Building a Sustainable Shopify Strategy

Top-line growth through expansion areas is often the go-to but prioritising assortment optimisation can yield far greater benefits for long-term success. Attaining new top-line growth may seem simple—launching new categories or stores can quickly boost year-over-year revenue. However, without focusing on your business's current inventory health, such actions can lead to long-term complications and a less sustainable business. True merchandisers 🤓 find great satisfaction in revitalising and optimising struggling categories, locking in reliable and sustainable growth in a dynamic retail landscape. To safeguard profits, drive revenue, and enhance sell-through rates, all while maximising your product's potential, consider the following strategies: 💡 Leverage Inventory Health Check Metrics Gain a deep understanding and competitive edge when you have clarity on both driving factors and hindrances to business performance. Favourites include: Newness %, Sizing Availability, Core Line Out-of-Stock Rate, Markdown: Velocity & Depth of Discount, GMROI at all levels. 💡 Ensure Comprehensive Product Attribution Enrich product data with great attribution to accurately gauge customer demand by any product facet. This is invaluable insights for decision-making. 💡 Optimise Price Points Identify and capitalise on the pricing sweet spot, not only the sweet spot that’s acquiring you customers but also the sweet spot which is upselling and retaining customers for you. Invest and build on these and adapt as the market or customer base changes. 💡 Identify Core and NOOS Lines Prioritise Core and Never Out of Stock items to maintain consistency and meet ongoing demand. These items usually have higher margins and should have great stock turn due to predictable demand. 💡 Focus on Top-Performing Products Apply the 80/20 rule, concentrating efforts on the top 20% of products contributing to 80% of sales, while streamlining the long tail. The goal is to continually adapt and meet the customer where they’re at in terms of their demand for product. Focusing on key metrics that matter empowers teams to drive sustainable growth and adapt to the evolving market dynamics effectively.

Been working with a prominent surf brand this year to reset their digital playbook. Here's 3 things we've seen work really well which has resulted in a 55% increase in revenue YTD vs. last year. 1. Traffic x Conversion Rate x AOV = Revenue This can't be overstated enough. If your site conversion rate is below 1.5% you have to invest in improving it. A good converting website is usually not sexy, and that's ok (see no. 3 below for more on this). Start with the site experience and look at it on mobile through the lens of a new customer. Remove points of friction, quickly answer customer questions, and make getting to checkout easy. Focus first on home page, collection page, PDP, navigation, and cart/checkout. Then move to customer service pages, return/exchange process, etc. It sounds trivial, but you'll be amazed at how easily you can gain a quick .25% in conversion rate with minimal effort. 2. Performance Max Google's Performance Max is loathed by many as a black box (which it is) and therefore untrustworthy, but we've found two key ways to make it work incredibly successfully: Product feed optimization and setting focus on new customer acquisition. By leveraging all the product data points available from Shopify, you can juice a product feed to make Google very happy and reward you with high-performing shopping ads. It's a bit of effort up front, but once complete starts to pay dividends. There's also a somewhat hidden setting to turn on new customer acquisition focus. This can help avoid save on ad costs from people who may have purchased anyways and just clicked the first ad they saw. Before enabling this, provide the account with a list of current customers to exclude (use Klaviyo's integration to keep the list up to date in realtime). Last month we turned it on for one client and we saw Google Ads conversions from new customers increase 62% vs. prior month. 3. Premium Photography Such an important yet often overlooked component to a winning strategy is high quality product imagery. Going back to site UX - if your product photography is not high quality, does a good job showing the detail of the product, or on-model, it will take a toll on conversion rate, especially if you have a high AOV. A website doesn't need to be custom or flashy if the photography is high quality. You can grow a brand online to $20m+ annually with a Shopify theme like Prestige and let the product photography do the heavy lifting. With a channel like Meta ads, there's no greater lever you can pull than testing creatives. Lately we've been seeing that tight crops on product features and text overlay has been working well, but we're always testing and refining. Use Advantage Plus campaigns to test lots of creative types at once to find what works, then double down on that.

