Dubai’s e-commerce sector is among the fastest-growing industries in the UAE. According to the Logistics Middle East, the market is estimated to achieve compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.4%, over the next 5 years.
Do you know what fuels business growth in this region? The top reasons include the widespread internet access, digitally savvy residents, and trusted networks for last-minute deliveries. However, there’s something else that reshapes Dubai’s e-commerce landscape: key performance indicators (KPIs).
Online retail businesses achieve specific milestones to remain visible in the market and keep attracting customers. If you own a startup or an established enterprise, important e-commerce metrics can help you measure progress and success.
This blog explores how e-commerce KPIs and metrics evaluate the performance of businesses and lead them to their specific goals. Scroll below to explore online business performance metrics you need to track to achieve sustainable growth and profit in 2025.
Understanding e-commerce KPIs and metrics
KPIs and metrics both help e-commerce businesses measure their success through various data points. They provide some vital details, which include conversions, traffic, revenue, and website performance.
Tracking KPIs helps online retailers identify the ideal customer profile to increase traffic and sales. It helps them create a unique value proposition to ensure business growth.
Metrics, on the other hand, measure the performance of an e-commerce website. Performance marketing companies often help brands evaluate quantifiable data and align actions with business goals through this consistently defined measurement.
Best metrics and KPIs for e-commerce businesses
To understand which e-commerce KPIs and metrics you must track, let’s explore the categories first.
1. Sales & marketing
Tracking the performance of marketing efforts and revenue is effortless with these metrics.
- Conversion rate (CVR)
This is an important marketing metric that helps online businesses measure how many visitors converted on their websites. Sometimes, the conversion rate could simply mean desiring a specific action from the internet user. When it comes to Dubai’s e-commerce market, CVR is mostly calculated over the purchases made by clients.
To calculate the conversion rate on a website, use this approach:
CVR = Number of successful conversions / Total impressions x 100
A higher CVR percentage indicates success with performance marketing for your brand to persuade potential buyers. Moreover, integrating features like mobile-first browsing, flexible payments, and localized UX can boost customer impressions (clicking ads or visiting landing pages) and sales further.
CVR is also essential to optimize landing pages and develop better advertising strategies. Monitoring this metric helps enterprises and emerging startups allocate better budgets to promote their businesses on high-performing channels.
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
CAC is a crucial metric to determine the efficiency of marketing and sales efforts of a brand. It gives an estimate of how much money you need to acquire each customer. Calculating this evaluation criteria need a few details, such as platform, advertising, and marketing fees, which cover acquisition expenses for all buyers.
CAC = Total acquisition expenditure / Number of new customers
Tracking this data point allows businesses to approach local influencers or consider SEO services to refine their target audiences.
Many startups look for sustainable digital marketing services to keep acquiring quality traffic. Maintaining customer acquisition cost within a certain limit helps them promote through digital advertising on Google, Instagram, or other leading platforms supporting e-commerce marketing in Dubai.
- Average order value (AOV)
This metric represents how much money an online retailer spends per order. To calculate average order value, you can use this formula:
AOV = Total revenue from sales / Number of orders placed by customers
Targeting premium customers through curated offers is one of the special aspects of e-commerce market in the UAE. Many retailers introduce or promote product bundles, upsells, and free shipping to generate higher returns. All these practices contribute to increasing AOV and revenue per shopper.
Business owners can utilize the profit generated from average order value in acquiring high-paying customers.
- Return on Ad spend (ROAS)
This metric measures the revenue your brand generates for every unit of currency invested in advertising. The return on ad spend is calculated as:
ROAS = (Total revenue from ad-driven sales/ Total expenses of advertising) x 100
For example, you have spent around AED 100 on advertising campaigns and generated AED 500 from sales. So, your ROAS is simply (500/100) x 100 = 500% or 5:1. This means for spending every AED 1, you are able to earn AED 5.
Businesses track ROAS, as it is a crucial efficiency metric. This data point is essential to identify which marketing campaigns are successful and give profitable returns. If you want to control costs and scale campaigns confidently, monitoring ROAS is necessary to yield maximum value.
- Revenue per visitor (RPV)
This evaluation criteria help businesses figure out the revenue generated against each website visitor. To calculate revenue per visitor, here’s what you can do:
RPV = Total generated revenue / Number of visitors
When it comes to evaluating the growth of an e-commerce business, a higher revenue per visitor always matters. It indicates that your website or online store receives high-quality traffic that effectively converts.
