The audit isn’t about whether your prices are too low. It’s about whether you’d know what a rise did, and whether your store already makes loyal customers pay more than strangers.

Open your margins, live discount codes and automations, subscription settings and your last price change. Score each check 0 to 2: 0 if it failed or nobody can answer it, 1 if partly true, 2 if clean.

A price rise you can’t measure is a guess you’ll repeat.

The twelve checks

1. You know contribution per unit for every SKU · 5 minLook at: Your top 20 SKUs by revenue.
   Good: Price minus landed cost, fulfillment, shipping, fees and average discount, in dollars and percent.
   Cost if wrong: You can’t work out how many buyers a rise can lose, so you guess.
   Read next: How Many Customers You Can Lose
2. The rise has a break-even written next to it · 3 minLook at: The plan or spreadsheet for the rise.
   Good: Each SKU’s increase sits next to the volume it can lose and leave contribution flat.
   Cost if wrong: A 10% drop in orders looks like a disaster when it’s a win, or noise when it’s a loss.
   Read next: How Many Customers You Can Lose
3. You know how much of revenue comes from existing customers · 3 minLook at: Last 90 days of revenue, split between first orders and repeat orders.
   Good: Someone can give the split today.
   Cost if wrong: You plan for strangers’ reaction and get your regulars’.
   Read next: The Risk Sits With the Customers You Have
4. The reason is one sentence customers would call fair · 3 minLook at: The draft announcement.
   Good: It names a cost that rose and doesn’t mention demand, competitors or “market conditions.”
   Cost if wrong: A rise that reads as opportunism draws complaints out of proportion to its size.
   Read next: What Customers Call Fair
5. You know which prices customers remember · 4 minLook at: Your SKU list, marked hero, entry product or staple.
   Good: The rise is spread by how well customers know each price, not flat.
   Cost if wrong: The one price everyone knows jumps, and becomes the story.
   Read next: Which Prices to Raise First
6. Your hero product has a tier above it · 3 minLook at: The product page of your best seller.
   Good: A larger, better or bundled version at a higher price that at least one buyer in ten chooses.
   Cost if wrong: The only way to raise average price is to raise the known one.
   Read next: Tiers, Fences and the Price Per Day
7. Subscribers and repeat buyers hear before the site changes · 4 minLook at: Your last price change, or your plan for this one.
   Good: Subscribers get written notice inside your strictest state’s window, in dollars, with a way to cancel; repeat buyers get notice and a chance to buy at the old price.
   Cost if wrong: Loyal customers learn the price from a charge, which some states treat as a violation.
   Read next: Grandfathering and Notice
8. Any grandfathering has a written end date · 2 minLook at: Customers still on old prices.
   Good: You know how many, what they cost a month, and when their price moves.
   Cost if wrong: A kindness becomes a permanent second price list.
   Read next: Grandfathering and Notice
9. No stranger gets a better deal than a customer · 6 minLook at: Every live code, pop-up, ad offer, marketplace price and subscription discount.
   Good: Repeat customers can get any price a stranger can, or something at least as good.
   Cost if wrong: Your best customers pay the most, and a rise makes it visible.
   Read next: The Loyalty Tax Audit
10. Recent buyers are covered if a price drops · 3 minLook at: Your policy, and what support does when someone asks.
    Good: A written price protection window, applied to everyone who asks.
    Cost if wrong: The customers who just paid the most watch the price fall, and buy less.
    Read next: Price Protection
11. Any pack or count change is disclosed · 3 minLook at: Your last three product changes in size, count or formula.
    Good: Each was stated on the product page and to repeat buyers, old and new amount.
    Cost if wrong: Customers who notice judge it worse than a price rise, and several countries require notice.
    Read next: Shrinkflation
12. You’ll judge the rise on retention, with a comparison · 5 minLook at: How your last price change was evaluated.
    Good: 90- and 180-day repeat rate for customers who saw the new price, against a comparison.
    Cost if wrong: You call it a win on week-one conversion and find the loss in next year’s repeat revenue.
    Read next: The Price Rise Scorecard

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

Read your score

If you’ve never changed a price, checks 7, 8 and 10 may not apply yet. Score them on the plan you’d follow. If you don’t sell subscriptions, score check 7 on repeat buyers alone.