Data is a powerful tool for gauging business performance and identifying opportunities for growth, better customer engagement and other improvements. Yet, the data that provides the most and best insight and indication of performance is different for every business.

 

We asked business owners the most important key performance indicator (KPI) for their company and how they track it. Here’s how they responded:

 

Project completion time

As a roofing company, the most important KPI we track is the number of days between when a contract is signed and the job completed. We have found that this metric is directly correlated to so many other of our business drivers that just by focusing on it, the rest of our business operations tend to fall in line. Many homeowners are nervous about signing up with a contractor and then having them disappear, so if we focus on very actively working on their project immediately after they sign with us, they tend to feel more at ease—and we end up with a happier customer who pays on time and is more likely to refer us to neighbors and leave a positive review! We track this KPI using our project management and customer relationship management software, JobNimbus.

—Kyle Shirley, owner, Sol Vista Roofing, Denver

 

Customer retention 

As a fairly new vitamin brand competing against well-established brands, the KPI that is most important is customer retention rate. This metric tells us how many of our customers are buying from us again and again. It shows us if customers like our products, find them effective and want to keep using them. To calculate this, we track when each customer makes a purchase, what products they buy and how often they return to make additional purchases. We currently use Shopify as our ecommerce platform, and it has many built-in features for tracking this information.

—Darren Litt, co-founder, Hiya Health, Los Angeles

 

Employee engagement and morale

At our digital marketing agency, one of the most important KPIs we track is our Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS). We use a tool called 15Five to get ongoing employee pulse scores each week to measure how our team is feeling; however, we also capture eNPS quarterly using the online survey tool Typeform. We want to ensure that we get truthful and candid answers from our team, so we’ve found that preserving anonymity by disconnecting the question from our HR platform and other systems that employees are signed into is important.

—Antonella Pisani, founder and CEO, Eyeful Media, Dallas

 

Time spent on page

As owner of an ecommerce business, the most important metric I look at is average time on page for paid traffic campaigns. I look at the statistics on a page-by-page basis and use it as a guidepost for making on-page changes to encourage people to complete a product purchase. I track that statistic using the Google Analytics app on my phone, so I can monitor it throughout the day and apply changes as needed.

—Lou Haverty, founder, Enhanced Leisure, Pennsylvania

 

Customer satisfaction

I own a company that sells communications equipment, such as two-way radios. I make customer satisfaction my first priority because I believe a positive result in this area trickles down to other KPIs. After all, you won’t have a positive conversion rate or high sales and profit margins if your customers aren’t happy. I track this by following the reviews our company gets in a variety of places, including on our social media pages and messages sent to me personally, as well as conducting customer surveys to gather customer feedback.

—Dan Shepherd, CEO and owner, VEI Communications, Louisville, Kentucky

 

Organic website traffic

My business relies on generating new leads to keep growing, and my primary source of leads is my website. So for me, organic site traffic is a top KPI. I track my site traffic daily using Ahrefs, an SEO software suite. This allows me to calculate how many leads I can expect through my sales funnel.

—Jake Irving, owner, ClueRx, Scottsdale, Arizona

 

What KPI does your business track most closely? Share your insights in the comments section below!

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