Performance Audit

Prepared for

Brown Butter Cookie Company

Store performance audit

A read of the store built entirely from its own BigCommerce data. The short version: the shop is busier than a year ago and taking in less money for it, and the clearest path back to growth is a subscription program the store already has but has barely switched on.

The store's homepage. brownbuttercookies.com
01

Executive summary

$61

Average order value, year to date

down 21% from $77 a year ago

Source

54%

of 2025 revenue landed in the final quarter

November and December alone carried 43%

Source

25%

of customers have ordered more than once

69% bought a single time

Source

2%

of customers are active Cookie Club subscribers

362 active subscriptions, but 65% lifetime churn

Source

Source

02

Problems

Problem 01

Average order value has fallen 21%

Year to date the store took 2,580 orders against 2,383 a year ago, up 8%. Revenue over the same period fell from $184,076 to $157,568, down 14%. The gap is almost entirely order size: average order value dropped from $77 to $61, and merchandising shows the same at the item level, average item price falling 29% from $30 to $21.

A drop this clean, arriving with a platform migration, usually points to one of three things:

  • a pricing or discount rule that did not carry across,
  • a changed free-shipping threshold,
  • product-page cross-sells and upsells that stopped firing.

One note: these totals include wholesale, which is small and falling on its own. Strip it out and the direct-to-consumer order-value drop still holds at about 18%.

Source

Problem 02

Revenue is concentrated in the fourth quarter

Cookies are a holiday gift, and the revenue shows it. In 2025, 54% of the year's $489,416 arrived in the fourth quarter, and 43% in November and December alone. January through September runs thin by comparison. That concentration is a cash-flow risk every year, and it is the single clearest reason to build subscriptions, which bill through the quiet months by design.

$0 $55k $111k Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
20252026 to date
Monthly revenue. The fourth quarter towers over the rest of the year, and 2026 is tracking below 2025 in most months.
Source

Problem 03

The funnel and repeat rate both leak

Of 98,395 visits in the last year, only 22,710 reached a product page, 10,299 added to cart, and 4,203 bought. That is a 59% cart abandonment rate, and only 23% of visitors ever see a product. Retention leaks too: 69% of customers order once and never return. Both are fixable with flows the store does not run today.

Source

How often customers order

1 order
6,92869%
2 orders
1,01610%
3–5 orders
9429%
6–10 orders
3273%
11–20 orders
1451%
20+ orders
300%
Nearly seven in ten customers buy once. The loyal tail (three or more orders) is small but heavy: it places 50% of all orders.
Source

The funnel, stage by stage

Visited
98,395
Viewed a product
22,71023% of visits
Added to cart
10,299
Purchased
4,2034% of visits
Every stage sheds volume. The last bar is the business: 4,203 buyers from 98,395 visits.
Source
03

Opportunities

Opportunity 01

Repeat demand already exists outside the subscription

The Cookie Club runs on Recharge and has 362 active subscriptions across roughly 199 subscribers, about 2% of the customer base, bringing in around $3,355 a month (near 9% of revenue). Underneath that, 1,265 customers have ordered three or more times and are not subscribers. They already reorder by hand. Converting them is the shortest path to the growth goal, because the demand is already proven.

On the leak: growing the base is only half the job. Of every subscription ever created, 65% have already ended (662 of 1,024), and Recharge's own setup score sits at 18%. The top cancel reasons are too expensive and more than I need (the 74% quarterly cadence may be too much for some), plus failed payments behind about 1 in 10 cancellations. Tightening payment retries and right-sizing frequency keeps the subscribers that acquisition brings in.

9%
of revenue is recurring today

1,265

proven repeat buyers not yet in the Cookie Club

Source

Opportunity 02

A small core places most of the orders

Order history concentrates hard. The top 15% of customers by order count place 50% of all orders, and the top 10% place 42%. A small core behaves like subscribers without the label. Protecting and widening this core is worth more than chasing first-time buyers who mostly never come back.

Top 1% of customers
12% of orders
Top 5% of customers
30% of orders
Top 10% of customers
42% of orders
Top 15% of customers
50% of orders
Share of all orders placed by the most frequent customers. The curve is steep, which is exactly the shape a subscription program is built to capture.
Source

Opportunity 03

Bundles and gifts raise the basket

The best sellers point to two levers for the order-value problem. Bundles like Best of Both and Favorite Things Trio, and gift formats like the Red Box, sit high on the revenue list despite modest order counts, because each one carries a larger basket. Leaning into gifting occasions and making bundles easier to find plays to what already sells.

