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Case study · direct to consumer beef on Shopify

How a beef brand took its 30-day Shopify sales from $5,110 to $35,812

Slowest 30 days before, Mar 20 to Apr 18, 2026 $5,110
Best 30 days after, Aug 17 to Sep 15, 2026$35,812
7x · Source: Shopify

A direct to consumer beef brand on Shopify sold $5,110 in its slowest 30 days before the work (March 20 to April 18, 2026) and $35,812 in its best 30 days after (August 17 to September 15, 2026), by Shopify's own reports. Google and email went from 24% of sales to 59%. The Facebook ads kept running, moved to warm audiences.

By Herbert Timpson · Updated

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At a glance

Before and after, with the source on every number.

Before is the slowest 30 days the store had before the work, March 20 to April 18, 2026. After is the best 30 days since, August 17 to September 15, 2026. The Facebook numbers compare cold audiences (August 3 to 25, 2026) with warm audiences (August 26 to September 15, 2026).

Total sales in 30 daysBefore$5,110After$35,8127xSource: Shopify, Mar 20 to Apr 18 and Aug 17 to Sep 15, 2026Sales from emailBefore$982After$12,50812.7xSource: Shopify, sales by referrer (Klaviyo), Mar 20 to Apr 18 and Aug 17 to Sep 15, 2026Sales from GoogleBefore$285After$8,66830xSource: Shopify, sales by referrer (Google), Mar 20 to Apr 18 and Aug 17 to Sep 15, 2026First-time buyers in 30 daysBefore19After532.8xSource: Shopify, new customers, Mar 20 to Apr 18 and Aug 17 to Sep 15, 2026Facebook ad cost per website visitCold45¢Warm13¢71% lessSource: Facebook Ads Manager, Aug 3 to 25 and Aug 26 to Sep 15, 2026Facebook visits that completed checkoutCold1 in 1,793Warm1 in 17910xSource: Shopify, sessions by referrer, Aug 3 to 25 and Aug 26 to Sep 15, 2026
The receipts

Five results, each proven the same way.

Every result shows the worst case before the work, what changed, the best case after, where the number comes from, what it does not prove, and how to test your own store.

Result 1 · Sales

Total sales: $5,110 to $35,812 in 30 days

Mar 20 to Apr 18, 2026$5,110
Aug 17 to Sep 15, 2026$35,812
7x
Baseline: the worst case before the work
$5,110 in sales from 27 orders, March 20 to April 18, 2026: the slowest 30 days the store had before the work began on June 4, 2026. Google and email brought in 24% of it.
What we changed
Rewrote product names, titles, descriptions and search snippets around what buyers search, with real weights (August 7 to 30). Built six city landing pages (August 1 and 2). Published the highest-value products to Google (August 24). Put welcome, abandoned cart and browse abandonment emails live (July 28) and replaced a weekly email that was not sending (September 4). Moved the Facebook budget to warm audiences (August 26).
Result: the best case after
$35,812 in sales from 75 orders, August 17 to September 15, 2026, 7 times the baseline. Google and email brought in 59% of it.
Evidence source
Shopify Analytics, Total sales over time and Total sales by referrer, pulled September 16, 2026. Beef shares count at full price on the day the deposit is paid, and the balance invoice that follows is left out, so no sale counts twice.
What this does not prove
This is the slowest 30 days before against the best 30 days after, not an average, which is why every month is in the table below. Beef shares are seasonal, and one September order for two whole shares was $9,480 of the result. The Facebook ads ran in both periods.
Test it on your store
In Shopify, go to Analytics, then Reports, and open Total sales over time. Find your slowest 30 days of the past year and compare them with your last 30. If you take deposits, count the full price on the day of the deposit.
Result 2 · Email

Sales from email: $982 to $12,508 in 30 days

Mar 20 to Apr 18, 2026$982
Aug 17 to Sep 15, 2026$12,508
12.7x
Baseline: the worst case before the work
$982 from 5 orders that came in through an email, 19% of sales, March 20 to April 18, 2026.
What we changed
Built welcome, abandoned cart, browse abandonment, win-back and beef share follow-up emails in Klaviyo (live July 28). Found that the weekly email used a trigger that only fires for people who join after it is switched on, so it reached 13 people in six weeks. Replaced it with a scheduled weekly email (September 4) that reached 484 people on its first send (September 8).
Result: the best case after
$12,508 from 10 orders that came in through an email, 35% of sales, August 17 to September 15, 2026, 12.7 times the baseline.
Evidence source
Shopify Analytics, Total sales by referrer, Klaviyo row, pulled September 16, 2026, beef shares at full price.
What this does not prove
One order was two whole beef shares, $9,480 at full price, placed 17 minutes after the buyer clicked a welcome email. Without it, email brought in $3,028, still 3 times the baseline. Klaviyo credits email with more, 23 orders for the same dates, because it counts orders placed within days of an open or a click.
Test it on your store
In Klaviyo, open each flow and compare recipients over the last 30 days with the size of the list it should reach. Then open Total sales by referrer in Shopify for the same 30 days and find the Klaviyo row. A flow reaching a fraction of its list, or a Klaviyo row near zero, is the place to start.
Result 3 · Google

