The 5-Step eCommerce Growth Plan to Grow Your Store Without Wasting Money

Jason Chappel
5 days ago
11 min read

Want to see exactly how to build an eCommerce growth plan that works in the real world?

In this episode of Clicked Off, Jason shares a step-by-step framework to plan profitable growth for your eCommerce brand.

If you’ve ever set vague goals for your online store, like “we want more sales” or “we just want to grow,” this episode will completely change the way you think about your eCommerce growth.

Jason breaks down exactly how to define what growth means for your eCommerce brand, how to map out a realistic route to get there, and make sure profit is baked in from the start, not treated as an afterthought.

Using a simple 5-step method, you’ll learn how to:

Define clear, measurable growth goals that actually move the needle
Break down your revenue targets into orders, traffic, and spend
Separate variable and fixed costs to build an accurate cost base
Reverse-engineer your marketing budget so it’s rooted in real numbers
Sanity-check your goals to make sure your plan won’t break your cash flow or operations

This isn’t theory – it’s the same process Jason has used to help eCommerce brands scale to over £50M, without burning cash or guessing what to do next. Whether you’re working toward a sale, planning for long-term sustainability, or simply trying to stop being busy but broke, you’ll finish this episode with a practical roadmap you can start using today.

Key Takeaway

By the end of this episode, you’ll know exactly how to build a realistic, profit-focused growth plan for your eCommerce business. You’ll walk away with the tools to forecast sales, define your marketing budget, and grow sustainably – without relying on guesswork or vanity metrics.

Who this episode is for

This episode is ideal for:

DTC founders and eCommerce managers who want to scale profitably, not just chase revenue.
Early-stage brands looking to turn ambition into an actionable, numbers-driven eCommerce growth plan.
7–8 figure eCommerce brands ready to align marketing, operations, and finance around profit and sustainability.

If you’re ready to stop being busy but broke and start growing your eCommerce store with confidence, this episode will show you how to do it step-by-step.

What you’ll learn in this episode

How to grow your eCommerce brand profitably.
eCommerce growth strategy for small & large brands.
How to plan for eCommerce sales growth.
Setting realistic revenue, profit, and traffic goals.
Profit forecasting for eCommerce stores.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Join my Skool community: eCommerce Growth Made Easy for community with other eCommerce founders, tools, calculators & training.

Follow Jason Chappel on LinkedIn.

Transcript

Welcome to Clicked Off – the place for eCommerce merchants who want growth without the guesswork.

I’m Jason Chappel, founder of Defiant and creator of eCommerce Growth Made Easy. Over the years I’ve helped countless eCommerce brands grow, working with businesses all the way from 0 to over 50M.

Each week, I’ll break down what’s working, what’s not, and how you can grow smarter without the fluff.

Now, I actually tried to record this episode yesterday. I’d set up, got myself comfortable, mic on… and then this thunderstorm rolled in, knocked the power out, and I ended up sat in the dark. Anyways we’re back, power on, mic’s up, so let’s get started.

Today we’re talking about planning for growth.

And I mean actual planning, not goal setting, or wishing.

By the end of this episode you will have a plan for growth that you will be able to go away and start executing TODAY!

So, if you want to grow your eCommerce brand, the first question you need to ask yourself is:

What does growth actually mean for you?

When I ask founders this, I’m usually met with silence, Or vague answers like:

More sales.

Or More orders.

And for the ones that stay silent, that usually means they don’t know or as one founder said to me once - I just want more!

Growth often feels like one of those things that we should be doing. And just for the record, you 100% should be planning for growth. But here’s the thing: you can’t hit a target that you haven’t defined.

So, think about it like this: A brand I spoke to earlier this year said their goal was “more sales.” Sounds reasonable, right?

But when we dug deeper, it turned out what they really wanted was profit growth.

They were already doing healthy revenue numbers, but after costs? They had almost nothing left.

They didn’t need more orders; they needed better ones.

And that’s the first mental shift I want you to make: stop chasing “more” and start defining “what.”

So I promised you this would be a practical episode, and now you’ve got some work to do.

Grab yourself a notebook or open a up a fresh document somewhere and write down these 4 questions:

What does growth mean for you?

It could be anything

Increased Revenue?
Increased Profit?
More customers?

There’s no wrong answer – but you can only pick one. Remember, I want to get you unstuck, so let’s not chase too many rabbits.

The next question is: What’s your timeline for that growth?

This year?

Next year?

In the next 3 years?

Be realistic, if it’s a big goal are you going to hit it this year or is that a 3 year goal that we need to chunk down into something smaller?

Okay, Question 3 is:

Are you working toward a sale or long-term sustainability?

