- Checklist library
eCommerce Checklists You Can Run This Week
A checklist is a working document, not an article with bullet points. Every check here states the action first and the reason second, so somebody on your team can pick one up, run it against a live store and come out with a list of things to fix.
- Every check says what to do and why it matters
- Written from the audits we run on client accounts
- Free, ungated, and printable without an email address
Checklists earn their place when they change what somebody does on Monday morning.
- How we write them
A checklist is only useful if it survives contact with a real store
Most published checklists are a list of nouns. Ours are a list of decisions, because a check nobody can act on is just a reminder that you might have a problem.
Run a checklist against a live store, not from memory. The gap between the two is the point.
Every item on every checklist here started as a finding in a real audit. If a check appears, it is because leaving it undone has cost one of our clients money, and we can say what it cost. Nothing is included to round a list up to a memorable number.
- Each check is an action, stated in the imperative, not a topic
- Each check carries one line on why it matters, so it can be argued for internally
- Checks are grouped in the order you should work through them
- Where a check needs judgement rather than a yes or no, we say so
- Every checklist ends by telling you what to do with the findings
If a checklist tells you something is wrong and gives you no route to fixing it, it has wasted your afternoon. Each one here links on to the guide, the service and the audit that follow.
- The library
Published checklists
Three are live and written in full. The rest are named here so you can see what is coming; they are not linked until they exist.
Published
The technical, category, product and content checks we run before recommending any SEO work on a store.
- Five sections, run in order
- Platform-agnostic, works on any store
- Routes on to eCommerce SEO and the audit
Published
What to check on product pages, basket and checkout before you spend anything on testing tools.
- Ordered by where revenue leaks first
- Includes the checks people skip
- Routes on to CRO and the audit
Published
Everything a listing needs before you put advertising behind it, from catalogue data to imagery and reviews.
- Compliance, content and conversion checks
- Written from live seller accounts
- Routes on to Amazon management
In production
Shopify SEO Checklist
The Shopify-specific subset: collection URLs, duplicate paths, theme templates and the constraints you cannot change.
In production — not yet published
In production
eCommerce Launch Checklist
What has to be true before a new store takes its first order, from tax and shipping to analytics and support.
In production — not yet published
In production
eCommerce Migration Checklist
The redirect, structure and data work that decides whether a replatform keeps its organic traffic.
In production — not yet published
In production
Website Audit Checklist
The whole-store version: performance, analytics, merchandising and retention in one pass.
In production — not yet published
Want one of the unpublished checklists sooner? Tell us which and we will prioritise it.
- The anatomy
What every checklist here contains
The same four things, every time, so you can move between them without relearning the format.
Ordered sections
- Checks grouped by the job they belong to
- Sequenced so earlier work does not get undone later
- A count of checks per section, so you can plan the time
- A sticky index, so a long list stays navigable
A reason per check
- One line on what leaving it undone actually costs
- Enough to justify the work to somebody who holds the budget
- No jargon that needs a second tab open to decode
- Judgement calls flagged as judgement calls
The common mistakes
- What teams usually get wrong on this particular job
- The checks that look optional and are not
- The ones that are genuinely optional for most stores
- Where following the checklist too literally causes harm
A route out
- How to turn a list of failures into a ranked plan
- Which findings are worth fixing first, and why
- Links to the guide that explains the reasoning
- Links to the service, if you would rather not do it yourself
If a checklist here is missing any of the four, it is not finished and we have not published it.
- The sequence
From checklist to plan to work
A checklist produces a list of failures. That is only useful if the next three steps are obvious.
01
STEP ONE
Work through it against the live store with somebody who can actually see the analytics and the admin.
02
STEP TWO
Where a check needs more than one line of explanation, the matching guide works through the reasoning in full.
03
STEP THREE
Score what you found by revenue impact against effort, so the plan starts with the work that pays first.
04
STEP FOUR
A free audit will tell you whether your list matches ours, and which findings we would act on first.
- Where to start
Which checklist should you run?
If you are not sure which one answers your question, start from the situation that sounds most like yours.
Your situation
Where to start
Organic traffic has stalled and you do not know why
Run the eCommerce SEO checklist. It covers indexation, category structure, product content and the technical checks in the order that usually finds the problem fastest.
Traffic is fine and the conversion rate is not
Run the eCommerce CRO checklist, which works through product page, basket and checkout in the order revenue tends to leak.
Your Amazon listings are live but advertising is not paying
Run the Amazon listing checklist before touching campaigns. Advertising a listing that cannot convert is the most expensive mistake on the channel.
You are about to replatform or launch
Both checklists are in production. In the meantime the eCommerce development page covers how we scope migrations, and the platform comparison covers choosing.
You want the whole store reviewed, not one discipline
Read the 12-point growth audit, which is the full-store version of this work and explains how the twelve points relate to each other.
You would rather somebody else ran it
A free eCommerce audit covers every discipline on this page, ranked by revenue impact, and you keep the findings whether or not you work with us.
- Once you have run one
Services that pick up where the checklist stops
A checklist tells you what is wrong. These are the teams that fix it.
Category architecture, product page content and the technical work behind the SEO checklist.
Research-led testing across product, basket and checkout, starting from what the CRO checklist found.
Listing quality, catalogue data and advertising across Amazon, Walmart and the regional marketplaces.
- Questions
About these checklists
What people ask before they spend an afternoon working through one.
Are these free, and do I have to give you my email?
They are free and there is no email wall anywhere on this site. Nothing here is gated, including the guides, the comparisons and the audit itself. If a checklist is useful, we would rather you used it and remembered where it came from.
Can I print a checklist or share it with my team?
Yes. Each checklist is a single page with the checks laid out in order and an empty box against each one, so it prints cleanly from the browser. Downloadable spreadsheet versions are being added as we finish them.
Do these apply to my platform?
The checklists are written to be platform-agnostic, so they apply on Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Adobe Commerce or a custom build. Where a check only applies on one platform, or is impossible on one, we say which and why. Platform-specific checklists are being added separately.
How often are they updated?
Each carries a last-updated date. We revise them when practice changes rather than on a schedule, and a checklist that has not needed changing is not out of date. Anything superseded is rewritten rather than quietly left up.
What if I fail most of the checks?
That is the normal outcome on a store nobody has audited before, and it is not a crisis. The final section of each checklist explains how to rank findings by revenue impact against effort, so you start with the few that pay rather than the forty that do not.
Who writes them?
The team that runs the accounts. Each checklist is drawn from findings that repeat across client audits, which is also why the reasons attached to each check are specific rather than general advice.
Is a checklist a substitute for an audit?
For a small store with a straightforward catalogue, often yes. An audit adds the things a checklist cannot: your actual numbers, the interactions between channels, and a judgement on which findings matter for your margin rather than in general.
Can you run a checklist on our store for us?
Yes, and that is essentially what the free eCommerce audit is. It covers every discipline represented here, and you keep the findings regardless of what happens next.
Would you rather we ran the checklist?
A free eCommerce audit covers everything on this page against your actual store and numbers, ranked by revenue impact. You keep the findings whether or not you work with us.