Marketplace metrics: the 12 KPIs to track every week

Running a marketplace takes neither an analyst nor a forty-tab spreadsheet. Twelve numbers are enough to know whether it is growing, whether it pays you, whether it stays healthy and whether supply meets demand. This guide from the Marketplace Factory team, which creates complete marketplaces from a single sentence and delivers them with Pilote, their back office and its statistics, defines those twelve metrics, gives the thresholds that matter, suggests a weekly dashboard and shows where to read them. The definitions are the ones Pilote gives for each number: you can reuse them as they are.

Three rules before you count

1. Net before gross. Revenue that rises thanks to orders that are later refunded earns you nothing. Think in net sales, and in what you actually keep.
2. The same definitions, every week. A metric whose calculation changes along the way no longer tells you anything. Choose a definition, write it down, keep it.
3. Beware of small numbers. On forty orders, a single dispute is 2.5%. At the start, look at the count as much as the rate, and at the trend over several weeks rather than a single point.

Volume: what goes through your marketplace

1. Gross sales and net sales

Gross sales, often called GMV (gross merchandise value), are the price of listings paid online multiplied by the quantity, excluding shipping and service fees, before discounts and refunds, counted on the day of the successful payment. Net sales take away discounts and refunds: they are the base of your commission. GMV tells you about activity; net sales tell you what is really earned.

2. Orders

The number of successful buyer payments. On a marketplace, one detail matters: a cart spanning three sellers counts as one order for the site, and as one sale for each of the three. Orders tell you how many times your marketplace kept its promise, whatever the amount.

3. Average order value

Gross sales minus discounts, divided by the number of orders. It decides how much your fixed fees weigh: at Stripe, each payment with a standard card from the European Economic Area costs 1.5% + €0.25 according to its price list, and a US domestic card 2.9% + 30¢ (Stripe US); that fixed part weighs far more on a €15 basket than on a €300 rental. If yours is small, our guide to the marketplace business model shows how to take it into account in your prices.

Your revenue: what comes back to you

4. Commissions and effective commission rate

Your commissions are those taken on successful payments, minus those returned on refunds. The effective rate, also called the take rate, divides them by net sales. It almost always differs from your displayed rate: free months for the first sellers, different rates by category, refunds. To place yours, Sharetribe, in its guide to marketplace pricing updated in June 2024, suggests 10% as a starting point and reports an average of 12.4% among its ten largest customers, between 5% and 30%.

5. Marketplace Factory fees

If your marketplace runs on Marketplace Factory, Pilote also calculates what you owe us: sales paid online, minus refunds and lost disputes, multiplied by your plan’s rate on the day of the sale, which is 2% on Launch, 1.5% on Pro and 1% on Dedicated. Nothing is due on requests or on what you collect offline. This number also helps you choose your plan: above €24,000 of online sales a month, Pro costs less than Launch. Full prices are on the pricing page.

6. Net revenue

Your commissions and your other revenue (seller subscriptions, boosts, listing fees, paid contacts), minus Marketplace Factory fees. Stripe’s fees are still to be deducted. Here is a sample month, for a rental marketplace that is starting out, on Launch, with a 12% commission, except for its founding sellers, who get it for free. Stripe fees are those of its price list for cards and of its Connect pricing when the platform sets its own prices, cautiously counting one payout per order. Amounts exclude VAT, and the volumes are assumptions, not results.

This table shows why the displayed rate is not enough: 12% commission on €10,000 does not leave €1,200. It also shows where to act. The commission given to founding sellers cost €120 that month: a good investment, as long as it has an end date.

Health: the warning signs

7. Dispute rate

Disputes are payments contested by a buyer with their bank; the rate divides them by orders. It is the metric that can threaten your access to online payments. Stripe writes in its documentation on measuring disputes that “the credit card processing industry standard recognizes dispute activity above 0.75% as excessive”, and that a sudden spike or a steep upward trend can trigger placement in a monitoring programme before that threshold. All disputes count, won or lost, and cardholders can dispute a charge up to 120 days after the payment, sometimes even later. Each dispute also costs a €20 fee from a euro-area account, plus €20 more if you respond to it manually, refunded if you win; in the US, the two fees are $15 each.