These 2 things might sound similar, but how you answer changes everything. This will impact the moves that you make with your business. If you’re looking to grow and operate your business for the long haul, you’re going to make some very different moves to someone who is looking to exit their business in the next 3 years.

And the last question you need to ask yourself is: What’s most important to you right now?

Speed?

Profit?

Cash flow?

Market share?

You can adjust these from year to year as the business evolves and changes, but you need to focus for that period of time on one goal for growth.

Think of this like planning a journey or reading a map.

First, you need to know where you are. Without that, you can’t plan your route.

Then, you decide where you want to get to. For some of you, that might be just down the road: steady, manageable growth. For others, it’s the equivalent of crossing the country, a big, ambitious leap.

Next, you set your timeline. When do you want to get there? That choice changes everything about the route you take.

In the real world, you’ve got options: you could fly and get there fast, but it’s expensive.

Or you could drive and pace yourself.

You could even cycle or walk, taking it slow and steady.

Each option has trade-offs around speed, cost, and effort.

And along the way, you need to plan stops for fuel, food, and rest. In business, those “stops” are things like cash flow, inventory, and staffing – all the things that keep you moving.

Without this map?

You’re like the founder who just wanted more! Moving, but who knows if it’s in the right direction, hoping you’ll eventually end up somewhere good.

With it, you’re in control.

Take some time here to answer these questions and decide what you want for your brand.

And once you’ve got these, you’ll be ready to get started creating your own growth map.

Now, before we start planning anything, you need to know your costs.

I’m afraid this isn’t sexy, but it is essential. And I’ll make it as painless as possible.

We’re going to start by splitting your costs into two types:

Variable costs and fixed costs.

Your Variable costs are the ones that only happen when you make a sale, think: shipping, transaction fees, fulfilment, pick and pack, those sorts of things.

And Fixed costs are costs that happen every month, no matter what. So: salaries, rent, warehousing, insurance. That sort of stuff.

Now, the next action for you to take is to create two lists in a spreadsheet:

List every variable cost you have, so the costs you pay only when you sell something in one column.

And list every fixed cost you pay no matter what, in another column.

Be honest. And don’t forget things like:

Agency retainers

Email/SMS platform costs

And Your own time.

This is your cost base. It’s what you need to cover just to stay afloat.

It’s no different from your household budgeting – you wouldn’t spend money renovating without knowing your monthly mortgage or rent costs and your grocery bills. Don’t try to grow your eCom store without first knowing all your costs.

Once you know your costs and your goals, it’s time to connect the dots.

Now, don’t panic – we’re going to keep it simple, and I’ll walk you through it step by step.

Here’s what you need:

Your revenue target (how much you want to sell in the next 12 months)
Your COGS percentage (what percentage of revenue goes to producing or buying your products)
Your fixed monthly costs or OPEX
Your variable costs per order
And your target profit margin (how much of that revenue you actually want to keep as net profit).

Now here’s where the magic happens:

We’re going to reverse-engineer your growth plan in 5 easy steps.

And I promosied you a a practical episode, so here it is.

You might want to hit pause after each section so that you can run your own numbers, then hit play once you’re ready to move on.

So, Step 1:

We’re going to break your revenue target into orders

I’ll give you an example so that you can do this for yourself, but feel free to write this down and calculate with me.

Let’s say your revenue target for the year is 1M.And to make the maths easy, your average order value is 100.

We’re going to divide your revenue by your average order value to give us the total number of orders you’ll need to hit.

So that’s 1,000,000 ÷ 100 which gives us 10,000 orders

Already, you can start to see what needs to happen. If you want to do a million this year, you need 10,000 orders. Which, depending on what you did last year, might be a huge leap or a small jump, but one of the questions that you might want to ask yourself is: do I have enough cash to cover the stock needed for 10,000 orders, but we’ll come onto that.

Step 2:

We’re going to Convert your orders into website traffic

Now that you know how many orders you’ll need to hit your goal, let’s figure out how many website visitors it will take.

Look at your current conversion rate. You can find this in your Google Analytics, Shopify, or any other platform you’re using’s dashboard

For this, let’s say it’s 2%.

If you need 10,000 orders to hit your 1M revenue goal, and 2% of visitors convert, here’s the maths for the traffic you’ll need to deliver:10,000 orders ÷ 0.02 (the decimal version of 2%) means you’ll need 500,000 website visitors

If that number feels huge, don’t panic. This is why we do this exercise: to see whether the growth goal you’ve set matches the traffic you can realistically generate.

If 500,000 visitors feels impossible, there’s 3 things you can do:

You can either Improve your conversion rate,
Increase average order value (so you need fewer orders), or
Adjust your revenue goal.

