Operations
A weekly Shopify marketing scorecard you can act on
Bring revenue, customer acquisition, contribution and campaign changes into one short weekly review without merging incompatible attribution reports.
A useful weekly report ends with a decision. It should tell you what changed, why the change matters and what someone will do next. A page of charts without that last step is still unfinished work.
Start with a consistent reporting window. Use the same store timezone, revenue definition and inclusion rules each week. Allow for delayed conversions and returns. If you revise a prior period, label the revision rather than silently replacing the number.
Keep the scorecard small
| Section | What to record | Decision it supports |
|---|---|---|
| Store result | Net revenue, orders, average order value | Did commercial demand change? |
| Acquisition | New customers and paid media spend | What did it cost to acquire the next cohort? |
| Economics | Contribution before and after ads | Can the current order mix support more spend? |
| Efficiency | Defined MER and channel ROAS separately | Where should we investigate? |
| Conversion | Sessions and store conversion rate | Is the bottleneck before or after the click? |
| Operations | Stockouts, promotion changes and refunds | Is marketing working against fulfilment? |
Not every store has reliable data for every row. Leave an unavailable measure blank and assign an owner to resolve it. Inventing a precise-looking figure is worse than recording a known gap.
Add a change log
Record budget adjustments, new creative, landing-page edits, offers and inventory changes beside the week's results. A marketing review without a change log makes cause and effect look simpler than they are.
For example, suppose revenue grows 12% during a week with a discount promotion and a larger media budget. Do not attribute the full increase to the new ad creative. Check the offer, customer mix and order contribution before deciding to repeat the campaign.
Use a three-question meeting
What happened? Describe the observation with comparable periods. “Net revenue rose while contribution per order fell” is more useful than “the campaign was great.”
What might explain it? List the strongest hypotheses and the missing evidence. Separate a tracking change from a commercial change. If two platforms claim the same order, do not sum their attributed revenues into a business total.
What will we do? Choose an action, owner and review date. A suitable action might be a margin check, a landing-page experiment or a staged creative test. It does not have to be an immediate budget increase.
A reusable review note
Copy this structure into your operating document:
- Reporting window and timezone:
- Net revenue definition and included marketing costs:
- Biggest commercial change:
- Biggest measurement uncertainty:
- Hypothesis to test:
- Proposed action and owner:
- Budget or operational limit:
- Date and evidence required for review:
Use the same structure when asking an AI assistant to analyse results. Provide the definitions, changed inputs and business constraint. Ask for a recommendation with its assumptions, then verify the account and proposed action before approving execution.
The MER vs ROAS guide explains the reporting distinction, while the break-even ROAS guide helps set an economic boundary. Together they make the scorecard a decision tool rather than a weekly ritual.