What numbers should you really be watching in your first 90 days of business?
What metrics actually matter when you’re just starting out? Should you be focusing on traffic (how many people are visiting my site), conversion rate (what percentage of visitors are actually buying), CAC or Customer Acquisition Cost (how much I’m spending to get each customer), or LTV or Lifetime Value (how much each customer is worth over time)?
Are all of these important right away, or should you prioritize some over others in the beginning? And are there any other key metrics I’m missing that you found helpful in those early days?
Would love to hear what you tracked and what actually helped you make better decisions.
In the first 90 days, I’d say the absolute key metric is traffic. Track the source so that you know at a high level what works and what does not. But the focus should be getting eyeballs on your new site!
Next I’d say customer satisfaction - and early on, this is best measured by talking to them instead of a metric! Learn what worked well and what did not. Did you meet their expectations on shipping, product and service?
Marketing metrics like CAC and ROAS will fluctuate as you experiment with ads in the early days. Plus, ads often take a while to build up & hit the right targeting, so it’s best not to over-index on these metrics too early.
For most Shopify merchants with a sensible theme and good checkout, conversion should be less of a priority as well. Without enough base traffic, it is very hard to optimize conversion because you won’t have enough of a sample size to know if your changes worked.
When you’re in the first 90 days, you don’t have the luxury of chasing every metric — the ones that really matter are the ones that prove your store can attract the right visitors and convert them into paying customers. Traffic on its own is only meaningful if those visitors are engaged, so you want to look at whether people are reaching product pages, adding items to cart, and actually completing checkout. Conversion rate in this stage is critical because it tells you whether your offer, site experience, and checkout flow are clear enough to get a stranger to trust you with their first order.
Customer acquisition cost (CAC) and lifetime value (LTV) will both be important eventually, but in the early stage CAC tends to swing wildly and LTV is mostly a guess until you’ve built a few months of repeat purchase data. What is more useful at the start is knowing if you can win a first order profitably, or at least at a cost you can sustain for long enough to test.
So in practice, I’d prioritize: (1) qualified traffic by channel, (2) the funnel metrics that show where people drop off, and (3) average order value and contribution margin so you know if there’s enough room to spend on growth. Once you have a steady flow of traffic and consistent conversions, then CAC and LTV become much more actionable. Until then, your focus is proving you can drive demand and capture it efficiently.