Analyzing revenue-per-visitor data can help you evaluate marketing efficiency and develop strategies to attract more clicks. Beneath this metric evaluation, lies the intention to convert these clicks into significant revenue for businesses.
2. Customer retention & loyalty
Want your customers to remain loyal to your business for a longer period? Here are a few key performance indicators to achieve this goal.
- Customer lifetime value (CLTV)
This KPI estimates how much net profit is generated by your customer over their entire association with your online store. Many enterprises and startups track CLTV to measure long-term profitability of maintaining relationships with their customers.
This data point helps businesses prepare more solid strategies for resource allocation, customer acquisition, and retention. You can calculate customer lifetime value through predictive analytics. The best way to measure this value is by using this formula:
CLTV = (Average order value) x (purchase frequency) x (lifespan or average retention period of a customer)
To survive in the competitive market, it is important for enterprises and startups to keep acquiring loyal customers. In order to achieve sustainable growth and generate more revenue, you have to maintain a good CLTV-to-CAC ratio.
Wondering how you can raise customer lifetime value? In the competitive e-commerce landscape in Dubai, initiate personalized communication, provide premium support, and promote loyalty programs to repeat business with your customers.
- Net promoter score (NPS)
This metric measures how likely your shoppers are going to promote or recommend your online store to other customers. NPS basically tracks customer loyalty and their individual responses for promoting the brand.
According to TraceData Research, Abu Dhabi and Dubai are key markets in the UAE due to advanced logistics infrastructure and high population density. With many national and international brands in this region, getting your products or services recognized by shoppers can be challenging. Net promoter score can help your online retail business heavily influence purchases and strengthen reputation in the market. Depending on customer satisfaction and areas for improvement, you can prepare new marketing strategies to promote your brand.
The process of measuring NPS is very simple. The existing buyers often rate your services, products, or company on a scale of 0 to 10. Through this rating, you get to learn about the respondents and categorize them into:
- Promoters: Those customers who give 9 or 10 as ratings.
- Passives: These are respondents who give a score of 7 or 8.
- Detractors: These are those shoppers who may rate your brand between 0 and 6.
Startups or enterprises often rely on these scores to foster lasting relationships with customers. They even trust the shoppers with referrals to boost sales and revenue for online retail businesses.
- Repeat purchase rate (RPR)
This metric allows identifying how many customers returned to the website to place additional orders after an initial purchase. Repeat purchase rate measures the satisfaction and loyalty of your shoppers who converted more than once within a specific timeframe.
Here is how you can calculate this KPI:
RPR = (Count of repeat customers / The total count of customers) x 100
Many of you might wonder what the main objective is behind measuring repeat purchases on your online store. You can evaluate if your customer retention and e-commerce marketing strategies are effective with the help of this data point. RPR is also helpful for identifying potential problems with specific services or products.
3. Operations & fulfilment
Below are the fulfilment and operations metrics that help brands retain shoppers.
- Order fulfilment time
Tracking this metric helps online retailers understand the duration between order placement and the final delivery of the shipment. Dubai is known for supporting a fast-delivery culture. Most enterprises and startups minimize fulfilment time to maintain operational goodwill and keep customers happy.
Monitoring order fulfilment time is one of the quickest ways to identify bottlenecks that can disrupt your business growth. If you don’t track this metric, there can be issues with order processing, inventory management, and product shipping.
Order fulfilment cycle time (OCFT) = Sourcing time + production time + delivery time
E-commerce businesses across the UAE depend on this data point to match the pace of picking, packing, and dispatching products. Calculating this time can help you gain a competitive edge over other online retailers while fine-tuning your business operations.
- On-time delivery rate
This key performance indicator involves measuring the number of orders delivered within a specific timeframe. The e-commerce market in the UAE thrives on the concept of delivering prompt services to boost GDP contribution. Many online retailers use same-day deliveries to dispatch their products to more than 90% of the urban population through AI-enabled routing and free-zone incentives. - Source
On-time delivery (OTD) is a powerful metric for businesses to establish themselves as trusted merchants for shoppers.
