Performance metrics can help ecommerce businesses measure progress and assess financial and marketing health.

But with so much data available from tools like Google Analytics, it can be hard to know what to measure or even what those measurements mean. With this in mind, I put together a list of the metrics I pay attention to most. For the sake of brevity and readability, I will split this list into three parts. In this first part, below, I will focus on the financial and operational metrics that I monitor, along with the first half of the web traffic stats I follow. Every business is a little different and may need to focus on one aspect or another of the operation from time to time. Nonetheless, I believe that this list is a good plac...