Order Revenue
What your orders were actually charged at, discounts off and shipping and tax on.
What it means
Order Revenue is what your orders were billed at: the items at their line prices, discounts taken off, shipping and tax added on. It's measured per order rather than per product line, so it matches what the customer was charged. Refunds aren't removed from it, and that's the one thing separating it from Total Sales.
Show the math
Formula and a worked example
Item price × Qty is the same line total that Gross SalesGross SalesRevenue before discounts; compare with Product Revenue for markdown cost. reports. Discounts come off it, then Shipping and Tax go on — leaving the amount charged to the card.
Worked example. March: Gross Sales €72,800, Discounts €7,300, shipping charged €3,200, tax €12,400. Order Revenue = 72,800 − 7,300 + 3,200 + 12,400 = €81,100. Across 800 orders that's €101 an order.
Two of those four inputs were never yours. The €12,400 of tax is owed onward and the €3,200 of shipping mostly pays a carrier, so of the €101 average order, roughly €82 relates to the products themselves.
It answers the question
What did the till actually take on these orders? It's the closest number to what customers paid, before anyone sent anything back.
Why it matters
Gross Sales counts the items alone, before discounts come off and before shipping and tax go on. Total Sales sits below Order Revenue, because refunds have come off it. The distance to each one tells you where the money went.
Because it's counted per order, it also divides cleanly by OrdersOrdersA simple, powerful demand signal; watch its trend.. That division is the fastest read you have on whether a change in revenue came from more people buying or from each of them spending more.
What good looks like
There's no benchmark for a euro total — it scales with the size of the store. Read direction instead: this period against the same period last year, and month against month. The check worth running every time is Order Revenue against Orders — growing faster means baskets got bigger, growing slower means you're selling more for less. Watch how much of the growth is tax and shipping, because that part isn't growth you keep.
How to improve it
| Lever | What you do | Expect | How long | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fast Set a free-shipping threshold above your average order | Put the threshold €10–15 above where the average order sits today | Revenue per order up 5–10% | 2–4 weeks | The shipping you now absorb comes straight out of margin, so shipping cost as a share of sales rises while the revenue line improves. |
| Fast Replace the blanket code | Swap a sitewide percentage for a minimum-spend or first-order-only code | Discounts down, Order Revenue up on the same units | 2–3 weeks | Price-led buyers drop out in the first weeks, so Orders dip — and win-back campaigns get harder when there's no code left to offer. |
| Slow Offer one add-on after the buy decision | Present a single relevant, low-price extra on the checkout or thank-you step | Revenue per order up 3–8% | 1 quarter | An extra step costs you some completed checkouts, and small add-ons carry full picking and packing cost, so they earn less margin than their price suggests. |
| Slow Move the merchandising upmarket | Give your higher-priced lines the homepage and collection slots your entry products hold | Order Revenue up on flat Orders | 1–2 quarters | Your cheapest product is usually how first-time buyers arrive, so the share of new customers falls while revenue per order climbs. |
Every lever costs something somewhere. The last column is the one to read twice.
Read it with
Order Revenue tells you what came in. Next to Orders, it tells you whether more people or bigger baskets did it.
Both moving
More buyers and no loss of order value. The only shape where growth doesn't have a catch hiding in it.
Bigger baskets, fewer buyers
Revenue held while the customer base shrank. Deliberate if you moved upmarket, worrying if it just happened — a narrower base is a riskier one.
More buyers, thinner orders
You won more people and less money. A code or a shift towards your cheapest line usually explains it. Volume like this costs more to fulfil than it earns.
Down on both
Demand fell. Discounting into this shape tends to make the next month worse, because you train the remaining buyers to wait.
Dividing one by the other gives the average order, and that's the whole point of reading them together. Revenue alone can't tell you whether a strong month came from more customers or from each one spending more, and those two months need completely different work next.
Tax rides inside Order Revenue and belongs to someone else. Sell the same units into a higher-VAT market and Order Revenue rises on its own — growth in one number, fully explained by the other.
Common misreads
It's what you billed. Product cost, ad spend, gateway fees and the real cost of shipping are all still to come. Net Profit MarginNet Profit MarginWhat you keep after every cost; the truest read on health.15% or more is healthy is where that finishes.
Refunds sit between them. A month with heavy returns shows a healthy Order Revenue and a much thinner Total Sales, and the gap is the number worth watching.
Tax and shipping are inside it. Raise your shipping charge, or sell the same units into a higher-tax country, and this climbs with not one extra unit leaving the shelf.
Also called
Total price · order value · billed revenue · gross order value
See yoursOrder Revenue for the period next to Orders, with the daily shape underneath it.
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