We’re just about to the end of 2024 — congratulations on another year of running your online business! No matter how things shook out this year, making it this far is a victory.
It’s time to start planning for next year. And actually, the first step in planning ahead is looking back. It’s crucial to evaluate your offers, promotions, and business decisions so you can decide what to keep or change.
How do you perform that evaluation? Follow the steps below to conduct a thorough end-of-year audit of your online shop.
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End-of-Year Audit Step #1: Review Your Finances
The best place to start is by looking at your financial numbers. This is how you find out how to keep your business profitable going forward.
- Sales data: Evaluate each of your offers individually to see how much revenue they brought in. Compare that to the cost (including materials, time, and other relevant expenses) to figure out how profitable each one actually is.
- Expenses: Now, look at the other expenses for your online. How much did you spend on operating costs, like payroll, software subscriptions, and advertising?
- Time: How much time did you invest in each of your offers? Think about the time you spend developing, testing, and updating it before release. And don’t forget to calculate the time it takes you to keep supporting it.
Now, take everything you learned and decide how profitable each of your products is.
You might find out that the time or effort it takes to keep supporting a product equals (or surpasses) the amount of revenue it brings in. If that’s the case, it might be time to retire that offer or increase its price.
Related post: 5 Steps to Building a Profitable Business from Day 1
End-of-Year Audit Step #2: Assess Your Products
Now that you know approximately how profitable each of your products is, let’s look at the other factors.
Relevance
How relevant is each one of your offers? In other words, do you have products your audience actually wants to buy?
To figure it out, look at your customers’ behavior. Are there specific offers they purchase and review consistently? Are there any products that used to sell well but have dropped off over the past year?
Feedback
Take a look at reviews and feedback for each product. Which ones have the most positive reviews? Are there any that seem to give customers consistent issues?
Try to find feedback beyond official reviews, if possible. Do your customers talk about any specific products in social media comments or elsewhere online?
Combine these qualitative results with the profitability analysis you completed. And then, take a hard look at your offers.
Can you identify any bestsellers? Consider expanding these or focusing more of your marketing on them next year.
Are there any products that don’t bring in enough revenue to keep? Or do you have any offers that have mixed reviews? This is a good time to consider whether you need to retire a product or revamp it to address customer issues.
Related post: 5 Ways to Ask for Client Feedback on Your Website
End-of-Year Audit Step #3: Analyze Sales and Promotions
Now that you’ve looked at your offers, it’s time to focus on your promotional campaigns.
- Sales: If you had a Black Friday or launch sale, what were the results? Did you see the revenue numbers you were hoping for? Were there issues with discount codes or the checkout process? Did you see a high number of abandoned carts?
- Email marketing: How is your email marketing going? Are you getting good open and click-through rates? If not, it might be time to change your content strategy and/or clean your email list.
- Social media: Are your social media profiles actively supporting your business? Are there any platforms that take a lot of your time without a good return? You might want to consider scaling down and focusing on one or two platforms where you get the most engagement.
Use the information you discover to start planning out your promotions for next year. It’s OK to drop sales or engagement strategies that didn’t pan out.
Related post: 5 Ways to Optimize Your WordPress Shop Site
End-of-Year Audit Step #4: Evaluate Your Website
Next, look at your website. Is it supporting your business effectively? Ideally, your site should attract consistent traffic and convert those visitors to leads and then paying customers.
Evaluate your traffic and conversion numbers. Look for areas you can improve. Are any images taking too long to load? Is your navigation confusing?
Focus on streamlining your site, so you can direct visitors to your calls-to-action. If you’re not sure where to start, try paring down your copy to the essentials and ensuring that your visuals align with your branding.
Related post: 4 Ways to Refresh Your Website in the New Year
End-of-Year Audit Step #5: Set Specific Goals
You’ve done all the hard work gathering information. Now it’s time to put everything together and create a strategy for next year!
- Decide which offers you want to keep, expand, change, or drop
- Make a content marketing strategy
- Plan out your sales and promotions
- Update your website
As you decide what changes to make, set relevant goals to track them. Consider making goals for your email list, revenue (during and outside of sales), social media engagement, website traffic — whatever is most important to you!
Related post: 13 Google Analytics Metrics You Should Be Monitoring and Why
Final Thoughts
Performing an end-of-year audit might seem a little tedious and time-consuming. But it’s completely worth it!
Evaluating your offers and promotions gives you essential data you can use to decide what you want to keep and change going forward. Then, look at your website with a critical eye and decide if you need to change anything to support those updated offers and promotions.
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