Monthly ecommerce marketing review checklist

Run this on the same day every month so that the numbers are comparable and nothing is quietly skipped. The value comes from repetition rather than depth: the same figures pulled the same way, the same channels reviewed in the same order, and a short written decision at the end that the next review can be measured against.

Pull the numbers

Export last month's revenue, orders and sessions from the store admin.Why: The store is the record of what actually sold, and every channel report should be checked against it.How: Pull the month from store analytics rather than an ad platform, note the exact date range, and save the file with the month in its name.
Calculate the four levers and compare them with the previous month.Why: Knowing which of visitors, conversion, order value or repeat rate moved tells you where the next work belongs.How: Divide orders by sessions, revenue by orders and orders by unique customers, then chart all four lines side by side.
Work out the marketing efficiency ratio for the whole month.Why: Channel level return figures overlap each other, while a whole store figure cannot be double counted.How: Divide total revenue by total marketing spend across every channel including fees and retainers, and record it beside the four levers.
Split revenue between new and returning customers.Why: Growth funded entirely by returning customers hides an acquisition problem, and the reverse hides a retention one.How: Use the store customer report to separate first orders from repeat orders, and track the two lines together every month.

Review each channel

Review spend and revenue by product, not only by campaign.Why: Campaign totals hide the small group of products quietly absorbing most of the budget.How: Pull the shopping item report and the catalogue sales report, list the top spending products, and check each one earns its share.
Read the search terms and placement reports for waste.Why: New irrelevant queries appear every month as products change and matching widens on its own.How: Sort by cost with no conversions, add negatives or exclusions, and note any pattern so the product data can be corrected too.
Check creative fatigue on paid social.Why: The same asset stops working gradually, so the reporting looks like a general decline rather than a creative issue.How: Compare click through and frequency for each concept against its first week, and retire anything falling while frequency climbs.
Review email flows on revenue per recipient rather than totals.Why: Totals rise with list size even when the messages themselves are getting weaker every month.How: Pull revenue per recipient for each flow, compare with the previous month, and rewrite the weakest message in the worst performing flow.
Empty the Merchant Center diagnostics queue.Why: Disapprovals build up quietly through the month as prices, stock and product data all change.How: Open diagnostics, fix the largest issue at source, and record the affected item count so the trend is visible month to month.

Review the store

Test page speed on the three highest traffic templates.Why: Apps and images added during the month are the usual reason a page has become slower.How: Run a speed test on the homepage, the busiest collection and the busiest product page, and compare with last month's figures.
Read the site search terms shoppers typed.Why: Internal searches show demand you may not stock and the words your navigation is failing to use.How: Export the site search report, list terms returning no results, and either add those products or rename collections to match the words used.
Read the month's reviews and support tickets for repeated objections.Why: The same complaint appearing several times is a page or product problem waiting to be fixed.How: Tag tickets and reviews by theme, count the themes, and add the answer to the product page where that theme appears most often.
Confirm store revenue still matches the analytics property.Why: App updates and theme changes break events silently, and the first sign is a quiet drop in reported revenue.How: Compare store revenue with analytics revenue for the month, and investigate whenever the gap has changed since last time.

Decide and record

Name the single biggest leak in the funnel this month.Why: One clearly named problem produces action, while a list of twenty observations produces none.How: Compare the four levers with last month, pick the one that fell or lags furthest behind, and state it in one sentence.
Move budget towards what earned and away from what did not.Why: Budgets set once and never revisited keep funding assumptions from a quarter that has already ended.How: Reallocate a defined share of spend between channels based on the month's figures, and write down the new split and the reason for it.
Write next month's plan as three actions with an owner and a date.Why: A review only pays for itself when it ends in work someone has actually agreed to do.How: Name three actions, give each an owner and a date, and note which of the four levers each one is meant to move.
File the review where next month's review will find it.Why: Month to month comparison is impossible when each review lives in a different document and folder.How: Keep one document per month in the same place with the same headings, and open the next review by reading the last one.

Questions

A couple of hours once the numbers live in one place. Most of the time goes into pulling data, so build the report once and reuse the same structure every month.

Record it. Stock outs, a supplier delay or a seasonal peak explain more month to month movement than campaign edits do, and next year's review will need that note.

Watch spend and delivery weekly, but judge results monthly. Weekly revenue on most stores is too noisy to base budget decisions on without chasing noise.

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Monthly ecommerce marketing review checklist

Pull the numbers

Review each channel

Review the store

Decide and record

Questions

How long should a monthly review take?

What if the numbers moved for reasons outside marketing?

Should I review weekly instead?

Related

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