Metric Dictionary
Browse definitions, formulas, and usage notes for all Daasity metrics in one place.
Know your numbers. Grow your business.
Welcome to Daasity’s Metrics Glossary—a single source of truth for the KPIs that power your retail and e-commerce decisions. Every entry includes a plain-English definition, the exact calculation, and links to where you’ll see it in Daasity.
Built for: merchants and operators who want consistent, trustworthy numbers across channels.
$ per Point of Distribution
Description: Average dollar sales per 1% of ACV distribution. This velocity metric standardizes a product’s sales by its distribution level. It shows how much revenue is generated for each point of ACV distribution. A higher $ per point of distribution means the product sells more strongly in the stores where it’s available (i.e., it has high velocity). This allows comparison of products with different distribution levels on an even footing.
$ per Store per Week
Description: Average dollar sales per active store per week. This metric shows how fast a product moves in the stores that actually sell it, independent of how many total stores carry it overall. It’s ideal for comparing true in-store sales intensity across brands/SKUs or over time, without distribution effects masking performance. Use when you want to answer: “Given a store is selling the item, how many dollars does it move each week on average?”
% Dollar Sales on Promotion
Description: The percentage of the product’s dollar sales that occurred during promotional periods. This metric shows how reliant the product’s revenue is on promotions. For example, 30% means nearly a third of all sales dollars came from weeks when the item was on deal.
% Unit Sales on Promotion
Description: The percentage of the product’s unit sales volume that was sold on promotion. This indicates what portion of all units sold were under a promotional discount. A high percentage suggests a large share of volume is driven by promotions.
ACV Gap
Description: ACV Gap represents the distribution opportunity – the gap between the product’s current % ACV and a target or maximum % ACV (often 100%, or sometimes compared to a key competitor’s % ACV). Essentially, it’s how much ACV is not covered by the product’s distribution. For example, if a product has 75% ACV, the gap to full distribution is 25 percentage points. This highlights how much market coverage is missing and can help prioritize efforts to gain distribution in new stores.
ACV Gap: Dollar Opportunity
Description: Dollar Opportunity is the estimated incremental sales that could be gained by closing the distribution gap. It translates the ACV Gap into a revenue opportunity. Typically, it’s calculated by multiplying the ACV Gap (in percentage points) by the product’s velocity (sales per point of ACV). This metric provides a dollar value for unrealized sales – essentially, how much more revenue the product might generate if it achieved full distribution or a specific distribution target.
Average Order Value (AOV)
Description: The average dollar amount spent per order on the website. AOV is an important metric for e-commerce health, showing how much customers tend to spend in one transaction. Increasing AOV (through strategies like upselling or cross-selling) can drive higher revenue without needing to acquire more orders. This is the same concept as overall AOV, but focused on the e-commerce channel.
Average Price
Description: The average price paid by consumers per unit of the product. (Referred to as “ARP” – Average Retail Price – in retail data, and “ASP” – Average Selling Price – in e-commerce.) This metric provides the average price point of a product in the market.
Average Retail Price (Base)
Description: The average price per unit for units sold not on promotion (at regular price). This is essentially the same as the non-promo ARP described above – reflecting the everyday base price. (Sometimes “Base” price is used interchangeably with non-promo price.)
Average Retail Price (Non-Promo)
Description: The average price per unit for units sold not on promotion (i.e., sold at regular price). This metric shows the typical selling price when the product is not discounted. It’s calculated using only the sales where no promotional discount was applied. Generally, this reflects the everyday or base price of the product in store.
Average Retail Price (Promo)
Description: The average price per unit for units sold on promotion. This captures the effective unit price consumers paid during promotional periods (when discounts or deals were in effect). It’s usually lower than the non-promo ARP, reflecting the discount offered.
Base Dollars
Description: Base Dollars represent the baseline sales (in dollars) that would have been expected without any promotional influence. During a promotion period, base dollars are the portion of sales that would likely have occurred anyway (modeled or estimated from historical/non-promotional sales). This serves as a benchmark of normal sales level.
Baseline Sales (Pre-Promotion Expected Sales)
Description: Baseline sales represent the normal expected sales of a product without promotional influence. It serves as the standard benchmark to measure incremental promotional lift.