Sales from Google: $285 to $8,668 in 30 days

Mar 20 to Apr 18, 2026$285
Aug 17 to Sep 15, 2026$8,668
30x
Baseline: the worst case before the work
$285 from 4 orders that came in from Google, March 20 to April 18, 2026. The highest-value products in the catalog had never been published to Google.
What we changed
Rewrote product names, titles, descriptions and search snippets around the terms buyers search, with real weights (August 7 to 30). Built six city landing pages (August 1 and 2). Published the beef share products to the Google channel so they could show in free Shopping listings (August 24). Cleaned up crawl errors and expanded thin product pages to more than 400 words (August 27 to 30).
Result: the best case after
$8,668 from 16 orders that came in from Google, August 17 to September 15, 2026, 30 times the baseline.
Evidence source
Shopify Analytics, Total sales by referrer, Google row, pulled September 16, 2026, beef shares at full price.
What this does not prove
Shopify does not split Google search from free Shopping listings, so this cannot say which sold more. Four of the 16 orders were beef shares, $6,120 at full price. Search Console only began collecting on July 28, 2026, so there is no clicks comparison from before the work.
Test it on your store
In Shopify, open the Google and YouTube channel and check that your best sellers are published to it. In Search Console, open Performance, sort queries by impressions, and note the ones in positions 5 to 15. Then compare the Google row in Total sales by referrer for your last 30 days with your slowest 30.
Result 4 · New customers

First-time buyers: 19 to 53 in 30 days

Mar 20 to Apr 18, 202619
Aug 17 to Sep 15, 202653
2.8x
Baseline: the worst case before the work
19 first-time buyers, March 20 to April 18, 2026.
What we changed
The same work, aimed at people who had never bought: product and city pages written the way new buyers search, the highest-value products on Google, a welcome email that sends, and Facebook ads shown to people who had already visited or engaged.
Result: the best case after
53 first-time buyers, August 17 to September 15, 2026, 2.8 times the baseline.
Evidence source
Shopify Analytics, orders by new or returning customer, pulled September 16, 2026.
What this does not prove
Shopify counts a buyer as new on their first order in this store, which opened in October 2025, so someone who bought from the brand another way before then still counts as new.
Test it on your store
In Shopify, open Total sales over time for your last 30 days and group it by new or returning customer. Do the same for your slowest 30 days. If new customers stay flat while ad spend climbs, the ads are mostly reaching people who would have bought anyway.
Result 5 · Facebook

Facebook: 45¢ to 13¢ a visit, and 10 times the checkouts per visit

Cold, Aug 3 to 25, 20261 in 1,793
Warm, Aug 26 to Sep 15, 20261 in 179
10x
Baseline: cold audiences, before the switch
Cold-audience campaigns, August 3 to 25, 2026: 45¢ per website visit. Shopify logged 5,379 visits from Facebook and Instagram and 3 completed checkouts, 1 in 1,793 visits.
What we changed
Moved the budget to warm audiences, people who had already visited the store or engaged with the brand, with a single box offer (from August 26).
Result: warm audiences, after the switch
13¢ per website visit, 71% less. Shopify logged 3,589 visits from Facebook and Instagram and 20 completed checkouts, 1 in 179 visits, 10 times the rate on cold audiences.
Evidence source
Cost per visit: Facebook Ads Manager. Visits and checkouts: Shopify Analytics, sessions by referrer with completed checkouts, pulled September 16, 2026.
What this does not prove
Both periods fall inside the work, so this proves the switch, not a gain over the ads that ran before June. Facebook visits have converted anywhere from 1 in 71 (March 2026) to 1 in 811 (December 2025). Warm audiences are smaller and wear out, and Shopify's Facebook visits include unpaid posts. The periods are 23 and 21 days.
Test it on your store
In Shopify, open Sessions by referrer and Total sales by referrer for your last 30 days, and divide Facebook's orders by its sessions. In Ads Manager, compare cost per landing page view on cold ad sets and retargeting ad sets. Thousands of visits and a handful of orders means the ads are buying visits, not buyers.
Where it started

Paying for sales the store could have earned.

Facebook was carrying the store

Before the work, the store paid $1,700 a month for Facebook: $1,200 in ad spend and $500 to an ad vendor. In its slowest 30 days, March 20 to April 18, 2026, the whole store sold $5,110.

