Want to learn how to track online sales for your business — with the least amount of stress? 

I’m going to simplify the whole process so that you can make better business decisions, because they’ll be based on the numbers that your business produces. 

As an online business owner, this is both a mindset that you need to adopt and a task that you need to do. 

Here’s the mindset piece I want you to learn:

Your numbers are standing there ready to help you, but they can only help you if you gather them in one place and track them. 

Related: Start Making More Sales: Remember This 5-Step Recipe for High-Converting Sales Pages

The beautiful thing about numbers is that they’re not emotional. 

You may be feeling strong emotions about your business’s performance — maybe joy that your offer is selling, or despair that it’s not selling.

But the numbers are neutral.

That’s why it’s important to learn how to track online sales. You will be able to see patterns and make decisions about your business — based on real results. 

Numbers are our friends! They’re the antidote to emotion-based decision-making when it comes to business. 

Let’s look at the simple information that you need to gather, even if you’ve never taken the time to figure out how to track online sales before.

The good news? You don’t have to be an accountant.

You can do this!

How to track online sales — the 2-step method

Your sales numbers may bring up lots of emotion (positive and negative), but digging into your data is healthy. It means that you are going to learn from what happened, and those lessons can make your results even better in the future. 

Here’s what you need to look for as you learn how to track online sales. 

At a very basic level, you need to measure how many people viewed your offer, and how many people purchased your offer.

I like to do this week by week so that I can notice trends. 

Step 1: Tabulate how many people saw your offer

Pick a week, then count up how many people saw your offer in emails, on social media and any place else you shared it. 

For example, let’s say you did a live presentation. Take a look at how those numbers add up:

• How many people attended? 
• How many people opened the emails that you sent with your offer? 
• How many people saw any ads that you ran (if you use ads)? 
• If you sell on sales calls, how many people did you talk to? 

Tabulate all those numbers and get a grand total for each place you shared your offer. 

Step 2: Look at how many sales you made 

Trigger warning: This part might be tough. If your promotion didn’t do as well as you wanted, seeing your online sales number might sting.

Remember, this exercise is about data, not drama. The results will help your business do even better going forward.

You’ve got this! 

To get your conversion rate, take the total purchases and divide them by the views.

Purchases divided by views equals conversion rate. 

Let’s look at some examples:

• 40 purchases ÷ 1000 views = 4% conversion rate

Let’s say you had 40 purchases divided by 1000 views. That is a 4% conversion rate. That’s pretty good! 

• 15 purchases ÷ 1000 views = 1.5% conversion rate

Let’s say you had 15 purchases out of 1000 views. That is a 1.5% conversion rate. That’s about the industry standard. 

• 1 purchase ÷ 1000 views = .01% conversion rate

Let’s say you had one purchase out of 1000 views. That is a 0.1% conversion rate. You’re probably not happy about that. 

Remember though — data not drama. 

If your conversions are super low or non-existent, the first thing to do is to track them, as painful as that may seem. 

Without the information, you can’t make good decisions going forward. You might only need to make a few changes to increase your conversion rate.

In our example above, you need just 14 more buyers!

Let’s look at how you can move forward.

Related: How to Build a Money-Making Online Offer

Related: How to Love What You Do, Love Your Customers, Love Your Results

Disappointed? Don’t give up — here’s how to track online sales like a pro

If your conversion rate is disappointing, don’t panic. Take the data-not-drama approach.

If your promotions have worked in the past, how many people saw that offer? 

How many people purchased your offer?

What has your conversion rate been in the past? 

If your current promotion didn’t work, what changed this time? 

Knowing how to track online sales is super helpful when things didn’t go as well as you’d hoped.

Once you review your numbers, you can ask yourself some smart questions:

• Did fewer people see this offer? 
• Did different people see this offer? 
• Did you substantially change the offer itself? 
• Did you substantially change the way you talk about the offer? 
• Did you substantially change the offer marketing assets that you used? 
• Did you have a strong call to action?

The best thing that you can do is set this up in a spreadsheet. 

I developed a Results Tracker for my Offer Accelerator program members. It’s a tool that helps them to look at their numbers in a non-emotional way. 

This spreadsheet helps you to notice what’s happening with your offer every week — how many people view it and how many people purchase it. 

It adds everything up and automatically calculates your weekly conversion rates, as well as your overall conversion rate over time. 

Running these numbers allows you to see very quickly when something is off. It gives you the data that you need to shift your promotion quickly if it’s not performing — drama-free. 

The Results Tracker is one of the many tools I’ve built to make developing and managing a high-value offer easy. 

If you want to work with me to develop your high-value offer, check out my program at TheOfferAccelerator.com.