This audit isn’t about your reorder rate. It’s about the steps before it: whether you know who used the product, how fast, what told them to, and whether the reasons they stay are ones they’d be glad of.

Have your order data, your post-purchase emails and texts, your survey tool and a box packed exactly as a customer gets it. Score each check 0 to 2: 0 if it failed or nobody can answer it, 1 if partly true, 2 if clean. “We think most people use it” scores 0.

If you can’t say who used it, you can’t say why they came back.

The twelve checks

1. You know what share of first-time buyers used the product · 4 minLook at: Any signal of use: a survey question, a QR scan, an app or device activation, a refill, a support contact.
   Good: You can say what share of last quarter’s first-time buyers used the product within 14 days of delivery, and how you know.
   Cost if wrong: You treat a usage problem as a messaging problem and send more reorder emails to people who never opened the box.
   Read next: Time to First Use
2. Time to first use is tracked by monthly cohort · 3 minLook at: Your reporting.
   Good: A median days-to-first-use figure for each monthly cohort of first-time buyers, measured from delivery.
   Cost if wrong: A packaging or shipping change slows first use and nobody notices for a quarter.
   Read next: Time to First Use
3. Repeat rate is split by used and not used · 4 minLook at: Your repeat-rate report.
   Good: The 90- or 180-day repeat rate shown separately for early users and non-users, with the gap written down.
   Cost if wrong: You can’t size the prize, so first-use work loses every budget fight to acquisition.
   Read next: Unused Product Doesn’t Come Back
4. You know why unused product sits · 4 minLook at: Survey answers and support tickets from buyers who hadn’t used it by day 14.
   Good: The top three reasons, in customers’ words, with rough shares.
   Cost if wrong: You fix the wrong thing. “Still finishing my old one” and “not sure how to start” need different fixes.
   Read next: Why It Sits in the Cupboard
5. There is one scripted first move · 4 minLook at: The box you packed, opened as a customer would.
   Good: The first thing they see tells them one action to take first, in one sentence, with when and where.
   Cost if wrong: A booklet of ten tips, read by few and acted on by fewer.
   Read next: The One Scripted First Move
6. You ask for a when-and-where plan · 3 minLook at: Your order confirmation page and delivery messages.
   Good: Somewhere, the buyer is asked when and where they’ll first use it, and can answer in one tap.
   Cost if wrong: You skip one of the few behavior-change prompts with strong field evidence for one-time actions.
   Read next: If-Then Plans
7. A cue in the box ties use to a place or moment · 3 minLook at: The box again.
   Good: Something physical is meant to stay where the product is used (a card for the mirror, a scoop in the bag, a tag on the leash) and names the moment.
   Cost if wrong: The only reminders live in an inbox the customer doesn’t check at the sink.
   Read next: Cues in the Box
8. Product education is spaced over the first weeks · 4 minLook at: Send dates of every post-purchase message about using the product.
   Good: Teaching spread over at least four weeks, each message tied to the next thing the customer needs to do, not all sent in the first three days.
   Cost if wrong: Everything arrives before the product does, and is forgotten by the time it matters.
   Read next: Spaced, Not Stacked
9. The survey asks about use, and has a holdout · 3 minLook at: Your post-purchase survey and who gets it.
   Good: One question about whether and how they’ve used it, and a random slice of buyers who don’t get the survey so you can see what asking does.
   Cost if wrong: You measure use with a tool that changes use, and can’t tell by how much.
   Read next: The Question That Changes Behavior
10. Reorder is one tap, with preferences saved · 4 minLook at: Your reorder email or text, on a phone, as a logged-out customer.
    Good: One tap lands on a cart with the same size, scent, shade or flavor, and checkout remembers the address and payment.
    Cost if wrong: Every reorder is a fresh search, and a fresh chance to find someone else.
    Read next: Captivity Without Resentment
11. Captivity sources are audited, and none is resented · 5 minLook at: Why your best customers stay, and what cancel reasons and reviews say about leaving.
    Good: You can name which of habit, search costs and switching costs you have, and nothing customers lose by leaving is a penalty you added.
    Cost if wrong: You build lock-in that works until a competitor, a regulator or a viral review finds it.
    Read next: Three Kinds of Captivity
12. First-use numbers are on the weekly page · 3 minLook at: Your weekly report.
    Good: First use by day 7 and day 14, and the used-versus-unused repeat gap, sit next to revenue and reorder rate, with an owner.
    Cost if wrong: The number nobody watches is the one that moves first.
    Read next: The First-Use Scorecard

Score as you go; your band appears when all twelve are in.

Read your score

Checks 1 to 3 are measurement, and they decide how much the rest is worth. A brand scoring 2 on the box checks and 0 on measurement has done work it can’t defend. Fix measurement first.