8 Things to Check Before Seriously Tackling Growth on Shopify

Here are 8 things you need to have in place before diving seriously into growth on Shopify. These are also the first things we at StoreHero check when starting a growth project.

It may feel roundabout, but confirming these points before jumping into specific tactics — like advertising or social media — will allow you to pursue growth initiatives much more smoothly.

Even if you've already started working on growth, moving forward without addressing these fundamentals greatly increases the risk of hitting a plateau. We recommend revisiting them at least once.

At StoreHero, we leverage our proprietary growth platform to support business growth through fine-grained operations that manual management can't achieve, and through the large-scale execution of initiatives.
If you're struggling to grow sales on Shopify, feel free to reach out. =>Download our free service overview here

PMF (Product-Market Fit)

The most important factor in the growth potential of a commerce business is having demand for your product. No matter how many growth tactics you throw at it, there are limits if there's no demand for the product.

Before you launch your business in earnest, validate that there is demand for your product. PMF (Product-Market Fit) refers to the state in which you have confirmed that your product has market viability.

We've written articles on PMF and how to practice it previously — please use them as a reference.

Business Model

A business model is an organized structure of your business. Map out the following elements to design a structure for sustainable growth.

• Target customers
• Value proposition
• Products and services
• Channels
• Resources
• Profitability

Growth initiatives that aren't grounded in your business model are hard to land, and even when they do work, they rarely produce sustained results — making them poor investments. There are many well-known templates for organizing your business model, such as the Business Model Canvas and the Lean Canvas — pick one that works for you and get organized.

Having your business model documented gives you a foundation to return to when you lose your bearings during growth execution — it's invaluable in many ways.

Create a Business Plan

Build your business plan based on your business model.

It can be difficult to create a highly precise plan during the launch phase, but even a rough draft is important. By running financial simulations with different variables, you develop an intuitive sense of where to invest and where to build competitive advantage in order to win.

Research industry averages for LTV and CAC, build your business plan, and verify through simulation that the business is viable. We've previously written about LTV and CAC — please use it as a reference (How to Monitor LTV and CAC on Shopify to Aggressively Improve Profitability).

Build a Promotional Calendar

Translate your business plan into a promotional calendar. There are seasonal events like Christmas, Valentine's Day, and Black Friday, as well as industry-specific events — factor in these demand fluctuations when building your promotional plan.

It's hard to accelerate growth without running promotional campaigns. Especially at launch, we strongly recommend actively incorporating promotions into your plan. Aim for a cadence of one larger promotion every 2–3 months, with smaller promotions planned in the remaining months, so that customers who visit your store any month will always find something happening.

Also, promotions go well beyond sales — there are many types of campaigns available, so luxury brands and others who prefer to avoid discounts are no exception.

Team

Based on your business plan, secure your team members in advance.

Reaching monthly revenues of ¥10–20 million on Shopify is achievable with a growth team of 2–3 people, but scaling beyond that will require adding more members.

Commerce operations span a wide range of functions — planning, advertising, CRM, social media, content, PR, and partnerships. At a monthly revenue scale of ¥20 million or more, multiple initiatives run in parallel, increasing workload and management complexity significantly.

Standardizing workflows is of course essential, but also establish clear role divisions so the team's overall volume of initiatives can scale in line with the business plan.

Know-How

You don't need expert-level knowledge of Shopify or growth, but you should understand the basics. A search on Google or YouTube will yield a substantial amount of knowledge for free.

Additionally, growth is achieved through a combination of many different initiatives, so if you don't understand the relationships between them, you won't be able to make the right decisions. For example, when ad performance is poor, the root cause is often in content or social media management rather than the ads themselves — yet it's easy to blame what's most visible in the numbers.

To avoid making these kinds of misjudgments, make sure you have a solid foundation of basic knowledge.

The YouTube channel Learn With Shopify is personally recommended — it covers topics comprehensively and is easy to understand for beginners.

Your Shopify Store

As long as you're executing initiatives with the right strategy, growth performance is proportional to the number of initiatives you run — so keep your Shopify store simple so it's easy to layer on more initiatives.

It's common for stores to over-customize during build-out, making future improvements difficult. If you do customize, consider implementations that free up time for growth work — such as using Shopify Flow or Mechanic to automate operational tasks.

The Mindset and Systems to Execute Every Initiative

Achieving growth requires both the mindset and the systems to follow through on daily initiatives.

We at StoreHero have supported many merchants, and we have never seen a case where rapid growth was achieved with a small number of initiatives (which is why we actively manage task progress in detail as part of our growth support).

Start by committing to see your daily initiatives through to completion. Beyond that, task management systems that can keep up with the wide scope of work and rapidly changing schedules are equally critical.

Driving Growth Execution with StoreHero

StoreHero supports merchants who face challenges growing sales on Shopify by helping them execute growth initiatives with full commitment.

Leveraging the StoreHero growth platform, we provide continuous growth support across advertising, storefront, CRM, and inventory management — delivering fine-grained operations that manual management can't achieve and executing a high volume of initiatives.

We are currently offering free store diagnostics. If you have challenges with Shopify or growth initiatives in general, please reach out. Learn more about our free store diagnostic here

Summary

In this article, we introduced 8 things to confirm before seriously tackling growth initiatives.

Depending on the project, you may end up checking some of these while growth is already underway — but since major course corrections can be needed after the fact, it's best to address them as early as possible to avoid wasted effort.