Frame
- Goal: Break out of three flat months and find which of traffic, conversion or repeat purchase is the weak link.
- Constraints: About 5 hours a week, $300 a month, and a small shop with no mention of a team.
- Decision to make: What to try first, and how to tell within a few weeks whether it worked.
- Out of scope: A rebrand, a new platform, and wholesale at scale.
I couldn't look anything up, so the research below rests on what you told me and general e-commerce knowledge. I've used no outside statistics.
Research
| # | Item | Status | Source or how to check |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sales are flat for 3 months (roughly Jul–Oct) | Known | You said so |
| 2 | Budget is $300 a month and time is 5 hours a week | Known | You said so |
| 3 | It's late October, so the gifting season (Nov–Dec) is close. Candles usually sell best then | Assumed | Compare last year's monthly sales, if you have them |
| 4 | You haven't yet split the problem into traffic, conversion and repeat | Known | You said you're unsure |
| 5 | Your store platform's analytics (Shopify, Etsy, etc.) can give sessions, conversion rate and repeat-customer rate | Assumed | Check the dashboard. Most platforms show all three |
| 6 | The three causes need different fixes, so guessing wrong wastes the budget | Assumed | General principle |
| 7 | Where your current customers come from (search, Instagram, email, marketplace) | Unknown | Traffic-source report |
| 8 | How many past customers you have, and how many bought more than once | Unknown | Order export, 30 minutes |
Flat sales may not be a problem. If the same three months were flat last year, you may just be in the seasonal lull. Checking last year's figures is the first job.
Options
| # | Option | How it works | Main way it fails | Lens |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | One-hour funnel diagnosis | Pull sessions, conversion rate and repeat rate for the last 90 days and compare with the prior 90 and last year | Data is thin or tracking is broken | Smallest version |
| 2 | Email past customers | Send a "holiday order early" note with a small perk to everyone who bought before | List is tiny | Quiet option |
| 3 | Post-purchase email flow | Automate a thank-you, a care tips email and a reorder nudge at about 6 weeks | Takes setup hours, and the payoff is slow | Time shift |
| 4 | Gift bundles and sets | Package 3 candles as a gift set at a higher average order value | Doesn't help if traffic is the problem | Combine |
| 5 | Product page fixes | Better photos, burn time, scent notes and reviews placed above the fold | Conversion may already be fine | Inversion (what makes a visitor leave?) |
| 6 | Small paid ads test | Spend $150 on Meta or Google retargeting and interest ads aimed at gift buyers | Money burned if the page doesn't convert | Remove a constraint |
| 7 | Local and craft markets | Do one holiday market to get names and emails | Costs hours, and the stall fee eats budget | Borrow from another field |
| 8 | Micro-influencer swaps | Send free candles to 10 small creators in home or wellness | Low response rate, and it's hard to track | Change who does the work |
| 9 | Ask 10 customers why they bought | Short message or call, then reuse their words in your copy | Small sample | Quiet option |
| 10 | Subscription or "candle of the month" | Recurring revenue from your best customers | Too much work before the holidays | Extreme user |
Shortlist
Scores run 1–5, and higher is always better. Effort and risk are scored so that 5 means low.
| Option | Effort | Risk | Impact before holidays | Speed | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Funnel diagnosis | 5 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 18 |
| 2 Email past customers | 4 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 17 |
| 5 Product page fixes | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 14 |
| 4 Gift bundles | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 14 |
| 6 Paid ads test | 3 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 12 |
| 3 Post-purchase flow | 2 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 11 |
- Funnel diagnosis: it costs nothing, takes an hour, and tells you which of the other options to spend money on.
- Email past customers: it is the fastest and cheapest way to get sales, and it tests repeat purchase directly.
- Product page fixes (tied with gift bundles): if the diagnosis shows traffic but few purchases, this is where the effort goes. Let the diagnosis break the tie.
Next steps (for the top option)
-
First step (within a day): Export 90 days of data. Write down sessions, conversion rate (orders ÷ sessions), average order value, the share of orders from repeat customers, and the top traffic sources. Compare with the previous 90 days and the same months last year.
-
Cheapest test: Read the numbers like this.
- Sessions are down or flat, and conversion is normal (often 1–3% for small shops, though that's a rough rule of thumb): traffic is the problem.
- Sessions are healthy but conversion is under about 1%: conversion is the problem.
- Both look fine but few orders come from returning buyers: repeat is the problem.
Then send the past-customer email (option 2) in the same week. It costs $0 and gives a second signal.
-
Depends most on: Assumption #5, that your analytics are accurate enough to read. If they aren't, install basic tracking first and use the customer interviews (option 9) in the meantime.
Rough budget once you know the weak link: keep about $100 in reserve for the gift-bundle packaging or photos, and spend up to $150–200 on ads only if traffic is the problem and your product pages already convert.
Open questions
- Which platform do you sell on? A marketplace like Etsy gives different data and levers than your own site. Your dashboard will show it.
- Were these same months flat or slow last year? Last year's order history will tell you.
- How many customers have bought, and how many bought twice? The order export will tell you.
- Is the holiday gifting window your biggest sales period? Last year's November and December sales will show it.
If you send me the three numbers from the diagnosis (sessions, conversion rate, repeat share), I can go deeper on whichever option they point to.
Real run in an isolated directory with only this skill installed. Tools were limited to Skill and Read, so nothing was searched online and the research phase rests on what the user wrote plus general knowledge, which the output says itself. The made-up shop and numbers are example input. The answer is about 1,200 words, longer than the roughly 900 the skill asks for.
하는 일
열린 주제를 네 단계로 이끌고, 긴 아이디어 목록 대신 결론으로 마무리합니다.
작동 방식
- 정리: 목표, 제약, 내려야 할 결정, 범위 밖의 것을 분명히 씁니다.
- 조사: 아는 것, 가정, 모르는 것으로 나누고 각각 출처나 확인 방법을 붙입니다. 사실을 지어내지 않으며, 찾아볼 수 없으면 그렇게 말합니다.
- 발산: 최소 세 가지 관점(역발상, 제약 제거, 최소 버전, 다른 분야에서 빌리기 등)으로 서로 정말 다른 안을 8개 이상 내고, 각 안의 주된 실패 방식을 적습니다.
- 수렴: 사용자의 목표에서 평가 기준을 뽑아 점수를 매기고 상위 3개를 고릅니다. 1순위 안에는 첫 걸음, 가장 저렴한 검증 방법, 가장 크게 의존하는 가정을 제시합니다.
이런 경우에 적합
- 방향이 여러 개일 때 무엇부터 시도할지 결정
- 투입 전에 새 아이디어, 제품, 프로젝트, 계획 탐색
- 혼란스러운 상황에서 사실과 추측을 분리
코드, 명세, PRD 작성에는 맞지 않습니다. 답이 길어질 수 있으니 짧게 원하면 요청하세요.
참고: Skill 본문은 영어입니다.
낮은 위험: 지침만 있고 스크립트 없음, 네트워크 접근 없음, 파일 쓰기 없음. 스스로 자료를 찾아보지 않습니다. 에이전트가 웹 검색이나 지정한 파일 읽기를 할 수 없다면 조사 단계는 사용자가 알려 준 내용과 일반 지식에 기반하며, 출력에서도 그렇게 밝힙니다. 나열되는 사실과 경험적 수치는 확인용 단서로 보고, 검증된 데이터로 받아들이지 마세요.