Here’s how you can measure on-time delivery rate:
OTD Rate = (Number of on-time deliveries / Total number of deliveries) x 100
Many customers actually repeat business when brands maintain a higher OTD rate. If you deliver your products within the promised date, it can help enhance your business reputation.
- Return rate
This metric represents the percentage of returned orders. E-commerce companies continue to remain in the competitive market by keeping the return rate as low as possible. Often, this KPI indicates various aspects of products, which include quality, sizing reliability, and description accuracy.
Return Rate = (Returned items by the customers / total sales within a timeframe) x 100
Startups and established firms both analyze this data point to identify problematic stock-keeping units (SKUs). Sometimes, the return rate is all they need to improve customer satisfaction and have better control over product quality.
4. Financial & inventory
Here are some financial and inventory metrics for e-commerce stores or businesses.
- Gross margin
This KPI represents the portion of business’s revenue after excluding the cost of goods sold (COGS) during a timeframe. In the e-commerce sector, gross margin is expressed as a percentage, and brands strive to maintain healthy margins between 40% and 60%.
Many big organizations and emerging brands track gross margin to develop strategies for improving sales and reducing production costs. Monitoring this key metric ensures your business remains profitable amid adverse marketing conditions.
Gross Margin = (Revenue – COGS) / Revenue x 100
Based on gross margin, online stores often decide to save more on materials and labour costs to maintain higher revenue.
- Inventory turnover
This operational and financial metric is an essential parameter for e-commerce firms to make smarter decisions in inventory-related matters. It also helps them plan manufacturing, purchasing, pricing, marketing, and warehouse management.
Inventory turnover = COGS / Average inventory value
Tracking this KPI provides many vital information, which include the frequency of a company selling and replacing its entire inventory. Sometimes, the parameters are checked annually or even quarterly to analyze product demand, pricing, and inventory purchase, and overall costs.
- Gross margin return on inventory (GMROI)
This metric measures gross profit a business earns per AED 1 toward inventory investment. GMROI helps companies identify the products or services giving best return on invested capital.
Dubai has a diverse online retail environment. The products for which e-commerce businesses prioritize inventory investment range from electronics to luxury furnishings and perishables like watches, cosmetic products, and perfumery.
GMROI = Gross margin / Average inventory cost
Tracking GMROI is essential for enterprises and startups to categorize their investments based on highest turnover and profitability. It helps them reduce holding costs and improve capital efficiency.
Some important metrics for e-commerce success
Alongside the KPIs discussed so far, here are a few supporting metrics for succeeding in your e-commerce business in Dubai.
- Bounce rate
This indicates online users who land on the product, landing, or home page but leave without converting or taking action. Bounce rate is calculated as a percentage. It helps brands identify why visitors aren’t clicking or navigating to other pages.
Bounce Rate = (Single-page sessions / Total sessions) x 100
- Cart abandonment rate
It measures how many customers don’t complete a purchase even after adding products or items to the cart.
Cart Abandonment Rate = (Number of abandoned carts / Initiated transactions) x 100
A higher rate means there could be some issues during checkout. This can include UX problems, payment limitations, or unexpectedly higher shipping charges. You can track this metric to simplify checkout and motivate indecisive visitors to buy from your online store.
- Email click-through rate (CTR)
This KPI reflects the number of recipients who clicked on a call-to-action (CTA) or a link provided within an email. Many e-commerce brands in Dubai use this data point to plan their email campaigns to drive traffic to their stores.
Email CTR = (Number of clicks / Delivered emails) x 100
Businesses strive to maintain strong CTR through attractive visuals and messaging to engage customers and encourage conversions.
- Page load time
This is a crucial KPI that indicates how long a particular webpage takes to display all its content to visitors. Remember, a slow-loading e-commerce website can result in a 57% bounce rate or even a 90% cart abandonment rate.
To ensure your pages load quickly, you can approach a web developer or receive a customized digital marketing service in Dubai.
Conclusion
When operating a successful e-commerce store in Dubai, it’s best to focus on online traffic, customer retention, conversions, and website performance. Selecting the KPIs and metrics can fine-tune your business goals and marketing strategies to improve revenue and boost growth.
If you want performance marketing for your store or to reduce your website’s bounce rate, contact Proquantic. Your search for services that help businesses grow and acquire more customers ends with our e-commerce development agency in Dubai. Schedule a call to improve checkout experiences for your customers, target campaigns to increase conversions, and more.