Google and email were barely on

In those 30 days, Google brought in $285 and email $982, 24% of sales between them. The highest-value products in the catalog, the beef shares, had never been published to Google.

Most visitors were strangers

The store could identify about 0.8 percent of its visitors in the 30 days to August 20, 2026, which capped every email that depends on knowing who is browsing.

Checkout was not the problem

33 of the 41 people who started checkout finished in the 30 days to August 20, 2026, about 80 percent. The sales were being lost before checkout, not at it.

What was done

The Traffic to Sales Method, stage by stage.

01

Stack Check

Shopify, Klaviyo, Search Console, GA4 and Merchant Center were read side by side. That is how the unpublished beef share products, a weekly email that reached 13 people in six weeks, and Facebook visits that almost never bought all surfaced.

02

Get Found

Product names, titles, descriptions and search snippets were rewritten around real searches (August 7 to 30), six city landing pages went live (August 1 and 2), and the beef share products were published to Google (August 24). Sales from Google went from $285 in the slowest 30 days before the work to $8,668 in the best 30 days after.

03

Get Names

Every visitor the store can identify feeds every email after it, and the store could identify about 0.8 percent of its visitors. Sign-up forms went onto the city pages and the beef share pages on August 8.

04

Get Orders

Welcome, abandoned cart, browse abandonment, win-back and beef share emails went live July 28, and a scheduled weekly email replaced a sequence that was not sending on September 4. Sales from email went from $982 to $12,508.

05

Show Proof

Every figure comes from Shopify's own reports, with each order's referring channel, beef shares at full price and balance invoices left out.

Month by month

Every month, including the bad ones.

PeriodSalesOrders First-time buyersFrom emailFrom GoogleFrom Facebook
October 19 to 31, 2025 (store opens)$3,96899$0$590$194
November 2025$11,0872421$0$3,995$4,086
December 2025$13,3461510$0$2,505$710
January 2026$12,574137$2,400$2,500$3,988
February 2026$12,3263015$660$2,465$5,453
March 2026$12,1324836$1,311$374$6,128
April 2026$6,5603425$649$634$2,597
May 2026$8,1183722$581$635$2,048
June 2026 (work begins June 4)$12,5885030$1,481$2,602$2,306
July 2026$4,273226$150$970$1,600
August 2026$18,5735129$2,412$6,431$1,435
September 1 to 15, 2026$21,3014033$10,546$3,033$3,401

Source: Shopify Analytics (ShopifyQL), every order from the store's first on October 19, 2025 through September 15, 2026, pulled September 16, 2026. Sales are Shopify's total sales. Beef shares count at full price on the deposit day, and balance invoices on earlier shares are left out. Email, Google and Facebook are Shopify's referring channel for each order; the rest came in direct or from other sites.

The plain truth

  • Every Shopify figure on this page compares the same two windows: the slowest 30 days before the work (March 20 to April 18, 2026) and the best 30 days after it began (August 17 to September 15, 2026). That shows the range, not the typical month, which is why every month is in the table.
  • July 2026, during the work, was the worst full month on record at $4,273. The ads were paused from July 21 to August 2, and no email campaign went out after July 2.
  • The Facebook ads were paused once and never shut off. They moved to warm audiences on August 26, 2026.
  • Klaviyo credits email with 23 orders from August 17 to September 15, 2026. Shopify traces 10 orders to an email click. This page uses Shopify's count.
  • September figures cover September 1 to 15 only. They are not a forecast.
  • One store is not a promise. Each result above includes a way to test whether the same gap exists in yours.
Straight answers

Questions about this case study.

How much did sales grow for the beef brand in this case study?

Its slowest 30 days before the work, March 20 to April 18, 2026, brought in $5,110. Its best 30 days after, August 17 to September 15, 2026, brought in $35,812, by Shopify's own reports with beef shares at full price. Those are the worst and best stretches, not averages, and the monthly table shows every month.

Where did the growth come from?

Mostly Google and email. In the best 30 days, email brought in $12,508 and Google $8,668, 59% of sales together, up from 24% in the slowest 30 days before the work.

Did the store stop running Facebook ads?

No. The ads moved from cold to warm audiences on August 26, 2026. A website visit cost 13¢ instead of 45¢ in Facebook Ads Manager, and in Shopify 1 in 179 Facebook and Instagram visits completed checkout instead of 1 in 1,793.

Is this a typical result?

No. It is one store. Each result shows what happened there, where the number comes from and what it does not prove, with a way to test whether the same gap exists in your store.

Could your store look like this?

Thirty minutes. I will tell you honestly where your traffic is losing sales.

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