Glossary

E-commerce analytics, defined

The metrics and data concepts behind store analytics — in plain language, with how each one is measured.

RFM analysis

RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary) scores customers on how recently and often they buy and how much they spend, to segment them for marketing.

Customer lifetime value (CLV / LTV)

Customer lifetime value is the total revenue (or profit) a customer generates across their entire relationship with your store.

Average order value (AOV)

Average order value is the mean amount spent per order — total revenue divided by number of orders.

Repeat purchase rate

Repeat purchase rate is the share of customers who have placed more than one order.

Cohort analysis

Cohort analysis groups customers by a shared start point (e.g. first-order month) and tracks their behaviour over time.

Churn rate

Churn rate is the share of customers who stop buying over a given period.

Abandoned cart

An abandoned cart is a shopping cart a customer filled but never converted into a completed order.

Cost of goods sold (COGS)

COGS is the direct cost of the products you sold — what they cost you to buy or make.

Gross margin

Gross margin is the percentage of revenue left after subtracting the cost of goods sold.

Read replica

A read replica is a synchronised copy of a database used for reads, so heavy queries don't load the primary.

Keyset pagination

Keyset pagination pages through rows using a column cursor (e.g. last id seen) instead of OFFSET, staying fast and consistent on large tables.

EAV (Entity-Attribute-Value)

EAV is a database pattern that stores attributes as rows instead of columns — flexible, but heavy to query.