Bounce Rate
Description: The percentage of visits where the user leaves the website after viewing only a single page (i.e., they bounced without further interaction). A high bounce rate indicates that many visitors did not engage beyond the landing page, which may suggest they didn’t find what they were looking for or were not compelled to explore further. Bounce Rate is a gauge of initial engagement; for example, a high bounce rate on a landing page may signal issues with content relevance or user experience on that page.
Carrying Cost %
Description: Carrying Cost Percentage (Inventory Holding Cost %) is the annual cost of holding and storing inventory, expressed as a percentage of the inventory’s value. It includes all the expenses associated with keeping inventory, such as warehouse storage costs, insurance, taxes, depreciation, and the cost of capital tied up in inventory. For instance, a carrying cost of 25% means that holding $100 of inventory for a year costs about $25 in storage-related expenses. Monitoring this helps businesses balance inventory levels against holding costs.
Cart Abandonment Rate
Description: The percentage of online shopping carts that are created but not ultimately converted into orders. In other words, it’s the share of shoppers who add items to their cart but leave without completing the purchase. A high cart abandonment rate can point to friction in the checkout process or hesitation (such as unexpected costs like shipping, or requiring account creation). Reducing this rate (through optimizations like simplified checkout, free shipping, etc.) is key to recovering otherwise lost sales.
Channel Sales Mix
Description: %(Channel) of Total Sales – a calculated metric showing what proportion of total omnichannel sales each channel represents. Business use: Helps in evaluating channel strategy and dependency. For instance, if 80% of sales are DTC vs 20% retail, strategies can be adjusted accordingly.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Description: CTR is the percentage of ad impressions that resulted in a click. It’s an indicator of how effective an ad is at capturing interest. A higher CTR means a larger proportion of people who see the ad are clicking on it. This can reflect the ad’s relevance, creative effectiveness, or targeting accuracy.
Clicks
Description: The total number of clicks an advertisement or link receives. This metric indicates how many times users engaged with an ad by clicking on it, typically leading to your website or landing page. Clicks are a primary measure of ad engagement and the traffic driven from ads.
Contribution Margin
Description: Contribution Margin is the profit per unit or order after all variable costs are subtracted from Net Sales. It goes a step beyond gross margin by also subtracting variable non-COGS expenses (for example, shipping costs, transaction fees, or other costs directly tied to the sale). This metric helps in understanding profitability on a per-unit or per-order basis and how much each sale contributes toward covering fixed costs and profit.
Cost per Click (CPC)
Description: The average cost paid for each click in a pay-per-click advertising campaign. CPC tells you how much you spend every time someone clicks your ad. It’s a key metric for managing ad spend efficiency – lower CPC means you are getting traffic (clicks) at a lower cost, which is generally desirable if the traffic is of good quality.
Cost per Incremental Unit/Dollar
Description: Represents promotional cost efficiency by calculating spend required per incremental sale unit or dollar.
Cost per Mille (CPM)
Description: CPM stands for Cost per Mille, meaning cost per 1,000 impressions. It’s the cost to have your ad shown one thousand times. CPM is commonly used in display and social advertising to price and measure the efficiency of ad reach. It reflects how expensive it is to reach a large audience.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Description: Customer Acquisition Cost is the average cost to acquire one new customer. CAC accounts for marketing and sales expenses used to attract customers. It’s calculated by dividing all costs spent on acquiring customers (over a period) by the number of new customers acquired in that period. This metric is critical for understanding the efficiency of customer acquisition efforts and is often compared to the value of those customers (LTV).
Customer Churn Rate
Description: The percentage of customers that stop purchasing (are lost) in a given period. It’s the inverse of retention. For example, if out of those 100 customers at the start of the year, 40 did not purchase again that year, the churn rate is 40%. Churn Rate is critical in subscription businesses, but for e-commerce it can be applied to repeat purchasing behavior. Lower churn means more customers are staying engaged with the brand.
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
Description: Customer Lifetime Value is the estimated total value (revenue or profit) that a customer will contribute over their entire relationship with the brand. Often, LTV is calculated in terms of gross profit per customer across all their purchases. A basic approach is: Average Order Value × Purchase Frequency × Expected Customer Lifespan (in number of orders or time), sometimes focusing on profit rather than revenue. LTV is crucial for understanding how much a customer is worth to the business and informs how much can be spent to acquire customers (CAC) while remaining profitable.
