cost
Returns have become a meaningfully bigger line item in ecommerce P&Ls since the pandemic-era shift to online buying. The brands that ship soft goods, apparel, or category-bracketed merchandise (where customers buy multiple sizes intending to keep one) now operate with return rates in the 20-40% range. Each return carries reverse-logistics cost, restocking cost, and write-down risk.
The metric brands should be looking at is return cost as a percentage of gross merchandise value, not return rate alone. A 30% return rate on $100 AOV with a $4 return cost is a different business than a 30% return rate on $100 AOV with a $25 return cost.
6. Email Subscriber Growth and Engagement
Email remains the highest-ROI marketing channel in ecommerce by a meaningful margin. The 2022 metric stack here is subscriber growth rate, list engagement rate (opens, clicks, conversions), and revenue per subscriber per month. Klaviyo, the dominant ecommerce email platform, has standardized this reporting across most Shopify-powered brands.
The brands growing fastest are the ones with the largest engaged email lists relative to their revenue base. The list is the durable asset; the paid acquisition is the rented one.
7. Subscription Penetration (Where Applicable)
For categories where subscription makes sense — beauty, supplements, pet, food, household consumables — the percentage of revenue coming from active subscribers is the single most predictive metric of category-leading unit economics. Brands with 30%+ subscription revenue tend to have substantially better LTV:CAC ratios than peers on one-off purchase models.
8. Contribution Margin Per Order
Contribution margin — the revenue per order minus all variable costs (cost of goods, shipping, returns, payment processing) — is the metric that determines whether the business actually makes money on each transaction. Many ecommerce brands tracked gross margin and assumed it was enough. It is not. The variable costs that sit between gross margin and contribution margin are exactly the ones that have been rising fastest.
What This Means for the Reporting Cadence
The 2022 ecommerce reporting deck should include all eight of these metrics, segmented by cohort and channel where relevant. Weekly cadence for the operational metrics (CAC, AOV, repeat purchase rate). Monthly cadence for the strategic metrics (LTV, contribution margin, subscription penetration).
The brands that get this right are running their ecommerce business off real unit economics. The brands still running off revenue and gross margin alone are usually the ones that get surprised by quarterly results that look worse than the topline suggested.
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
