Most store owners we talk to know their revenue to the dinar. Far fewer know their profit per order, and almost none know their break-even ROAS. That's how a store can grow every month and still have less money in the bank.
These are the seven numbers we put on the first screen of every e-commerce dashboard we build. You can check most of them in five minutes a week. To calculate several at once, try our free store profit calculator.
1. Contribution margin per order
Take one average order. Subtract product cost, shipping and packing, payment fees and your average refund cost. What's left is what that order contributes before ads and fixed costs.
This is the most important number in the list, because everything else depends on it. If it's small, no amount of ad optimisation will save the store.
2. Break-even ROAS
Break-even ROAS is the return on ad spend you need just to not lose money on an ad-driven sale. The formula is simple: 1 ÷ contribution margin rate. If 40% of each sale is left after variable costs, your break-even ROAS is 1 ÷ 0.4 = 2.5.
A ROAS of 2.0 might look fine in Ads Manager, but with a break-even of 2.5, every one of those sales loses money.
3. Blended ROAS (or MER)
Ad platforms each report their own results, and their numbers often overlap. Blended ROAS ignores that: total store revenue ÷ total ad spend across every platform. It's less precise per campaign but much harder to fool yourself with.
4. Cost per order from ads
Total ad spend divided by orders. Compare it with your contribution margin per order. If you pay more to get an order than the order leaves you, you're buying revenue at a loss, unless those customers come back.
5. Average order value (AOV)
Revenue divided by orders. Shipping and payment costs are mostly per order, so a higher AOV usually means a better margin. Bundles, "free shipping over X" and gift sets are common ways stores in the region raise it, especially around Ramadan and Black Friday.
6. Refund and return rate
Returns cost you twice: the refund, and the shipping both ways. In fashion it's often the biggest hidden cost. If one product has a much higher return rate than the rest, the problem is usually the product page or the ad (colour, size, expectations), not the customer.
7. Repeat customer rate
The share of orders from people who bought before. A store that relies only on new customers has to pay for every sale with ads. Even a small rise in repeat rate takes pressure off ad spend.
How to actually keep track
You can do this weekly in a spreadsheet: export orders, add your costs, pull ad spend from each platform. It takes an hour if everything goes right.
Or you can have it update itself. A Kastana Data dashboard connects your store (Shopify, WooCommerce, Salla, Zid) and ad accounts and shows these seven numbers every morning. One dashboard starts from $519, typically live in 7 working days.