A couple of weekends back I decided to pull out my bean plants.
They were sorta making beans still but the Oregon rains hammered them so much that half were already rotting. Since the rainy season started it'll be unlikely to dry up enough for them to finish.
If I pushed it, I might get a dozen beans or so but it would take hours of hanging, harvesting, hanging, checking, cleaning, etc.
Not worth it.
Similarly some product margins in your Shopify store might be too low to bother with. By the time you pick, pack, ship, and handle refunds/replacements you might end up in the hole. Especially if you offer free shipping.
You might consider getting rid of the product but it could be a popular product that attracts customers who buy others. Either a classic loss leader or a loss leader over the customer's lifetime (e.g. unprofitable at first but profitable later).
Before deciding what to do you'd want to analyze the product to see:
- how many customers come back after buying it, and
- how much those customers are worth.
Both are included in Repeat Customer Insights in the Product Reorders analysis and Nth product analysis.
It could be you need to keep it around.
It could also be that, like my beans, it's just a waste of resources and you can just pull it out.
But you need data to decide.
Directive: Remove unprofitable products that don't attract great customers.
Eric Davis
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