So let’s move on to step step 3:

And this is one of the most important, and often most overlooked steps when it comes to building your growth map.

Profit.

Now a lot of people leave this until the end, but I want you to get paid, and not leave it as an afterthought, so I’m bringing it up the agenda!

Profit needs to be built into your plan from day one, not something you hope will appear at the end of the year when all is said and done.

And it’s really easy to account for

Start with your forecasted revenue.

So in my example this was $1M

And then decide on your net profit target as a percentage of that revenue.

If I go for 10%, I’m earmarking $100,000 that I’m looking to make AND KEEP at the end of the year.

This approach flips the usual mindset on its head. Instead of “profit is what’s left,” you’re saying:

“This is how much profit I want, and I’ll build my business around it.”

If, when you run the numbers, your profit target leaves you feeling tight elsewhere like marketing (we’ll talk about that next), that’s a signal – not to cut profit, but to revisit other areas:

Can any of your fixed costs be reduced?
Do you need to renegotiate your product costs?
Or is your timeline too aggressive?

Pushing your profit up the agenda helps keeps you from slipping into the “busy but broke” trap that is so easy to yourself in.

The place where sales are growing, but you’ve got nothing to show for it. And if you don’t ring-fence profit first, marketing and costs will expand to fill the gap and you’ll end up working for free.

So, Now that you’ve locked in your profit target, it’s time for step 4.

Working out your marketing budget.

The maths should be getting easier now, and the simple answer to this goes like this:

Subtract your COGS, Fixed Costs, and Profit Target from your revenue goal.

Multiply your variable costs by the number of orders you’re forecasting, and subtract them too. This will give you your marketing budget for the year.

So going back to my example, I’m going to subtract my COGS at 70% gross margin from my revenue target of 1M, leaving me 700,000.

I’m then going to take my fixed costs of say 200,000 from that, bringing me down to 500,000.

Next I subtract my desired profit of 10% or 100,000, giving me 400,000

And finally my variable costs work out at say $10 per order, which I multiply by the amount of orders I need to hit my target, which for me was 10,000. Giving me a total variable cost for the year of 100,000.

When I take that from the 400,000 I had, I’m left with 300,000 to spend on marketing.

This is the pot you’ll use to fund all of your marketing – both new customer acquisition and retention.

It’s not just ads; it covers everything you spend to attract, convert, and keep customers. So all of the tools you use, agency fees, staff that work in marketing.

This is the step is where things often get real.

By working this way, you’re not guessing at what you can “afford” to spend on marketing. You’re building a budget rooted in your goals and your actual numbers – not vibes or “what everyone else is spending.” And best of all you’ve made sure you’re making a profit!

Let me paint a picture for you around this. Imagine each cost is a slice of your revenue pie: COGS, fixed costs, variables, and profit. Whatever’s left once these slices are gone is your marketing slice. If it feels too thin, you don’t steal from profit – you bake a bigger pie (i.e increase revenue) or try to trim the other slices (or reduce your costs).

This is the moment where your plan goes from aspirational to actionable.

And we’re nearly there: Step 5 is where this exercise earns its keep: sanity-checking your goal.

Ask yourself:

Do you have enough cash to buy stock for this level of orders? If hitting 10,000 orders means you need to order $300k worth of inventory upfront, do you have the cash (or financing) to do it?
Even if you split this down into 3 or 4 orders throughout the year, if you don’t have funds released from your payment provider in time, can you bridge the gap?
What happens to your operational costs if you grow this fast? At higher volumes, you may need more staff, more storage, better fulfilment. Your OPEX will go up, which eats into your margins.
Can your current conversion rate and traffic channels deliver this? If you need 500,000 visitors, but last year you drove 150,000, what’s your plan to close that gap?
Do you need to adjust your goal? This is key. If the forecast says you’d need unrealistic traffic or cash flow to hit your goal, it’s not failure – it’s data. You either adjust your target or adjust the levers.

So, like I promised you at the beginning of the episode, you should have a growth roadmap you can start using today.

If you want to use my forecasting template where I have this broken out for you, head over to eCommerce Growth Made Easy on Skool, where we go deep into this.

We’ve got templates that make this easy, with built-in calculators that tell you:

How much traffic you need

What your breakeven point is

What your Customer Acquisition Costs should be

And how much profit you’ll actually make, all broken out month by month, accounting for your brands specific seasonality and sales cadence.

Plus, I’ll even help you adjust it so you’re building something sustainable, not stressful.

If you want access to those tools and the support that comes with it, come and join us at eCommerce Growth Made Easy.

The link’s in the show notes and it’s free to get started.

And if you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to like, follow or subscribe wherever you listen, it helps massively!

Thanks for joining me and I’ll see you in the next episode.