Store check
Type the address of a merch store and see how it is doing: how many products are on the shelf, how many are sold out, what they cost, and up to three things to fix.
ReviewedStore check · a sample store
This store is made up, to show what a check gives. No real store is shown here.
On the store’s product feed.
4 of 9 products cannot be bought.
From $18 to $65.
On the shelf
- City Lights Tee
- Logo Tee, Black
- Logo Tee, WhiteSold out
- Pullover Hoodie
- Dad Cap
- Enamel MugSold out
- Gig Poster, A2Sold out
- Tote Bag
- Crewneck SweatshirtSold out
Three things to fix
- 014 of 9 products are sold out
A sold-out product still takes a place on the shelf. Restock it, or move it off the front page and say when it is back.
- 022 products are out of at least one size
A fan whose size has gone cannot buy the piece. Reorder the sizes that are missing.
- 03No product names a tour
If the act has dates on sale, put a piece with the tour’s name on it in the store.
Found in order
- Something new was added in the last six months.
- Every product has a description.
How the check works
The check opens the store once, the way a visitor would, and reads two things: its front page, and the list of products that a Shopify store publishes. From those it counts the shelf, the share of it that cannot be bought and the range of prices, and it looks for up to three things worth fixing.
What it reads
- The product feed
- A Shopify store publishes a list of its products at a fixed address. The check reads the first 250, each with its sizes, its prices, its photos and whether it can be bought. A store that fills the list is shown as “250+”.
- The front page
- Where there is no feed, the check counts the products linked on the store’s front page. That count is a floor, so it is shown with a plus.
- One collection
- If the address you type is one collection in a larger shop, only that collection is counted.
Divini’s own dataDivini’s own reading of the public product feed on Shopify stores. One request returns 250 products at most. · checked
Sold out, and the filter that only says so
A product counts as sold out when not one of its sizes or options can be bought. A product with one size gone is not sold out: it is counted as out of at least one size.
Counting the words “sold out” on a page gets this wrong. A Shopify store lets a shopper filter by availability, and that filter prints “Out of stock” on a shelf where nothing is. Our own pipeline once read a store with eight products, all of them in stock, as partly sold out that way.
So the check reads each product’s own stock from the feed. Where there is no feed, it reads the count the filter gives, such as “In stock (8), Out of stock (0)”. It never counts the filter’s label as a product.
Divini’s own dataDivini’s own pipeline. The store that was misread is kept as a test of the check, and is not named. · checked
The things to fix
The check looks for nine things, in the order below, and reports the first three it finds. Each one is a count from the store, followed by what to do about it. If it finds fewer than three it says so, and lists what it found in order.
| It looks for | It says so when |
|---|---|
| Products that are sold out | Any product cannot be bought |
| Sizes that have gone | 3 products on sale, or 15% of them, are out of a size |
| A piece for the tour | No product is named for a tour |
| Anything new | Nothing has been added for 180 days |
| Descriptions | 25% of products or more have none |
| More than one kind of product | 80% or more are one kind, on a shelf of 5 or more |
| A shelf worth coming back to | The store has 4 products or fewer |
| Something small to buy | Nothing costs less than 25 dollars, pounds or euros |
| Photos | 50% of products or more show one photo or none |
Divini’s own dataDivini’s own rules of thumb. They are judgement, not measured data, and the advice beside each fix is our view. · checked
What the check does not do
- It does not sign in, add anything to a basket or buy anything.
- It does not run the store’s scripts, so a shelf that is drawn by scripts shows it little.
- It reads one page and one feed, once. It does not crawl the store.
- It reads one store at a time, so at a busy moment yours waits its turn.
- It keeps a store’s result for 24 hours, and does not read the store again in that time.
- It does not fetch an address that is not on the public internet.
Divini’s own dataThe check’s own settings. · checked
What it cannot see
- Sales. A shelf that sells and a shelf nobody buys from look the same.
- Stock that is held and not listed, such as boxes kept back for a tour.
- A store behind a password, or behind a check for robots.
- Whether the prices suit the act. It gives the range and no more.
For a reading of the store by a person, with the tour and the audience in view, send us its address with the form beside the result, or book a call.