A full e-commerce business audit is the detailed study of an online business, a kind of snapshot of exactly where the business is at, at any particular given time. It involves studying all necessary aspects of the business (not just one) in many specific areas.
If you’re like many retailers struggling to get to the next level and you are trying to figure out how and where you can grow your e-commerce business then please keep reading because I’ll show you a detailed audit will automatically identify opportunities for growth in your business that will provide you with a personalized strategic ‘growth’ roadmap to help you scale.
This is just STEP #1 in my 7-steps to 7-figures e-commerce growth system – if you’d like a free webinar on the whole 7-steps – you can sign up just here…
WATCH FREE WEBINAR >>> 7-Steps To 7-Figures E-commerce Growth System
The E-commerce Business Audit Process
The first part of an e-commerce business audit is an assessment of where you are at right now. These are the key online business metrics you should be looking at to determine where you are now, and more importantly, where you want to be:
- Data Analysis – have you got the right tools set up in your e-commerce business to produce the right data you need to analyze your business properly?
- Business Objectives – identify exactly where you are now and where you want to be. Mapping this out makes the growth journey much clearer. The following steps will help you achieve this.
- Sales Channel Performance Analysis – which channels are producing your e-commerce business’s revenue?
- Marketing Spend & ROAS Per Channel – you’ll need to understand what marketing you are performing in each channel and how much return on ad spend you are achieving‘
- Platform Analysis – your e-commerce platform is the single most important piece of technology in your online business – it must be performing as well as it can be in order to rank higher, drive more traffic, and convert.
- Personalized Growth Roadmap – performing all previous steps, and comparing your business data to industry standards, will automatically identify bottlenecks in your business and will provide you with your personalized roadmap for growth.
If you would like to take a deeper dive into the e-commerce business audit process, I have put together a brief training video here on Youtube…
Platform Analysis
The e-commerce platform that you use to sell your products online, is the single most important piece of technology in your e-commerce growth kit.
Although my agency has developed some of the world’s most technically advanced Shopify OS 2.0 technologies that will help you rank higher, drive more traffic and convert more – it doesn’t matter what platform you are using, it still needs to be…
Technically Aligned
With Google’s algorithms, quality guidelines, and 200+ known ranking factors, so that you can rank high and drive traffic and most importantly – convert.
Designed For UX, Speed & Conversions
Your store needs to have ‘best practice’ optimized page templates and layouts that are known to convert. Google suggests that 20% of conversions are lost for every second of page load speed so your store must be very fast on mobile, desktop, and other devices. You can check your store’s own page load speed here with PageSpeed Insights.
Content Driven
Every page of your store needs to be optimized for the most appropriate search terms and key phrases that will drive intent-based traffic ready to convert.
Every page of your store must have unique, indexable content that is not duplicate, thin, or low quality with no keyword or metadata cannibalization and your content marketing strategy should be influencing potential customers as early as possible in purchasing cycle and decision-making process.
Toxic Link Free
One harmful link pointing to your website can seriously damage your store’s ability to rank in the search engines and could even get you penalized! Most store owners try to cheat the link authority-building system with harmful links.
Google suggests that the ONLY way to attract high-quality links is to produce brilliant content that other people want to link to – so many stores get this wrong. My agency has NEVER purchased and link to build link authority in nearly 13 years!
The vast majority of my clients are using the Shopify platform so if you are using Shopify now, or are thinking of migrating to Shopify, then my other articles are essential for deeper understanding:
1 – The Technical SEO Issues With Shopify…
2 – What Are The Benefits of Shopify OS 2.0?..
3 – The Best Shopify OS 2.0 Theme For SEO…
4 – The Fastest Shopify OS 2.0 Theme…
Sales Channel Performance
Understanding your individual sales channel performance will quickly help you identify your opportunities for growth. All e-commerce businesses should be looking at data in Google Analytics in the following channels…
- All Channel Revenue – the total revenue from all of your combined sales channels.
- Organic Revenue – the revenue you generate organically from your SEO efforts including on-site optimization, off-site optimization, content marketing, and link acquisition.
- Paid Revenue – the revenue that you generate from your paid marketing efforts on Google Ads, Shopping, Display, Retargeting & Video ads, etc.
- Social Revenue – the revenue that you generate from social media platforms like Facebook. Twitter, TikTok, Pinterest, etc – this will also include organic and paid social
- Email Revenue – the revenue that you generate from your automated email marketing sequences and campaigns.
- Other Revenue – this will be unique for every business but this is revenue generated from other channels like affiliates, wholesalers, or influencers.
1 – Percentages of total revenue per channel
2 – Conversion rates [broken down by device and channel]
3 – ROAS in each paid channel Once you have mapped these out – industry benchmarks and channel performance standards will quickly identify ALL bottlenecks in your e-commerce which helps you produce your personalized ‘growth roadmap’.
Are you aware of what the bottlenecks are in your e-commerce business? You can get more free video training here >>>
WATCH FREE WEBINAR TRAINING: 7-Steps To 7-Figures Growth
Personalized Growth Roadmap
So, the final part of STEP 1 is to use all of the data that you have gathered in the previous steps, analyze it, benchmark it, and compare it to industry and sector standards.
The beauty of gathering all of the data (mentioned in previous steps) is that the data automatically formulates your personalized roadmap for scaling and growth.
What do I mean by that? Well, as I work with hundreds of clients all over the world in all sorts of sectors selling all kinds of products, I have unrivaled access to their analytics. Using this collective data and studying what the top 1% of my 7 & 8 Figure retailers do, I know exactly what KPIs you should be achieved across all channels and devices as well as knowing how well your platform should be performing and what ROAS you should be achieving, etc.
The similarities across all my high-end 6-figure and 7 & 8-figure retailers are striking! For example, I know that…
– If your organic channel revenue is less than 50-60% of your total revenue then you have neglected your SEO and you have an opportunity for organic growth…
– If your ROAS from Google advertising is not between 600-1000% you have serious room for improvement and your campaigns need rebuilding and set up correctly for maximum performance (we currently average 832% ROAS on Google Ads)…
– If your store is not achieving a page load speed score of 70 on mobile and at least 90 on PageSpeed Insights then your e-commerce platform needs a serious and professional upgrade – Google suggests that 20% of conversions are lost for every second of page load time.
– If your overall store conversion rate is less than 2-5% then you have serious issues with your platform design & UX – If your email marketing channel is not at least 15-35% of your total revenue then you don’t have the right automated marketing sequences set up etc. etc. Analyzing your data in the right way automatically formulates your personalized scaling roadmap.
In Summary
A detailed e-commerce business audit and analysis covering all aspects of your online business and then benchmarking that data against industry and sector standards will automatically identify bottlenecks in your business and will identify opportunities for growth.
For more FREE training and resources to help you scale your e-commerce business then please join my private Facebook Group for professional retailers…