Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) is the amount of money earned from the sales of your products over a period of time.
Reviewing this metric can help you understand your peak sales period and patterns in your customer’s shopping behavior. When used appropriately, GMV provides a great way to set goals for your business. As long as your products are profitable, a high GMV means higher profits for the business and is therefore a great North Star metric for the business.
Note that GMV could be different from revenue, depending on your business model. If you are a marketplace and don't own the inventory, then GMV is less relevant to you since only a small fraction of the money earned is due to you.
Littledata surveyed 1990 Shopify stores in November 2021. According to the study, the average revenue for a Shopify store is around US$ 87 per customer. Their survey also shows the low-earning and high-earning benchmarks. For instance, anything more than US$ 193 per customer would put you in the best 20%, while anything less than US$ 50 per customer would put you in the worst 20% (Source: Littledata.io).
GMV is driven by sales, regardless of where it comes from. If you have effective paid marketing channels that can get you new customers profitably, you can continue to invest more money into your marketing campaigns to increase GMV.
You can improve GMV from existing customers by offering customers value for their loyalty. For instance you can offer product bundles, loyalty programs, or discounts based on order size.
See also: AOV
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