Top Retail KPIs You Should Track
Retail key performance indicators (KPIs) are important metrics. They help retail managers understand their customers, business, and revenue situation better. If you want to run a profitable retail operation, then keep an eye on on these important KPIs.
- Sales – Most retailers understand the importance of tracking sales. This is directly related to revenues and profits. You should understand how many sales you make and the dollar amount of total sales for your entire store, products, product categories, and departments in your chain.
- Gross margin – Gross margin is the gross profits you earn as a percentage of sales.
- Sales per square foot – If you want to know whether your store layout is working, know your sales per square foot.
- Average customer spend – The average amount customers spend per purchase.
- Units purchased per transactions – How many products, on average, your customers purchase per transaction.
- Stock turnover rate – How many times you turn your entire inventory over per year.
- Sell through rate – The ratio of product units sold in a period of time and on-hand inventory at the beginning of that period.
Why KPIs Are Important for Store Budgeting
By understanding how each store in your chain compares to other stores on these metrics, you can better budget your expenses for each month, quarter, and year. You can set store budgets based on store size, revenue, traffic counts, and locations. However, understanding these KPIs for each store gives you important information for budget planning.
You likely have some bigger stores and some smaller stores in your chain. Larger stores could do better in sales and underperform on other metrics. For instance, sales per square foot, units per transaction, and sell through rate. If you can get an apples-to-apples comparison, you can make each store profitable regardless of size.