Retail Metrics: 16 Key Metrics for Your Store (2026)

Think of the 16 retail metrics below as your check-engine lights. They fall into four groups:

• Money: Gross profit, net profit, year-over-year growth, and same-store sales.
• Efficiency: Inventory turnover, sell-through rate, gross margin return on investment (GMROI), and shrinkage.
• People: Retention, traffic (digital and physical), and sales per employee/sales per square foot.
• Results: Conversion rate, average order value (AOV), and basket size.

Tip: Shopify POS unifies your online and retail store data into one back office—from customer data to inventory, sales, and more. View easy-to-understand reports to spot trends faster, capitalize on opportunities, and jump-start your brand’s growth.

The money metrics

These tell you if you’re generating sales at a healthy rate and growing your business.

1. Sales per square foot

This metric helps brick-and-mortar stores to figure out if they’re making the best use of their space. If you’re a retail business with multiple locations, it lets you see how each store is performing and compare how effectively they’re using their space.

To calculate sales per square foot: Net sales / Store square footage

This metric can also help you decide whether you need to upgrade or downsize your store, or if you should try rearranging your product into a different store layout.

2. Sales per employee

To calculate sales per employee: Net sales / Number of employees

You can take this a step further with a point-of-sale (POS) system that allows you to track sales per individual employee and identify your top performers.

3. Gross profit

Your gross profit is the total amount of profit you’ve made, minus the cost it took to buy or create the products.

To calculate gross profit: Total revenue – Cost of goods sold (COGS)

This shows the profit you’re bringing in before operating expenses. It can help you determine if your core offering is profitable enough to support your business. 

4. Net profit

Your net profit is the total profit you’ve made, minus all of your expenses. 

To calculate net profit: Total revenue – All expenses

Expenses include rent and utilities, administrative costs, taxes, and salaries.

Your net profit should be high enough that you’re able to make a comfortable living at the end of the day. If you’re spending all revenues on expenses or you’re in the red, it might be time to increase prices.

5. Year-over-year growth

Year-over-year (YoY) growth tells you if your business is growing. When you first start out, you might also consider tracking month-over-month (MoM) growth to ascertain the health of your business and see if any adjustments need to be made.

To calculate YoY growth:  [(Current year’s sales – Previous year’s sales) / Previous year’s sales] x 100

Similarly, to calculate MoM growth: [(Current month’s sales – previous month’s sales) / Previous month’s sales] x 100

Multiplying the result by 100 states it as a percentage. A positive percent would indicate growth, while a negative result would mean your sales have fallen—something you definitely don’t want to see year over year.

Tracking your month-over-month or quarter-over-quarter sales growth can give you early warning of problem areas or falling sales.

The efficiency metrics

These help you decide how much product you need to order, assisting with overall inventory management.

6. Inventory turnover

Inventory turnover, or stock turn, measures how many times you’ve sold and replaced your inventory over a certain period of time.

To calculate: Cost of goods sold / Average inventory

This metric is an indicator of how efficiently you are managing your inventory, and can signal issues like overstocking or understocking. 

A low stock turn could leave you with dead stock, while a high stock turn might mean you’re not ordering enough, and that customers frequently encounter an “out of stock” message. 

7. Sell-through rate

Your sell-through rate (STR) indicates which specific products are overperforming or underperforming, enabling you to adjust how much of that product you keep in stock.

To calculate: (Number of units sold / Starting inventory) x 100

Knowing this metric for each of your products can help you decide if you need to run a promotion or marketing campaign to help sell underperforming products.

It can also tell you if any of your products are more popular than you expected, and whether you need to order more.

8. Shrinkage

Shrinkage refers to loss of inventory that has not been sold. Shrinkage could be due to administrative errors, misplaced inventory, shoplifting, employee theft.

To calculate shrinkage: (Inventory recorded – Physical inventory) / Inventory recorded

The resulting figure gives you the percentage of inventory lost to shrinkage.

9. Gross margin return on investment (GMROI)

Your retail store’s gross margin return on investment, or GMROI, refers to your inventory’s profitability.

To calculate GMROI: Gross profit / Average inventory cost

This calculates the gross profit you earn for every dollar invested in inventory. If your GMROI is low, you can consider raising prices or looking for ways to decrease your inventory cost.

The people metrics

McKinsey’s 2025 research found that retailers using targeted, personalized promotions see a 1% to 2% lift in total sales and up to 3% improvement in margins. This section of metrics focuses on your customers and their buying behaviors. 

10. Foot traffic

Foot traffic tracks the number of customers who enter a physical store.

Foot traffic, instead of being calculated, is counted:

Foot traffic = Total number of people who enter your store during a given time period

Tracking foot traffic can tell you if awareness of your business is growing, and can determine whether any major marketing campaigns you’re running are increasing consumer interest in your store.

Tip: Use Shopify-connected tools that track foot traffic, like Dor. Dor connects with your Shopify POS and uses battery-powered thermal sensors to count actual customers entering your store. Once installed, you can see foot traffic trends, revenue, and conversion rate all in one dashboard. 

11. Retention rate

Your customer retention rate allows you to make sure the new customers you’ve worked so hard to bring in the door are coming back.

To calculate customer retention: [(Customers at end of period – New customers) / Customers at start of period] x 100

To increase customer retention, consider strategies like implementing a loyalty program or creating incentives for repeat shopping.

12. Foot traffic and digital traffic

Foot traffic and digital traffic measure how many people are encountering your brand, both in-store and online. 

