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Metrics type: Supporting Metrics • Category: Ecommerce Platform

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At a glance

The top-N products by revenue over the period. The merchandising answer to “where does the money come from?” at the SKU level. Rankings shift week-to-week for low-volume stores (any store with <500 orders/month should read on 30D+ windows for stability), and the ordering is sensitive to whether you measure by revenue, units, or order count. This card defaults to revenue ranking; toggle to units or count for different lenses. Pair with BC Bottom Products to see the full distribution and identify SKUs to delist.

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Calculation

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Worked example

A UK home-fragrance brand on BigCommerce, 30-day window 14 Apr 26 to 13 May 26. What’s interesting:
  1. Top 10 = 70% of revenue from 29% of unit volume. Classic Pareto distribution: a third of units drive most of the revenue. This is healthy concentration; below 50% revenue share for top 10 means flat distribution (no flagships); above 80% means dangerous flagship dependency.
  2. The Vetiver large candle is the undisputed hero at 18.4% of revenue. A stockout on this single SKU costs ~£1,400/day. Reorder triggers should be aggressive; warehouse floor space should be allocated. This is the SKU that the entire P&L turns on; defend it.
  3. Refills (#7, #10) are stealth winners. Refills (CAN-RFL-4PK and DIF-RFL-8) appear in the top 10 with high unit-volume but lower per-unit revenue. These are subscription / retention indicators: customers buying refills are bonded to the brand. Consider a subscribe-and-save program for refill SKUs.
  4. Gift set (#4) is the breakout. £14,800 from 295 units = £50 average. Gift sets typically have 10-15% gross margin lower than singletons (curated bundle costs more to assemble) but generate 2-3x the customer-acquisition value (gift recipients become customers). Expand the gift-set range and double-promo around Mother’s Day, Christmas, Valentine’s.
  5. Three of top 10 are Vetiver-scented (CAN-LRG-VTL, DIF-100-VTL, and the Vetiver-included gift set). Scent concentration: vetiver is the brand’s signature note. Lean into the brand identity; develop more vetiver SKUs (small candle, room spray, body care extension).
Action playbook this card surfaces:
  1. Defend top 5 inventory aggressively. Reorder triggers at 30 days of cover, not 14.
  2. Identify hero scent / category. If 3+ of top 10 share a theme, that’s the brand identity; develop adjacencies.
  3. Promote refills heavily. Refill customers are 2-3x more likely to repeat-purchase within 90 days; refill SKUs are LTV indicators.
  4. Audit the long tail (490 SKUs at 30% revenue share). Most have <5 units sold in 30 days; consider delisting or relaunching.
  5. Pair with BC Bottom Products to find the worst SKUs (often candidates for delisting).
  6. Pair with BC Top Refunded to find SKUs with high refund rates relative to sales; quality issues hide here.

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Sibling cards merchants should reference together

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Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look in BigCommerce’s own dashboard: The native view is BC Control Panel → Analytics → Insights → Top Products (Plus and Enterprise tiers) or Reports → Sales Reports → Sales by Product (all tiers). Both expose top-N products with revenue and unit columns; match the date range for direct comparison. For finance-grade audit, Settings → Data Solutions → Export → Orders (with line-item detail) provides the underlying data for spreadsheet pivot. Why our number may legitimately differ from the vendor’s: Cross-connector reconciliation (when both connectors are connected for this merchant):

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Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Why is my top product ranking different week-to-week? Sample-size effect. Below 500 orders/week, individual customer purchases dominate the ranking. Use 30D windows for stable strategic ranking; weekly views are for trend monitoring only. My #1 product dropped to #5 this week, what should I check? In order: (1) stockout (check inventory), (2) listing / image issue (check the product page), (3) pricing change (intentional or accidental), (4) competitor action, (5) sample-size noise (if below 500 weekly orders). Most “rank drops” on small windows are noise; on 30D+ windows they’re signal. Should I rank by revenue or by units? Both, for different decisions. Revenue ranking surfaces highest-margin opportunities; unit ranking surfaces operational priorities (inventory, packaging, fulfilment workload). Toggle in card settings. Why are my variants rolled up to parent products? Default for readability. A T-shirt with 5 sizes appears as one row, not five. Toggle to “show variants separately” if you need SKU-level granularity (often needed for inventory decisions, less so for merchandising). My gift bundle SKU is in the top 10 but the constituent items aren’t, why? Because BC attributes bundle revenue to the bundle SKU at the line-item level, not to constituent SKUs. The bundle is its own product in BC’s catalog. For constituent-SKU analysis, use Ask Viq with bundle-decomposition: “show top SKUs including bundle constituents”. Why is my B2B portal showing weird top products? B2B orders are bulk; one B2B customer ordering 500 units of a wholesale-only SKU puts that SKU at the top by units, while DTC customers might never see it. Filter to web channel for end-customer top products. Can I see top products by margin? Yes via Ask Viq: “top products by gross margin for last 30 days” if cost-of-goods data is populated. Margin ranking often differs from revenue ranking; high-revenue may be low-margin (heavy discounting). Why does this card not include my POS-only SKUs? It does, but POS revenue typically distributes across many SKUs evenly (no Pareto effect at the in-store level). POS-only SKUs rarely make the top 10 unless your store has very concentrated POS volume. Should I read this card or BC Top SKUs? This card for merchandising decisions (which products to promote, which to feature). BC Top SKUs for inventory-management decisions (which variants to reorder, which to discontinue). Different decision contexts. My top product has a 15% refund rate, that’s high, what should I do? Investigate quality. A 15% refund rate on a top SKU represents the most fixable margin damage in the catalog. Pull customer feedback / refund reasons; common causes are size-fit (apparel), defect rate (electronics), expectation mismatch (descriptions don’t match reality). Can I export this list? Yes via Ask Viq: “export top 50 products for last 30 days as CSV”. Includes product_id, name, units, revenue, refunded_amount, refund_rate, channel breakdown. Does this include subscription SKUs? Yes. Subscription SKUs typically have steady weekly cadence and rarely top the list unless the subscription base is very large. For subscription-specific top products, filter via Ask Viq. My top products vs Insights Top Products differ by 2-3 SKUs, why? Variant rollup, time zone, and refund treatment are the typical sources of small list differences. The top 5-10 should match; positions 11-25 can vary by 2-3 SKUs. Should I worry about my top product ranking shifts during sale events? No. Sale events distort short-window ranking; a heavily-discounted SKU jumps in units but drops in revenue (or vice versa). Use post-sale windows for stable ranking.

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Top Products by Revenue is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across BigCommerce and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.