  1. Original Dozen core $33,897
  2. Best of Both bundle $13,164
  3. Cookie Club - Two Dozen Quarterly sub $13,141
  4. Original Dozen Case wholesale $13,106
  5. Favorite Things Trio Half Dozen bundle $12,979
  6. Original Dozen in Red Box gift $11,700
Source

Opportunity 04

Email is a big engine that has gone quiet, and SMS is untapped

Email is one of the store's largest revenue drivers and its most under-used asset at once. Omnisend attributes 41% of revenue to email over the last year, $203,565, split almost evenly between campaigns ($110,499) and automations ($93,067). That runs off a list of 12,359 email subscribers the store already owns.

Two things stand out:

  • The program has cooled. The last 30 days show only 9% attributed, so sending slowed right as revenue dipped.
  • The other channels are empty. SMS has 1 subscriber and push has 0, so two channels Omnisend already supports are producing nothing.

This list is the direct route to the opportunities above: it is how the 1,265 repeat buyers get asked to join the Cookie Club, and how the 69% who bought once get a reason to return.

04

Projections

Three levers drive the model: restoring order value toward last year's level, converting proven repeat buyers into subscribers, and recovering a share of abandoned carts. The baseline is the store's revenue over the trailing twelve months (August 19, 2025 to August 18, 2026), $462,781.

Today
$462,781
Conservative
$573,781+24%
Optimistic
$735,781+59%
Annual revenue at today's run rate, then with the levers working at a conservative and an optimistic setting.

HM3 model

LeverConservativeOptimistic
Restore average order value AOV fell from $77 to $61 year to date. Recover part of that on ~5,500 orders a year. +$44,000 +$89,000
Convert proven repeat buyers to Cookie Club 1,265 customers already reorder 3+ times without a subscription. Convert 10% to 25% at ~$300–$350/yr. +$42,000 +$123,000
Recover abandoned carts 6,096 carts are abandoned a year (59%). Recover 5% to 12% at the ~$84 order value. +$25,000 +$61,000
Added revenue a year +$111,000 +$273,000
05

Solution

Eight moves, each tied to a finding above and sequenced by how quickly it pays back. The first five are ninety-day work; the last three build the durable base.

  1. 01

    Repair the average order value drop

    Problem 1 90 days

    Order count is up 8% year to date while revenue is down 14%. The whole gap is order size. Audit what changed in the migration: bundle pricing, the free-shipping threshold, and product-page cross-sells are the usual culprits when average item price falls from $30 to $21.

  2. 02

    Reactivate email and switch on SMS

    Opportunity 4 90 days

    Email already drives 41% of revenue but has cooled to 9% in the last month. Return to a steady send calendar against the 12,359-subscriber list, and turn on SMS, which sits at 1 subscriber today. It is the same list that powers steps 3 and 7, so the work compounds.

  3. 03

    Turn manual reorderers into subscribers

    Opportunity 1 90 days

    1,265 customers reorder three or more times and none are in the Cookie Club. Target them directly with a one-step offer to subscribe to the box they already buy. This is the fastest path to the subscription growth goal because the demand is already proven.

  4. 04

    Plug the subscription leak

    Opportunity 1 90 days

    65% of every subscription ever created has already cancelled or expired, and about 1 in 10 cancellations are failed payments. Tighten dunning and payment retries to recover involuntary churn, and offer a lighter or less frequent box to the "too much" and "too expensive" cancellers before they leave. Retention is the other half of the growth goal.

  5. 05

    Recover more carts

    Problem 3 90 days

    59% of carts are abandoned, roughly 6,096 a year. Automations already recover some; tightening the cart and browse-abandonment flows on the ~$84 order value returns more of what is left on the table.

  6. 06

    Fill the ten-month trough

    Problem 2 12 months

    November and December carry 43% of annual revenue; the rest of the year runs thin. Subscriptions bill in the quiet months by design, so every conversion smooths cash flow. Pair off-season gifting occasions (spring, graduation, summer) with the gift SKUs that already sell.

  7. 07

    Open the top of the funnel

    Problem 3 12 months

    Only 23% of visitors reach a product page. Merchandising, search, and landing experience decide whether the other 77% ever see something to buy. Small gains here compound through every stage below.

  8. 08

    Win the second order

    Opportunity 1 12 months

    69% of customers buy once and never return. A post-purchase sequence that earns the second order lifts the whole retention curve and feeds the subscription pipeline.

Targets worth holding to

  • 90 days. Average order value recovering toward $77, a cart-recovery flow live, and a first conversion campaign to the 1,265 repeat buyers outside the Club.
  • 12 months. Subscription revenue near 13% of the total, repeat rate moving from 25% toward 30%, and a lighter revenue dip outside the fourth quarter.