Pilote shows an alert from 0.5%, to give you time to act. The remedies are well known: accurate listings, faithful photos, a quick answer before the buyer calls their bank, a refund when it is due. At Marketplace Factory, for a rental, a stay or a service, a customer who reports a problem before the seller is paid sees the money held until your team decides: they have a simpler route than a bank dispute.

8. Failed payment rate

Attempted payments that failed, divided by attempted payments, with the reason given by Stripe: card declined, insufficient funds, authentication abandoned. A sudden rise, or the same reason coming back, signals a problem to fix before it costs sales.

9. Payout delay

The median time between the buyer’s payment and the payout to the seller. Your sellers care about it more than about any other number. On a marketplace created with Marketplace Factory, a purchase is paid out to the seller at payment, a rental or a stay after it starts, an appointment or a session after it ends, and you set when sellers get paid in your back office. Our guide to marketplace payments with Stripe Connect details how the money travels.

The market: does supply meet demand?

10. Active sellers

Pilote distinguishes two kinds: active sellers, with at least one listing online, and selling sellers, with at least one transaction or accepted request over the period. The gap between the two tells you how many sellers are still waiting for their first customer. Also watch concentration, the share of net sales made by the top 10% of sellers: above 60%, the marketplace depends on very few people. To recruit new ones, read our guide to the marketplace chicken and egg problem.

11. Requests received and acceptance rate

Requests received, those your customers confirmed and sent to sellers, tell you whether supply finds takers; set against the number of listings online, they can be compared from month to month and from category to category. The acceptance rate divides requests accepted by those accepted, declined or expired. Two additions: the response rate within 24 hours and the time to first response. A buyer who waits two days has had plenty of time to book elsewhere.

12. Occupancy rate

For a rental, stays or appointments marketplace: the days, nights or slots booked, divided by those open in the calendar. It is only valid if calendars are kept up to date: a seller who forgets to close their dates distorts everything. For classes or sessions with a set number of places, its equivalent is the fill rate, seats taken divided by seats open.

The weekly dashboard

Keep a fixed appointment, twenty minutes every Monday, with these twelve lines. For each, one question and one signal to watch: benchmarks to adapt to your marketplace, except for the dispute threshold, which is set by the card industry.

One week, one move: the most worrying number decides your main action. A rising dispute rate comes before everything else; listings with no requests call for buyers, not sellers, and our guide to marketplace SEO shows how to bring them through Google; customers who cannot find what they look for call for the opposite.

What Pilote, Marketplace Factory’s back office, shows

Pilote is switched on for every marketplace created with Marketplace Factory, and its statistics fit into seven tabs: Overview, Live, Sales, Audience, Marketplace, Customers and Reports. Every number has its “How it’s counted” help, giving its written definition: the one used in this guide.

• Overview starts with a few plain-language findings, such as “3 requests have been waiting for a reply for more than 48 hours”, then shows where the money goes: your commissions, minus Marketplace Factory fees, equal your net revenue.
• Sales lines up gross and net sales, refunds, orders, average order value, your commissions, the effective rate, our fees and your net revenue, with disputes and their alert at 0.5%.
• Marketplace measures how supply meets demand: three indices out of 100, supply, demand and match, then the response within 24 hours, acceptance and the concentration of sales.
• Customers follows your buyers: new ones, returning ones, and what they spend.

Before your first sales, Pilote can show sample data from the same trade, clearly marked as such, so you learn to read every screen; one click, and you are back to your own numbers. To see what the rest of a ready-to-open marketplace includes, our turnkey marketplace checklist goes through it point by point.

In short

You do not need a data team to run a marketplace: twelve numbers, twenty minutes a week, and one action at a time. With Marketplace Factory, those numbers are calculated for you, defined in black and white and placed where you need them, from day one. You can launch: the numbers will tell you where to go.