You’ve already seen how to count foot traffic using in-store traffic-tracking tools. To measure digital traffic, use website analytics from tools like Shopify Analytics or Google Analytics, which track sessions, users, and page views across your online store.

Once you have both numbers, you can look at them together: Foot traffic + Digital traffic = Total demand exposure

13. Same-store sales

Same-store sales (sometimes called “comparable store sales” or “comps”) measure revenue growth for specific stores. You can use this to track a store’s progress, and compare figures from different stores.

To calculate same-store sales: (This period’s comparable store sales − Last period’s comparable store sales) / Last period’s comparable store sales x 100

Tip: Look at same-store sales and sales per square foot together before making real estate decisions. If comps are consistently strong and traffic is increasing, but sales per square foot lags due to space constraints, it may signal an opportunity to expand or relocate. 

The result metrics

14. Conversion rate

Conversion rate helps you identify how many sales you made out of how many store or website visitors you’ve had.

To calculate your conversion rate: (Number of sales / Number of store and website visitors) x 100

A good retail conversion rate depends on channel, industry, and traffic quality. Across online retail in 2025, global ecommerce conversion rates generally sat in the 2% to 3% range, with variation by category and device.

This is an easy metric to track for ecommerce stores with access to website analytics, but different strategies are needed to track foot traffic.

Note that the term conversion rate can be used more broadly to signify how many visitors perform any significant action a retailer is targeting for analysis—for example, how many visitors to your online store sign up for your newsletter.

15. Average order value (AOV)

Average order value (AOV) measures how much customers typically spend when they make a purchase. 

To calculate: Total revenue / Number of orders

A higher average order value can mean your customers are gravitating toward high-value items or ordering larger quantities of products. 

Lower average order value may mean you need to increase prices or provide incentives for ordering more. For example, you might offer free shipping for orders over $50 or $100 to try to increase this metric.

16. Basket size

Basket size tells you the typical number of items sold per transaction. 

To calculate: Total number of units sold / Total number of transactions

Knowing how many items the average customer is buying at a time can give you useful information about customer buying behavior. 

In conjunction with AOV, basket size can help you determine if an increase in revenue is due to your customers purchasing more items at once, or if they’re starting to purchase more expensive products.

Bonus retail KPIs to track in 2026

The 16 metrics above give you a solid foundation, but there are seven more that can be helpful for ecommerce. 

Marketing and ecommerce KPIs

These metrics help you understand the efficiency of your marketing efforts.

Return on ad spend (ROAS)

ROAS tells you how much revenue you generate for every dollar spent on advertising.

To calculate ROAS: Total revenue from ads / Total ad spend

The average ecommerce ROAS in 2025 was 2.87:1, meaning the typical retailer brought in $2.87 for every $1 spent on ads, but that number is sliding—the average ROAS dipped 4.3% year over year.

You can track ROAS by channel and campaign to see what is working best. 

Cart abandonment rate

Cart abandonment is the percentage of shoppers who add items to their cart but leave before buying. Based on data aggregated across 50 studies, the Baymard Institute puts the average cart abandonment rate at 70.22% in 2026.

To calculate cart abandonment rate: [1 − (Completed purchases / Carts created)] x 100

A high abandonment rate can be indicative of friction points like last-minute shipping costs, forced account creation, and complicated checkout flows.

Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

CAC tells you exactly how much you’re paying to acquire a new customer.

To calculate: Total marketing expenses / Number of new customers acquired

CAC has risen roughly 40% between 2023 and 2025 for ecommerce brands on average.

CAC is useful when paired with customer lifetime value (LTV). Most ecommerce brands target an LTV:CAC ratio of at least 3:1.

Customer experience KPIs

These help you understand whether customers want to come back.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS measures how likely your customers are to recommend you. Respondents rate you on a scale of 0 to 10. A customer who assigns a score of 9 to 10 is considered a “promoter”; a score of 7 to 8 indicates “passive”; and a customer who assigns 0 to 6 is a “detractor.”

To calculate NPS: % promoters − % detractors

In 2025, retail and ecommerce NPS fell from 68 to 55, a double-digit drop that may reflect rising customer expectations and intensifying competition.

Customer satisfaction (CSAT)

CSAT measures how a customer felt about a specific interaction: a purchase, a return, a support call. You ask them to rate their experience on a simple scale (typically 1 to 5 or 1 to 10) and calculate the percentage who rated you positively.

To calculate CSAT: (Number of satisfied responses / Total responses) x 100

CSAT is most valuable when you run it consistently at the same touchpoints, so you can track whether your customer experience is improving or slipping over time.

Availability and returns KPIs

Stockout rate

Stockout rate is the percentage of products unavailable for sale at any given time. 

To calculate stockout rate: Products out of stock / Total products x 100

Michael Ross at Edited calls this a “failure metric”: if your viewed availability is low, your conversion rate will suffer regardless of how good your marketing is.

Return rate

Return rate is the percentage of sold items that come back. 

According to the National Retail Federation’s 2025 Retail Returns Landscape report, 15.8% of all merchandise sold in the US was projected to be returned, totaling approximately $849.9 billion in merchandise. Online sales are even more return-heavy, with an estimated 19.3% of ecommerce purchases expected back.

To calculate return rate: (Returned items / Items sold) x 100

Use Shopify POS to track key retail metrics

Shopify POS brings your in-store and ecommerce data into one back office, so you can track sales, average order value, items per order, inventory performance, and customer behavior in a single system. 

Built-in analytics and reporting tools let you compare performance by location, spot trends over time, and understand how physical and digital channels work together. 

Read more about how to build your very own store performance dashboard.