Dollar Sales
Description: Total dollar value of product sold in a given market and time frame. (For e-commerce sales, the custom-defined Total Revenue metric will be used – by default this is Net Sales.)
Forward-Buy Indicator
Description: Identifies potential forward-buying by comparing wholesale shipments to actual retail sales during promotions.
Gross Margin (Gross Profit)
Description: Gross Margin (often expressed as a dollar amount, a.k.a. Gross Profit) is the profit remaining after subtracting the direct cost of goods sold (COGS) from Net Sales. Gross Margin shows how much money is left from sales after covering the product costs. This is essentially the gross profit from e-commerce sales and indicates how efficiently products are produced and sold relative to their cost.
Gross Margin %
Description: Gross Margin % is Gross Margin expressed as a percentage of Net Sales. It indicates the proportion of revenue retained as profit after product costs. For example, a 40% gross margin means $0.40 of every $1 in sales is profit after accounting for COGS. This percentage is a key indicator of product profitability and cost management.
Gross Sales
Description: In e-commerce, Gross Sales represents the total merchandise value of orders before any discounts, promotions, or returns. It is the initial revenue booked from all transactions in the period. Gross Sales for online channels is often also called Gross Merchandise Value (GMV). This metric is useful for understanding total demand and order volume before any adjustments.
Impressions
Description: The number of times an advertisement is displayed or seen. Each impression represents one view of your ad by a user (regardless of whether they click it or not). Impressions measure the reach of your advertising campaign in terms of total ad exposures. It’s often used to gauge brand visibility and the scale of an ad campaign.
Incremental Dollar Sales (Promotional Lift)
Description: The additional dollar revenue generated due to promotions, beyond what would have been sold at the baseline. Incremental Dollar Sales (often called Dollar Lift) represents the extra sales dollars attributable to the promotional incentive. It is computed by estimating the baseline sales (had there been no promotion) and subtracting that from the actual sales during the promotion. The remainder is the increment (lift) due to the promo.
Incremental Dollars
Description: Incremental Dollars (Promotional Lift in dollar terms) are the additional sales revenue generated due to promotions, beyond the baseline. It represents the extra dollar sales attributable to the promotional activity – essentially the lift above what would have been sold without the promotion.
Incremental Sales (Lift Volume or Value)
Description: Incremental sales quantify additional sales generated specifically by the promotion, beyond baseline expectations.
Incremental Unit Sales (Unit Lift)
Description: The additional units sold because of the promotion, above the baseline level. Unit Lift represents the extra volume that the promotion drove, in terms of units. It highlights the volume impact of promotional activity on top of normal sales.
Inventory On Hand (Units)
Description: The total quantity of units currently in stock (available inventory) across all warehouses or selling locations. It represents the physical inventory on hand that is available for sale as of the current date.
Inventory On Order (Units)
Description: The total number of units that have been ordered from suppliers but not yet received into stock. These are incoming units (open purchase orders) that will be added to inventory on hand once they arrive.
Inventory Turnover
Description: Inventory Turnover indicates how many times the inventory is sold (or “turned”) over a given period, usually a year. It’s a measure of how quickly inventory is moving through the business. A higher turnover means inventory is selling quickly and being replenished more often, whereas a low turnover can signal overstocking or slow sales. This metric helps assess inventory efficiency and product demand.
Inventory Value
Description: The total monetary value of the inventory on hand. This is typically calculated as the number of units in stock multiplied by the cost per unit (at cost basis). It represents the amount of capital currently tied up in inventory.
LTV:CAC Ratio
Description: The ratio of Customer Lifetime Value to Customer Acquisition Cost. It compares the long-term value of a customer to the cost of acquiring that customer. For example, an LTV:CAC of 3:1 means the average customer’s lifetime value is 3 times the cost to acquire them. This ratio is used to evaluate the efficiency and sustainability of marketing and customer acquisition efforts. Generally, a higher LTV:CAC (well above 1:1) is desired — it means customers bring in significantly more value than they cost to acquire.
Market Share Change
Description: Tracks shifts in product market share due to promotional activities.
