The five numbers that actually run your store.

Open your analytics and you will find forty numbers, each with a sparkline, all moving. Most of them are commentary. Five are structural — they decide, between them, whether the store makes money. Here is each one, what it answers, and when to worry about it.

Average order value

What a customer spends per order. Revenue ÷ orders — the full tour is in the glossary, and the calculator will tell you what lifting it is worth. AOV is the cheapest lever because moving it needs no new visitors: bundles, thresholds and tiers do the work. Read it monthly; react quarterly.

Conversion rate

The share of visitors who buy. Between one and three percent is the normal range for ecommerce; the full definition covers what moves it. The trap is comparing yourself to other industries — compare only to your own last quarter. If it drops suddenly, check the checkout before you check the marketing.

Customer acquisition cost

What you pay to win one new customer. All acquisition spend ÷ new customers, explained properly here. CAC only means something next to what a customer is worth — which is the next number.

Lifetime value

What a customer is worth over the whole relationship — every reorder, not just the first. The LTV page has the working model. The ratio to hold in your head is LTV to CAC of about three to one: below that, growth is expensive; far above it, you are probably underinvesting in growth.

Gross margin

The share of the price you keep after the cost of goods. Every other number stands on this one: your breakeven ROAS is one divided by margin, your discount ceiling is your margin, your survivable CAC is a function of margin. The gross margin and COGS pages walk the math.

How they fit together

Multiply them and you get the business: traffic × conversion × AOV is revenue; revenue × margin is gross profit; gross profit − (new customers × CAC) is what is left. When a month disappoints, walk that chain left to right and the culprit identifies itself. Everything else on the dashboard is detail.