New store marketing checklist

This is the order of work for a store in its first few months, when the budget is small and every mistake is expensive. It puts measurement and margin before any spend, then the pages a first time buyer looks for, then the cheapest traffic a new store can buy, and finally the automated messages that earn from the visitors you already have.

Measurement before marketing

Install analytics with ecommerce events before buying a single visit.Why: Traffic bought before tracking exists can never be judged afterwards, so the money teaches you nothing.How: Set up the analytics property, switch on ecommerce events in the store platform integration, and place a test order to confirm revenue arrives.
Record your gross margin per product in one place.Why: Without margin you cannot tell whether an order won at a given acquisition cost was worth having.How: Build a simple sheet holding cost price, shipping and payment fees per product, and update it whenever a supplier price changes.
Write down the four numbers you are starting from.Why: A baseline is what makes the first months readable, even while the numbers are still very small.How: Record visitors, conversion rate, average order value and orders per customer for the first full week, and store them with the date.

The store itself

Publish the trust pages a first time buyer looks for.Why: An unknown store has to answer who you are, how delivery works and what happens when something goes wrong.How: Write shipping, returns, contact and about pages with real detail and real dates, then link all four from the footer.
Set delivery options and costs you can actually meet.Why: A promised delivery window that slips creates refunds and reviews a new store cannot afford to carry.How: Confirm dispatch times with whoever packs the orders, set the shipping rates to match, and state the daily cutoff time on the delivery page.
Complete the product data for the whole catalogue at the start.Why: Titles, images, barcodes and stock levels feed every sales channel you will add later on.How: Fill title, description, images, barcode, weight and stock for every product before the first sync to any channel.
Have a stranger buy something on their own phone while you watch.Why: Founders navigate their own store from memory and stop noticing the obstacles in front of them.How: Ask someone unfamiliar to find a product and complete a purchase without help, and write down every pause and every question.

First traffic channels

Claim the brand search term first.Why: People who hear about a new store search its name, and that is the cheapest traffic you will ever buy.How: Run a small campaign on the store name and its common misspellings, and make sure the homepage ranks for it organically as well.
Send the product feed to Merchant Center before running any Shopping ads.Why: Free listings and item approval both take time and cannot be rushed on the day you want ads live.How: Create the account, verify the domain, submit the feed and clear the diagnostics queue while the campaigns are still being built.
Choose one paid channel and fund it properly.Why: Splitting a small budget across several channels leaves none of them with enough data to be judged.How: Pick the channel where your buyers already look, fund it for several weeks, and leave the second channel until the first is understood.
Publish content that answers the questions asked before purchase.Why: A new store has no organic authority, and question content is where it can begin to earn attention.How: Write the three questions buyers ask before choosing in your category, answer them fully, and link each to the collection it supports.

First retention work

Capture email addresses with a reason to subscribe beyond a code.Why: A list built only on discounts converts once and then waits for the next discount to arrive.How: Offer a fit guide, a restock alert or early access, place the form where it does not block the first view, and say what you will send.
Switch on the first three automated messages in week one.Why: Automations earn from the traffic you already have while everything else is still being built.How: Set up a welcome message, a basket reminder and an order follow up asking for a review, and check each one renders on a phone.
Ask every early customer for feedback personally.Why: The first fifty orders carry more useful information about the offer than any report will produce.How: Email each early buyer yourself, ask what nearly stopped them buying, and change the page wherever the same answer appears twice.

Reviewing the first month

Read the funnel from sessions to orders before changing any spend.Why: Low sales with healthy traffic is a store problem, and more budget will not repair it.How: Compare sessions, product views, basket adds and orders for the month, and work on the single biggest drop between them.
Compare acquisition cost against gross profit per order.Why: Revenue can grow while every order loses money, and a young store cannot absorb that for long.How: Divide total marketing spend by new customers, compare with the margin sheet, and pause anything that cannot pay back inside your cash cycle.
Choose the one thing to fix next and write it down.Why: Small teams make progress by finishing one change rather than by starting five at once.How: Pick the largest drop in the funnel, decide the single change, set a date to measure it, and leave the rest of the store alone until then.

Questions

Get measurement and the trust pages right, then claim brand search and submit the product feed. Paid prospecting before tracking works is money you cannot learn anything from.

Enough for one channel to gather real data, and no more than the store can afford to lose while it learns. Fund one channel properly rather than three thinly.

Brand search and email work quickly. Feed approval takes days, paid channels need weeks of data, and organic search takes months. Plan the sequence around those differences.

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New store marketing checklist

Measurement before marketing

The store itself

First traffic channels

First retention work

Reviewing the first month

Questions

What should a new store do first?

How much should a new store spend on ads?

How long before a new store sees results?

Related

Your plan is free.