Marketing Efficiency Ratio (MER)
Description: Marketing Efficiency Ratio (MER) is the ratio of total revenue to total marketing spend. Also known as “Blended ROAS,” it looks at the return on all marketing dollars holistically (not just attributable ad spend). MER answers the question: for every $1 spent on marketing (across all channels), how many dollars of revenue is the business generating overall? It’s a high-level indicator of marketing’s contribution to revenue.
Max ACV (%)
Description: Max % ACV is the weighted percentage of total store sales in which a product is available. All Commodity Volume (ACV) represents the total annual sales volume of all products in a store (a measure of store size). The % ACV for a product is the percentage of the total market ACV that comes from stores carrying that product. This metric indicates the breadth of distribution weighted by store importance (sales volume). A higher % ACV means the product is available in stores that account for a larger portion of total market sales.
Net Sales
Description: Net Sales (for e-commerce) is the actual realized revenue from online orders after subtracting discounts, promotions, refunds, and returns. This is the net revenue the business retains from online sales, and it reflects what was actually earned. Net Sales is often used for financial reporting as the true sales number after all adjustments.
New Customer Count
Description: The number of first-time customers acquired in a given period. These are customers who made their first-ever purchase from your brand during that time window. This metric indicates how well you are attracting new buyers. Growing the new customer count is essential for expanding the customer base.
Non-Promo Dollars
Description: Non-Promo Dollars are the total dollar sales that occurred when no promotion was running. This measures the sales in regular, non-promotional periods. It represents the “baseline” actual sales outside of promos. (In combination with Promo Dollars, this accounts for all sales.)
Orders
Description: The total number of orders placed on the e-commerce website in the given period. Each order is a completed transaction through the online store (regardless of how many items were in it). This metric indicates sales volume in terms of transactions and is fundamental for gauging online sales activity.
Post-Promotion Baseline Lift
Description: Measures sustained sales lift post-promotion, evaluating lasting impact.
Promo Dollars
Description: Promo Dollars are the total dollar sales that occurred during promotional periods. This includes both the baseline sales and the incremental sales during those promo weeks. It indicates how many dollars of product were sold when a promotion was active. (Promo Dollars plus Non-Promo Dollars would sum up to total Dollar Sales for the product.)
Promotional Incrementality (%)
Description: The percentage of promotional-period sales that were truly incremental (i.e., would not have occurred without the promotion). This metric shows how effective a promotion was in generating new sales versus merely shifting the timing of sales that would have happened anyway. A higher incrementality percentage means most of the promo-period sales were additional, not just cannibalizing regular sales.
Promotional Lift Percentage (% Lift)
Description: Measures promotional effectiveness as the percentage increase over baseline sales.
Promotion ROI (Return on Investment)
Description: Evaluates financial performance of a promotion by measuring incremental gross margin relative to promotional spend, expressed as a percentage.
Purchase Frequency
Description: The average number of orders each customer makes within a given period. It reflects how frequently customers purchase on average. For example, a purchase frequency of 2.0 per year means the average customer places two orders per year. This metric, combined with average order value, helps determine overall customer value. Strategies that increase purchase frequency (like subscriptions or loyalty programs) can boost revenue.
Repeat Purchase Rate
Description: Also known as Repeat Customer Rate or Repurchase Rate, this is the percentage of customers who have made more than one purchase. It’s a measure of customer loyalty within a timeframe. For example, if out of 100 customers who bought in Q1, 25 made at least one additional order later, the repeat purchase rate is 25%. A higher repeat rate means more of your customers are returning for additional orders, indicating good retention.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
Description: ROAS measures the revenue return for each dollar spent on advertising. It is expressed as a ratio or multiplier (e.g., 4× means $4 revenue for every $1 spent). ROAS helps evaluate the effectiveness of advertising campaigns in driving sales. A higher ROAS means more revenue generated per dollar of ad spend, indicating more effective advertising.
Return Rate
Description: Return Rate is the percentage of sold products that are returned by customers. It’s an important measure of product performance and customer satisfaction, especially in e-commerce (for example in apparel, where fit issues can drive returns). A high return rate can signal issues such as product quality problems, inaccurate descriptions/sizing, or customer dissatisfaction. For example, if 100 units were sold and 5 were returned, the return rate is 5%. Managing return rate is crucial, as returns directly reduce net sales and incur additional handling costs.
