StoreHero's 5-Step Approach to Creating a Shopify Growth Project Plan
This article explains how to create a growth project plan for those who are launching a commerce business on Shopify. At StoreHero, we create a project plan upfront before tackling any growth project to increase our chances of achieving our goals.
In this article, we'll walk you through the 5 steps that StoreHero practices in the early stages of a project for creating a project plan. We hope you find it helpful.
1. Find the Right "Growth Model"
The first thing to do is understand your growth model. We believe the optimal growth model — the framework for how to grow — differs depending on the products you sell, your brand identity, your customer base, and your stage of growth.
For example:
- A model for high-ticket items like bedding or bags, where growth comes from clearly communicating added value and building trust
- A model for trend-driven apparel and accessories with frequent new releases, flexibly adjusting exposure and pricing based on inventory
- A model for a small SKU count of products like supplements, maximizing LTV (Lifetime Value) through subscription purchases
When growth models differ, the KPIs that matter most also differ.
For high-ticket products, customers take longer to make purchasing decisions, so important KPIs include not just revenue, but also the size of the prospect list and the number of wishlist saves. For trend-driven products, the sales of star products are critical to driving top-line revenue, while managing inventory of other products is also key. For subscription models, the balance between customer acquisition cost (CAC) and LTV is paramount.
In this way, identifying the growth model that fits the store and selecting the right KPIs to match it is the starting point for creating a project plan and pursuing growth.
As a side note, up until last year, StoreHero had roughly categorized growth models into about 5–6 types. However, through our daily work with merchants, we've encountered growth paths we hadn't seen before, and our library of growth models has continued to grow.
2. Diligently Search for "Room to Grow" from Three Perspectives
Once the growth model is determined, the next step is to uncover current challenges. We focus on analyzing data from the following three perspectives.
- Customer perspective: We analyze the distribution of customers by annual purchase amount and frequency to discover hidden growth opportunities, such as "Which segments are easiest to grow repeat buyers from?" and "Are we taking the right measures to retain VIP customers?"
- Product perspective: We understand product characteristics through sales pattern variations — including seasonal products and consistently top-selling items. We also review the distribution of SKU counts by product type and order volume to identify products whose appeal has not yet been fully communicated.
- Channel perspective: We analyze data such as sessions, CVR, and average order value for each acquisition channel (ads, social media, CRM, etc.) in comparison with best practices for each channel type. If operations are not aligned with the growth model or product category, we estimate how much improvement switching to the right approach could deliver.
For analysis, we primarily use data from Shopify, Shopify apps, GA4, Search Console, and advertising platforms. At StoreHero, we have a growth platform that integrates with these tools to automatically generate charts that visualize challenges, enabling us to conduct analysis efficiently.
3. Work Backward from Goals to Build a Realistic Business Plan
Once challenges and areas of growth potential are clear, we translate the goals into a concrete business plan. We use a method called "backcasting" — working backward from the target — to build the business plan.
We consider various patterns for how revenue will break down by channel, customer segment, and product at the time of goal achievement, and we adopt the pattern with the highest probability of success. When evaluating patterns, we verify whether the plan is truly achievable.
"Can we truly maintain this CVR and average order value at this traffic level?" "Will the customer distribution shift as intended at this growth rate?"
Drawing on past experience, we simulate specific initiatives and their expected outcomes to build a realistic growth plan.
For example, if advertising, CRM, or site operations are underperforming, we estimate how much revenue improvement could come from fixing them. If products are being shown to audiences that don't match the customer profile, we simulate how much growth correcting that could generate.
The Importance of Clear Communication as a Support Partner
As a support partner, StoreHero believes it is essential to clearly communicate the logic behind achieving the business plan to Shopify merchants.
We sometimes receive requests such as "There are issues with our ads, please improve them" or "The site UI isn't great, we'd like to fix it." However, when we actually analyze the situation, resolving only those isolated issues is often not enough to achieve the target — and we frequently need to take on initiatives that the merchant wasn't initially expecting.
In cases where non-linear growth is the goal, or where structural decline is occurring, high-risk initiatives may also be necessary — such as strengthening operational structures, developing premium or limited-edition products, restructuring the product lineup, or adding and changing production and logistics locations.
There have been times when things didn't go as well as they could have simply because the explanation wasn't thorough enough. With that lesson in mind, we aim to carefully explain the path to achieving the business plan as a support partner, build mutual understanding, and move forward together in the same direction.
4. Confirm the "Implementation and Operations Structure" Needed to Achieve the Business Plan
No matter how detailed the business plan, it means nothing if the implementation and operations can't keep up. A project plan is a business plan translated all the way down to implementation and operations. To make a project succeed, you need to verify that implementation and operations are actually executable.
Recently at StoreHero, we've been going beyond simply executing initiatives within the existing structure — we're also working on automating and streamlining operations and strengthening our organizational capacity to expand what we're able to take on. This is because many Shopify merchants lack the implementation and operations structure needed to achieve their goals.
On the other hand, for areas where merchants excel — such as planning, communication, and content — we ask merchants to prepare their own structure.
5. Translate the Business Plan into an Execution Schedule
In the fifth step, we translate the implementation and operations of each initiative included in the plan into a concrete schedule.
At StoreHero, growth projects determine priority initiatives in 3-month and 6-month cycles, while running the project in an agile manner that allows us to shift focus initiatives as circumstances change. Implementation tasks are managed in weekly sprints.
Multiple initiatives run in parallel, but they are not independent of each other. We also factor in the interdependencies — where the results of one initiative enhance the performance of another — when determining the schedule.
Each initiative is optimized through the steps of planning, implementation, operations, and verification/improvement. Once an initiative has been refined through multiple cycles of testing and improvement and its impact maximized, it transitions to automated operations with only periodic monitoring.
Summary
In this article, we introduced the 5 steps that StoreHero practices for creating a growth project plan. The key to creating a growth project plan is to build the business plan and project plan starting from critical challenges. The 5 steps introduced here are based on that philosophy.
- Identify the growth model that fits your business and understand the framework best suited for scaling.
- Thoroughly analyze data from three perspectives (customers, products, and channels) to uncover critical challenges and areas of growth potential.
- Work backward from your goals to create a highly feasible business plan that accounts for challenges and growth opportunities.
- Build a structure with automation and operational efficiency in mind to ensure the business plan can be reliably executed.
- Factor in the dependencies between initiatives when building the schedule, and advance the project in an agile manner.
This is the approach we use at StoreHero for creating Shopify growth project plans. We hope it serves as a useful reference for you.