I’ve seen it happen over and over again. A Shopify brand hits its stride—scaling to 7-figures, maybe even touching 8—and then the momentum stalls. Why? Because what got you here won’t get you there. I’ve worked with 150+ Shopify brands, and here’s the hard truth: Scaling is as much about what you stop doing as what you start. Here’s where most brands hit roadblocks: ➡️ Ad accounts packed with duplicate campaigns and no clear testing strategy. ➡️ Creative fatigue kicking in because they’re running the same ads over and over. ➡️ Blind spots in key financial metrics like MER, aMER, and Contribution Margins. We’ve helped brands push past these bottlenecks by focusing on efficiency—because scaling isn’t about spending more. It’s about spending smarter. Here’s how we do it: 1️⃣ Simplify the Ad Account – Strip out the noise and focus on high-impact campaigns with clear goals. 2️⃣ Ruthless Creative Testing – Build systems to rotate fresh ideas weekly. If you’re not testing at least 10 creatives, you’re leaving money on the table. 3️⃣ Profit-Driven Metrics – Forget vanity metrics like ROAS. Focus on Contribution Margins, AMER, and CAC thresholds to scale sustainably. We’ve scaled brands from $46K/month to $351K/month in just 3 months using these strategies. It’s not magic—it’s systems. If your scaling feels stuck, it’s not the market. It’s inefficiency. What’s the biggest bottleneck you’re facing right now? Let me know below—I’d love to share insights that have worked for others in the same spot. Let’s fix the leaks, dial in the systems, and make 2025 your most profitable year yet.

Want to scale your e-commerce business to $500k/mo with just paid ads and email marketing? Here's the step-by-step strategy I did that I want to share with you: 1) Start with a good product. Choose a product that: - Solves a problem - Emotional connection - Has a decent profit margin - Has room for upsells/cross-sells Without a good product, your ads will not convert. 2) Optimize your website for conversions. Ensure that your website: - Loads fast - Has clear and compelling copy - Has high-quality product images - Has a user-friendly layout Your website is the first impression a customer gets. Shopify has great themes that do this. 3) Create a customer avatar. Figure out who your ideal customer is and create a persona around them. This will help you craft marketing messages that resonate with them. 4) Set up your email marketing. Start by: - Creating a welcome series - Setting up abandonment emails like checkout, cart, product, site abandonment, and email abandonment. Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to convert leads into customers. 5) Set up your ad campaigns on Meta. Start with: - One product - One platform - One audience Test and optimize until you see a positive ROI. 6) Scale your ad campaigns. Once you have a winning ad campaign, scale it by: - Increasing your ad budget - Testing new audience segments - Testing new ad creatives/messaging 7) Implement a post-purchase experience. After a customer makes a purchase, take steps to: - Upsell/cross-sell - Encourage repeat purchases - Get feedback/reviews The post-purchase experience is important for building customer loyalty. 8) Analyze your data. Use data to: - Optimize your ad campaigns - Improve your website - Identify upsell/cross-sell opportunities - Improve your email marketing Data-driven decisions will help you maximize your ROI. 9) Rinse and repeat. As you scale, continue to: - Test new marketing angles - Launch new products - Improve your website and customer experience Scaling takes time and effort, but it's worth it for the long-term growth of your e-commerce business.

Scaling a Shopify brand isn’t just about acquiring customers… It’s about keeping them. Most brands get stuck because they focus only on front-end sales, ignoring the real driver of long-term growth: Lifetime Value (LTV). Here’s how to build a scalable growth engine: → A front-end offer that at least breaks even (so CAC doesn’t kill margins) → Dialed-in CAC & CPA for predictable acquisition costs → Retention strategies (email, SMS, loyalty programs) to increase repeat purchases → A 90-day LTV that allows reinvestment into growth without burning cash When these metrics align, scaling from 6 to 7 figures per month becomes predictable and profitable. If your brand is hitting a revenue ceiling, it’s time to optimize—not just spend more on ads. Let’s talk.