Returning Customer Count
Description: The number of existing customers who made an additional purchase in the given period. These customers had purchased at least once before (prior to the period) and came back to buy again. This metric shows the volume of repeat customers in that timeframe and is related to customer retention and loyalty.
Sell-Through Rate
Description: Sell-Through Rate measures the percentage of inventory sold through to customers out of the inventory available or received. It’s commonly used to evaluate product performance in retail and wholesale contexts. For example, in a wholesale scenario, if a brand ships 100 units to a retailer and 80 units are sold to consumers over the season, the sell-through is 80%. A higher sell-through rate indicates strong consumer demand relative to supply. This metric helps identify how well products are selling and can inform production and replenishment decisions.
Stockout Rate
Description: Stockout Rate is the frequency or percentage of time that a product is out-of-stock and unavailable for sale. It can be measured as the percentage of total demand that could not be filled because inventory was not available. A high stockout rate indicates that the product often runs out of stock, leading to missed sales opportunities and potentially unhappy customers. Companies aim to minimize stockouts through better forecasting and inventory management.
Stores Selling
Description: Stores Selling is the number of retail stores that sold the product during the period. It is a count of distinct store locations where at least one unit of the product was sold. This shows the breadth of distribution in terms of outlets (unweighted by store size). A higher number of stores selling indicates broader availability of the product.
Total Distribution Points (TDP)
Description: Total Distribution Points is a combined measure of distribution breadth and depth for retail products. It accounts for how widely a product is distributed and how many product variants are carried on average. TDP is often calculated by summing the % ACV for each item (SKU) of a brand in a market, or equivalently as % ACV × average number of SKUs carried per store. A higher TDP means broader and/or deeper distribution. This metric allows comparison of overall distribution presence, especially when a brand has multiple SKUs.
Trade Promotion Spend (Budget Spent)
Description: Total monetary investment dedicated to a promotion, covering off-invoice discounts, bill-backs, MCB, and scan-back deals.
Traffic (Sessions)
Description: Traffic (sessions) refers to the number of visits to the website or online store. In digital analytics this is often measured in sessions, where each session represents a single visit by a user (from entry to exit on the site). This metric indicates how many times people are coming to your site and is a basic measure of your online reach or audience size. Note: A single user can have multiple sessions.
Units per Point of Distribution
Description: Average units sold per 1% of ACV distribution. Similar to the dollar metric above, this measures how many units are sold for each point of ACV distribution. It indicates unit velocity normalized by distribution (i.e., how well the product sells relative to how widely it’s distributed).
Units per Store per Week
Description: Average unit sales per store selling, per week. This represents how many units of the product, on average, each store sells in a week. It’s another way to express product velocity at the store level, in terms of unit movement.
Units Sold
Description: The total quantity of individual items sold through the e-commerce channel in the period. This counts all units across all orders. It measures the volume of product sold online. Together with the number of orders, it can indicate the average items per order.
Unit Sales
Description: The physical volume of product sold, expressed as the number of units (packages) purchased by consumers. In short, this is the total number of individual items sold in the period.
Weeks of Supply (WOS)
Description: Weeks of Supply estimates how long current inventory will last, given the current rate of sales, expressed in weeks. For example, if you have 8 weeks of supply of a product (and no new inventory arrives), it would take 8 weeks to sell out completely at the current sales pace. WOS helps in inventory planning: too high WOS might indicate overstock, while too low could warn of potential stockouts.
Wholesale Case Sales
Description: Total number of cases sold to wholesale partners. (Many brands sell products in case packs, with multiple units per case.) This metric tracks how many cases were shipped, indicating volume sold in terms of cases – useful for logistics and supply chain planning.
Wholesale Dollar Sales
Description: Total sales revenue from selling products to wholesale partners (e.g., retail accounts, distributors). This is the amount the brand receives from wholesale orders, based on wholesale pricing (not end-consumer retail pricing).
Wholesale Unit Sales
Description: Total quantity of units sold to wholesale partners. This counts how many individual units were shipped out in wholesale orders to retailers/distributors in the period.
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