Ecommerce growth · Acquisition, feed quality, conversion, retention
A store can grow revenue and lose money at the same time, and blended ROAS will not tell you. It ignores cost of goods, ignores returns, and averages a profitable category together with one that is subsidising it.
The work here is acquisition, conversion and retention judged on contribution margin — which changes which campaigns you keep.
Experience includes
Usually not in the ad account. Usually in the feed, the margin data or the repeat rate.
Cost of goods and returns brought into reporting so profitability is visible per campaign and per category.
Titles, attributes, images, categorisation, availability accuracy and pricing signals.
Why it matters: feed quality limits Shopping and PMax far more often than bidding does, and is checked far less.
Google Ads and Meta structure, bidding and budget allocation, judged on contribution rather than platform ROAS.
Product page, cart and checkout friction, with drop-off measured by step and device.
Email flows, repeat purchase timing and reactivation — the cheapest growth available to most stores.
Where to push spend and where to stop, based on margin and repeat behaviour rather than on revenue alone.
Budget moves toward products and categories that actually contribute.
Feed improvements make products eligible and competitive in auctions they were quietly losing.
Repeat revenue becomes a managed number rather than a byproduct.
Directional. Category economics and competitive pressure set the ceiling.
01
Action: bring COGS and returns into reporting.
Output: profitability visible per campaign.
02
Action: audit and rebuild Merchant Center data quality.
Output: the constraint removed before spending more.
03
Action: campaign architecture aligned to margin and intent.
Output: readable, controllable spend.
04
Action: attack measured drop-off, highest loss first.
Output: more revenue from the same traffic.
05
Action: lifecycle flows timed to actual repurchase behaviour.
Output: revenue that does not need buying twice.
Averaging a 60% margin category with a 12% margin category produces a number that describes neither. The 12% category can be running at a loss inside a healthy-looking blended figure, indefinitely, because nothing in the reporting surfaces it.
Getting cost of goods into the reporting is usually the single highest-value change available in an ecommerce account, and it is a data task rather than a marketing one.
The store platform matters less than the feed and the data. I work with WooCommerce, Shopify and custom builds through Merchant Center and the ad platforms.
Often, with a strong feed. It needs more careful measurement than standard Shopping because visibility is reduced, so the answer depends on whether your tracking can show what it genuinely adds versus reassigns.
Yes — we start with category-level estimates. Approximate margin data beats none, and it is usually enough to change the decisions.
Yes, as part of retention. Flows and timing, built on actual repurchase intervals rather than a generic schedule.
If blended ROAS is the number the business runs on, there is probably a campaign inside it that is costing you money.