Ecommerce Operations Checklist
Use this checklist to pressure-test your operation before launches, seasonal peaks, and growth campaigns. The objective is to reduce avoidable failures before they become customer-facing incidents.
Where merchants get exposed
- Unclear ownership delays incident response and extends customer impact.
- Weak readiness controls quietly increase refund and support costs.
- No shared KPI cadence means recurring failures stay invisible until they are costly.
Implementation checklist
- Assign one accountable owner for fulfilment, support, refunds, and incident command.
- Define severity tiers and escalation SLAs for post-order incidents.
- Add thresholds for delayed shipment rate, WISMO contacts, and refund spikes.
- Standardize high-impact customer communication templates.
- Run a weekly review of top failure categories with owners.
- Run a monthly postmortem with action-owner follow-through requirements.
- Map every recurring failure to one preventive control in operational readiness.
KPI scorecard to track
- • On-time shipment rate
- • WISMO contact rate
- • Refund rate by reason code
- • Mean time to incident resolution
- • Recurring failure rate
5-day execution sprint
- Day 1: Confirm owners and publish escalation ladder.
- Day 2: Baseline the top 5 operational failure patterns.
- Day 3: Add alert thresholds and communication templates.
- Day 4: Run an incident simulation drill.
- Day 5: Close documented gaps and lock the cadence.