Sample audit · fictional brand
Northstar Home Co.
A fictional home-goods brand on Shopify, US and Canada. A fully worked example of the free Commerce Operations Audit — see the depth before you share a credential.
This is a sample, not a case study
Northstar Home Co. is invented. It is not a real company, and every finding, number, timing and screenshot on this page is illustrative — written to demonstrate the shape of a real audit. No real client, revenue or results are shown or implied.
Reading on screen · press ⌘P / Ctrl-P to save this sample as a PDF
Seven findings, ranked.
Three things this month: one operating view, a fast PDP, triage on support.
No single operating view
Revenue, orders, ads and support in five tools; rebuilt by hand.
Mobile PDP is slow
Illustrative mobile LCP ~4.2s. Past ~2.5s, every second costs conversion.
Support has no triage
~35% of tickets are order-status, answered by hand. Deflectable same-day.
Ad numbers don't reconcile
Meta and GA4 disagree by ~20% (illustrative). Budget optimized on it.
Buy Box slipping on hero SKUs
Two SKUs lost the Buy Box (illustrative), no alert — margin leaking.
Shopify app bloat
12 apps, ~4 unused (illustrative). Added weight and cost, no owner.
Above-the-fold clarity gap
Homepage leads with brand story; a visitor can't tell what Northstar sells.
Priority reflects impact × effort · illustrative, for a brand of Northstar's shape
Where the store leaks sales.
The storefront is Northstar's best salesperson or its biggest leak.
PDP friction on mobile
Add-to-cart below a long spec block, unclear variants, no sticky ATC (illustrative).
Speed & Core Web Vitals
Illustrative mobile LCP ~4.2s, CLS ~0.18. Unoptimized hero, render-blocking JS.
Homepage clarity
Above the fold sells the story, not the category — a visitor can't orient.
Collection navigation
Nine overlapping nav items, no 'shop by room' or best-sellers entry.
App hygiene
12 apps, ~4 unused (illustrative). Each adds weight; no owner.
Merchandising gaps
No PDP/cart cross-sell and no bundles — for a category that sells in sets.
Checkout & journey
Guest checkout works, but shipping thresholds are late and no post-purchase offer.
No screen the founder can trust.
The data exists; there's just nowhere to look — the gap that hides the rest.
No daily operator view
No one morning screen — the picture is reassembled from four tools by hand.
Scattered reporting
Revenue, ad spend, tickets and marketplace live in separate tools; nothing reconciles.
Unclear CAC / MER / repeat
Blended MER, CAC and repeat rate aren't tracked in one place — a guess.
Support not tied to revenue
Tickets and refunds aren't linked to products, so issues never surface as risk.
Data never unified
Ad, marketplace and support data don't meet; a bad week has no explanation.
Answered — with judgment kept human.
Fast where it should be automatic; human where it must be. Today, manual on both.
Slow-response risk
No after-hours coverage; weekend tickets age. Illustrative median first reply ~9 hours.
Repeated questions
~35% of tickets are order-status (illustrative) — deflectable with tracking and a macro.
Missing macros & FAQ
No macro library or FAQ for the top 10 questions; agents retype answers.
Refund & escalation guardrails
No written thresholds — refunds and escalations are ad-hoc between agents.
AI-assisted triage opportunity
Route, tag and draft routine tickets on approved knowledge; sensitive cases held for a human.
Spend that works the right window.
Where money goes out the door — and where the tracking that guides it breaks.
Ad tracking gaps
Meta and GA4 disagree by ~20% (illustrative); pixel/CAPI incomplete. Spend optimized on broken data.
Marketplace listing risk
Buy Box lost on two SKUs, one listing suppressed (illustrative), no alert in place.
Feed & catalog hygiene
Feed throws ~30 errors (illustrative); titles and GTINs inconsistent across channels.
Campaign reporting gaps
No weekly readout tying spend to revenue, and no creative-testing cadence.
Landing-page mismatch
The top ad drives to the homepage, not a matching collection or PDP.
Ten workflows worth running for you.
Ordered by payback. Each ships with monitoring and a human checkpoint.
Daily founder brief
One morning summary — revenue, orders, ad efficiency, support load, anomalies.
Support triage
Route, tag and draft on approved knowledge; sensitive cases held for a human.
Refund / escalation routing
Refunds over a threshold and complaints auto-route to a human, with context.
Low-stock alert
Flag SKUs below cover before they stock out or lose the Buy Box.
Marketplace issue watch
Watch Buy Box, suppressions and account health; alert on any change.
Weekly growth report
Auto-assembled spend / revenue / ROAS readout with what changed and why.
PDP issue tracker
Watch key PDPs for speed, price and inventory regressions; file automatically.
Campaign anomaly alert
Flag CPA, ROAS or spend moving out of range before it compounds.
Review monitoring
Watch reviews; surface negatives for a fast, human response.
Task routing
Turn recurring ops requests into tracked, routed workflows, not Slack messages.
Visibility first. Rhythm by day 30.
See the operation, fix support and dashboards, then store and channels, then run it.
Visibility & cleanup
- Stand up the daily operator view
- Connect Shopify, ads, support & marketplace (read-only)
- PDP speed quick wins
- Prune the app stack
Support & dashboard workflows
- Macro library + on-site FAQ
- Triage + written escalation guardrails
- Daily founder brief live
- Tag support to products & campaigns
Shopify & marketplace fixes
- PDP + merchandising fixes
- Feed & catalog hygiene
- Buy Box & listing alerts
- Ad tracking (pixel/CAPI) rebuild
Managed operating rhythm
- Weekly growth report
- Anomaly & review alerts
- One owner per pillar
- The standing weekly cadence
Do the cheap wins first.
Impact against effort, so the sequencing is obvious.
- Daily founder brief
- Order-status deflection + macros
- PDP speed quick wins
- Buy Box & low-stock alerts
- Unified reporting layer
- Ad tracking (pixel/CAPI) rebuild
- PDP + merchandising overhaul
- Feed & catalog re-hygiene
- Homepage above-the-fold refinement
- Secondary-nav cleanup
- Post-purchase upsell
- Bundle merchandising
Reminder — Northstar Home Co. is a fictional brand and every figure here is illustrative. Your audit is built from your real store and answers, and is yours to keep whether or not we work together.
This is the shape of it. Now yours.
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