If your Meta ads have stopped working, the ads are usually not the problem. In most of the brands we audit, the spend was fine. The foundation underneath it was not.

The pixel is double-firing, or it stopped matching reality months ago and nobody noticed. The product page loses mobile shoppers at the same scroll depth every time. The welcome flow was switched on two years ago and has not been touched since. None of that shows up in the ad account, so the ad account takes the blame and the budget goes up.

This checklist is the first two weeks of every Marketing Launch Partners engagement, written so you can run it yourself. It covers 21 checks in the order we run them: tracking first, then the store, then retention. Most take five minutes with access you already have. Work through it with your Shopify admin, Meta Events Manager, Google Analytics and your email platform open, mark each check pass or fail, and you will know by the end whether your growth problem is the spend or the foundation.

Want the printable version? The PDF has every check as a worksheet, the five-minute steps for each one, and the scoring at the end. Get the Foundation Checklist PDF

Is your tracking telling the truth?

Tracking comes first because every decision after it depends on it. If the data is wrong, every optimization is a guess wearing the costume of data.

1. Is the Meta pixel firing once per event? Open Meta Events Manager and look at your Purchase event. Then place a test order or use the Meta Pixel Helper browser extension on your thank-you page. Pass if each purchase registers once. Fail if you see duplicates, which usually means the pixel is installed twice, once by the Shopify integration and once in the theme code.
2. Is Conversions API running alongside the pixel? In Events Manager, open your dataset and check the connection method for Purchase. Pass if you see both browser and server events. Browser-only tracking misses a meaningful share of purchases on iPhones and ad-blocked browsers.
3. Is your event match quality strong? In Events Manager, open the Purchase event and find its event match quality score. Pass if it reads Good or Great. A low score usually means customer details such as email and phone are not being passed with the event, so Meta cannot connect sales to the people who saw your ads.
4. Do Shopify and Meta roughly agree on sales? Pick the last 30 days. Compare total orders in Shopify with purchases Meta reports across all campaigns. Pass if they sit in a believable range of each other, allowing for organic sales Meta never touched. Fail if Meta claims more purchases than your store actually had.
5. Is Google Analytics counting each purchase once? In GA4, compare purchases for last month with your Shopify order count. Pass if they are close. Fail if GA4 shows roughly double, which usually means two Google tags are running, often the Shopify Google app plus a manually added tag.
6. Is consent mode set up correctly? If you sell to shoppers in places with cookie consent rules, check that your consent banner passes consent signals to Google and Meta. Pass if declined visitors are handled without breaking tracking for everyone else.
7. If you run Google Ads, is there a conversion tag? In Google Ads, open Goals, then Conversions. Pass if a Purchase conversion is active and recording. Fail if Shopping or Performance Max campaigns are running with no purchase conversion, because Google has nothing to optimize toward.

Is your store ready to convert paid traffic?

Paid traffic is expensive traffic. If the store leaks, more spend just pours more visitors through the same hole.

8. Where do mobile shoppers drop off on your top product page? Most paid traffic arrives on a phone. If you have a session recording or heatmap tool such as Microsoft Clarity, watch ten mobile sessions on your best-selling product page. Pass if shoppers reach the add-to-cart button and the reviews. Fail if most leave at the same point, which usually marks a slow image, a confusing option picker or a wall of text.
9. How fast does that page load on a phone? Run the page through Google PageSpeed Insights on mobile. Pass if it loads in a reasonable time and the main image appears quickly. Then count your installed apps in Shopify. Every app you no longer use can still be loading code on every page.
10. Does your free-shipping threshold make sense against your prices? Compare the threshold with your hero product's price. Pass if a typical order can reach it with one natural add-on. Fail if the threshold sits just above your main product with nothing priced to bridge the gap, because shoppers either abandon or buy a worse combination to get there.
11. Is there any way to buy more than one? Check for a bundle, a quantity break, a subscribe-and-save option, or a product recommendation in the cart. Pass if at least one exists. A store where every order is a single unit has capped its own average order value.
12. Do your reviews show up in Google? Search your brand plus your hero product name. Pass if star ratings appear under your listing. Fail if they do not, which usually means your product schema is missing its rating data, so the reviews you worked for are invisible in search.
13. How many steps does it take to buy? On your phone, go from the homepage to a completed checkout. Pass if it takes three or four taps to reach checkout with no surprises. Fail if a pop-up, a forced account, or an unexpected shipping cost appears along the way.
14. Does your email signup ask for too much? Look at your signup form. Pass if it asks for an email, and perhaps a phone number as an optional second step. Every extra required field lowers the number of people who join.

Will your customers come back?

Acquisition only pays when customers buy again. Retention is where a brand earns back what it spent to get them.

15. Does a welcome flow exist, and has anyone touched it this year? In your email platform, open your flows. Pass if a welcome series is live and was reviewed recently. Fail if it was switched on years ago and still mentions an old offer or a product you no longer sell.
16. Are abandoned browse and abandoned cart flows both running? These are two different flows. Abandoned cart catches people who added a product; abandoned browse catches people who looked and left. Pass if both are live and sending.
17. Is there a post-purchase flow? Pass if new customers receive something after they buy beyond the shipping confirmation, such as how to use the product, what to expect, or a request for a review.
18. Is there a winback flow for lapsed customers? Pass if customers who have not ordered in a while receive a reason to come back. Without one, every customer who drifts away is simply lost.
19. How much of your revenue comes from email? In your email platform, look at revenue attributed to flows and campaigns over the last 90 days, then compare it with total store revenue. Pass if email is a meaningful, steady share. Fail if it is a sliver, which usually means the flows above are missing or stale.
20. Is your list healthy? Check open rates on recent campaigns and whether you have a sunset policy that stops mailing people who never engage. Pass if engagement is steady and unengaged subscribers are suppressed. Mailing people who never open hurts delivery to the people who do.
21. If your product runs out, do you remind people to reorder? For anything consumable, check whether customers get a replenishment reminder timed to when they are likely to run low. Pass if they do. Fail if repeat purchases rely on customers remembering on their own.

How did you score?

Count your passes out of 21.

Passes	What it means
17 to 21	Your foundation is probably ready for spend. Scaling acquisition should now produce results you can read and trust.
11 to 16	Fix before you scale. You have real gaps, and every dollar added now will be harder to measure and slower to pay back.
0 to 10	Spending more will mostly buy a more expensive version of the same result. The fastest growth available to you is in the foundation, not the ad account.

Whatever your score, fix in the same order as the checklist: tracking first, because you cannot judge any other fix without it, then the store, then retention.

What should you do next?

If you want to work through this with your store open, the PDF version has every check as a worksheet, the five-minute steps, and space to note what you find. Get the Foundation Checklist PDF

If you would rather have someone run it with you, that is exactly what the free Growth Audit is. Thirty minutes, no pitch deck. Linda Singh looks at your store, your paid media and your email setup, and tells you where the gaps are and what to fix first, whether or not you hire Marketing Launch Partners. Plenty of founders take the audit, fix things themselves, and come back later. That is a fine outcome.

Book Your Free Growth Audit