Key Metrics (KPIs) Explained

VitalSigns tracks three core KPIs, each rated on a 1–10 scale and tracked separately for Point-of-Sale (POS) and Fulfillment (FF). Each answers a different question and is most valuable when read together — a merchant can score well on satisfaction while quietly losing ground on loyalty, and the gap between the three numbers is often more informative than any one of them alone.

Why Every KPI Is Tracked Twice

Each KPI is measured at two moments: right after checkout (POS) and after delivery (FF). These are genuinely different questions to your customer. At checkout, they are rating your site, selection, pricing, and checkout flow. After delivery, they are rating whether you kept your promise — the package arrived on time, the product matched what they ordered, and the experience held up end to end.

That is why the same customer can give you a 9 at POS and a 6 at FF, and why comparing the two is one of the most effective diagnostics in the platform. When the numbers diverge, the direction of the gap tells you where to look. See POS vs. Fulfillment: Where Issues Occur for the full pattern guide.

How the Three KPIs Relate

Read the KPIs as a sequence of increasing commitment. Satisfaction is the easiest bar to clear — the customer just has to feel the experience went fine. Buying again requires them to choose you over alternatives next time. Recommending you requires them to stake their reputation on you with people they know.

This ordering makes the gaps between scores meaningful. If Overall Satisfaction holds steady but Likelihood to Buy Again declines, customers may have been satisfied without becoming more loyal — a signal that the experience is adequate but not differentiated. If multiple metrics decline together, the issue is likely broader. Likelihood to Recommend is typically the lowest of the three, and it feeds directly into your Net Promoter Score, covered in Net Promoter Score (NPS).

The Attributes Behind the Scores

The KPIs sit on top of a more detailed 10-point question set covering site design, ease of finding products, selection, product information, prices, shipping options and charges, clarity of charges, and the checkout experience. To reduce survey fatigue, customers see a rotating subset of attributes. All attributes are reported in VitalSigns.

Attribute scores are where a vague KPI movement becomes a specific lead. If Overall Satisfaction dips, the attributes tell you whether the drag is coming from shipping charges, product availability, checkout, or somewhere else — before you ever read a comment. The Metric Distributions view goes one level deeper still, showing how scores spread across the full 1–10 scale for each attribute rather than just the average.

What You Can Do with Each KPI

Overall Satisfaction is your monitoring metric — the first number to check daily and the first to investigate when it moves. If POS dips below 9.0, comments are often the best place to start.

Likelihood to Buy Again is your retention metric. When it dips below the category benchmark, check Product Met Expectations and Checkout scores, since unmet expectations and checkout friction are the most common reasons a satisfied customer does not return.

Likelihood to Recommend is your advocacy metric and the input to NPS. When it lags, read detractor comments and identify top friction points — the customers scoring you 1–7 will tell you in their own words what is holding advocacy back.

Whatever the KPI, the analysis pattern is the same: spot the number, confirm the direction, then read the words behind it. See The 3-Step Framework for the full approach.