A Weekly Routine for Ecommerce Operations
Published
Stores rarely fail because of one big mistake. They slip because small things go unchecked: a listing is suppressed for three weeks, a best-seller runs out, an ad campaign spends on the wrong searches. A weekly routine catches these while they are still small.
The routine below takes a fixed block of time once a week. Run it on the same day each week so the comparisons are like for like.
1. Stock
- Which products will run out before the next delivery arrives?
- Is anything overstocked and tying up cash?
- Do the stock levels shown on the store match what you can actually ship?
Running out of a best-seller costs more than the lost sales, because rankings and ad performance take time to recover afterwards.
2. Listings and product pages
- On Amazon, check for suppressed, inactive or stranded listings and fix the cause.
- On Shopify, check that new products are published, in the right collections and showing the right price.
- Look at your top products as a shopper would. Is anything broken, missing or out of date?
3. Advertising
- Review search terms. Promote the ones that convert and add negatives for the ones that waste spend.
- Check that no campaign is running out of budget early in the day.
- Compare spend and sales with last week, and note any change you made so you can connect cause and effect.
4. Conversion
- Compare sessions, conversion rate and average order value with the previous week.
- If conversion dropped, look for the reason before changing anything: a price change, a stock-out, a broken page or a traffic source that brought the wrong visitors.
5. Customers
- Are there unanswered messages or open return requests?
- Are the same questions coming up repeatedly? That usually points to something missing from the product page.
- Read the new reviews. They are free research on what to fix.
6. Account health
On Amazon, look at the account health page and any performance notifications. Policy issues are much easier to resolve when they are new.
7. Supplier and catalog updates
- Have any suppliers sent new price lists or stock files?
- Are there discontinued products to remove or new ones to add?
Process these on a schedule rather than whenever they arrive, and catalog errors stop piling up.
Write down three things
End the routine by noting what changed since last week, what you did about it and what you will check next week. Over a few months these notes become the most useful record you have of what moves your store.
Make it someone's job
A routine only works if a specific person owns it. Most of the steps above are rule-based, which makes them good candidates to hand over; see what to delegate to an e-commerce VA first.
If you would rather hand over the whole routine, across Amazon and Shopify, that is what our e-commerce store management service does.