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Dropshipping Home View demo Start free
All of The Basics 1.1What is dropshipping 1.2The market, in numbers 1.3What goes wrong, and why 1.4How to start on Shopify
All of Getting Sales 2.1Your first sale 2.2Paid ads without the bleed 2.3Organic traffic 2.4Email and retention basics 2.5Launch checklist
All of Why Sales Stall 3.1Why did my sales drop? 3.2Why people don't buy from your store 3.3Checkout conversion problems 3.4Analytics blind spots 3.5The catalog tipping point 3.6Traffic but no sales 3.7Store health audit
All of The Fixes 4.1Increase average order value 4.2Bundles that work 4.3Cart drawer optimization 4.4Product recommendations 4.5Urgency and campaigns 4.6Repeat purchase playbook 4.7Social proof and reviews 4.8Product discovery 4.9Fixing store search 4.10Filters that convert 4.11Merchandising and sort order 4.12Recovering dead-end searches
All of Making It Last 5.1Metrics that matter 5.2Attributing revenue to changes 5.3The weekly optimization routine 5.4When to hire or automate

// Level 03 Why Sales Stall · 3.7

Illustrated golden tree in full leaf with butterflies around it, lit from within.

Store health audit

Updated August 2026 7 min read
A FINDING IS WORTHLESS UNTIL IT POINTS SOMEWHERE WHAT THE AUDIT FINDS WHERE IT GETS FIXED Costs appear late at checkout Order value too low for the CPM Searches returning nothing Products nobody can reach No reason to come back 4.3 Cart drawer 4.1 Order value · 4.2 Bundles 4.9 Search · 4.12 Dead ends 4.8 Discovery · 4.11 Sort order 4.6 Repeat purchase RUN THE AUDIT MONTHLY. FIX ONE ROW AT A TIME, OR YOU LEARN NOTHING.

Every failed check exits to a chapter number. Nothing on the list ends in itself.

The short answer

This is the whole of Level 03 turned into a checklist you can run in under an hour, once a month. Work top to bottom: data first, because a broken tracker makes every check below it meaningless, then checkout, then discovery, then order value and retention. Every unticked box names the chapter that fixes it. Fix one at a time and write down the date, or you will change five things in a week and learn nothing from any of them.

How to run it

Set aside an hour. Open your store in an incognito window on a phone, not on the desktop you built it on. Work top to bottom and do not skip ahead, because the sections are ordered so that a failure in one makes everything below it unreadable.

Mark anything you cannot check as unknown rather than passing it. A blind spot recorded as a pass is how stores end up confident about things nobody ever looked at.

Then fix exactly one thing, and write down the date you changed it. Chapter 5.2 explains why that last sentence is the most valuable one on this page.

The audit

1 · Data, before anything else
2 · Checkout, the cheapest layer to fix
3 · Trust, mostly free
4 · Discovery, usually the biggest prize
5 · Order value and retention

What each failure is worth

Here is where each section goes, ordered by how quickly the fix pays.

If this section failedGo hereTypical cost to fix
1 · DataChapter 3.4, then re-run this auditFree, and everything depends on it
2 · CheckoutChapter 3.3, then chapter 4.3Mostly settings
3 · TrustChapters 3.2 and 4.7An afternoon
4 · DiscoveryChapters 4.8, 4.9, 4.10 and 4.12Ongoing, largest prize
5 · Order valueChapters 4.1, 4.2 and 4.6Real work, compounds
An audit that produces a list of worries is a way of feeling busy. An audit that produces a list of chapters is work. The Dropshipping Playbook

The boxes you could not tick

Sections 4 and 5 are where most stores run out of visibility rather than out of time. Search queries, zero-result rates, empty filter combinations and repeat-view behaviour are events, and chapter 3.4 covers why none of them exist in a standard report or can be recovered afterwards.

If those boxes are unknown rather than failed, that is the honest state and worth recording as such. It also means that the largest section of your audit, and by most measures the largest prize in the store, is currently being run on guesswork. Closing that starts with recording, and recording only ever starts today.

Common questions

How often should I run this?
Monthly is enough for most stores, plus immediately after any theme update, app install or supplier change. If you are under 500 sessions a month, run the data and checkout sections only; the discovery and order-value sections need more traffic than you have to produce a readable answer.
Everything failed. Where do I start?
Top to bottom, exactly as ordered, and one at a time. The sections are sequenced so that each one invalidates the ones below it when it fails: a broken tracker makes your discovery data fiction, and a checkout that surprises people makes any order-value work land on a leaking bucket.
Why only one fix at a time?
Because attribution. Change five things in a week and the revenue number that follows belongs to all five, which means you have bought a result you cannot repeat. Chapter 5.2 is entirely about this.
Can I skip the sections that need tools?
Yes, and note them as unknown rather than passed. That distinction matters: "we checked and it was fine" and "we have no way to see this" are different states, and writing them down the same way is how a blind spot becomes an assumption.
Illustrated violet ridges receding to a yellow sun, over a field of pale flowers.

One number pays for the rest

What a single order is worth decides what every other fix can afford. Chapter 4.1 is where that number moves.

Go to chapter 4.1