Your business cycles are important to understand.
A down month might be from your typical cycle and not have anything to do with what you did (or didn't do) this month.
This point was driven home to me once by a Shopify store complaining about a low month. With one glance at their sales trends it was clear they were at their natural low-point in their cycle. Wait a month or two and they'd be hitting their peak.
The other benefit of knowing your own cycles is that you can better time marketing campaigns. You can shore up weak periods or boost the busy season on your schedule, not the cycle's.
Eric Davis
P.S. Beyond business cycles, you'll want to make sure you're improving year-over-year. Repeat Customer Insights can track and measure this for you as part of it's Insights system.
Segment your customers automatically with RFM
Segmenting your customers has always been touted as a powerful marketing tool but many stores avoid it because it can be time-consuming.
Repeat Customer Insights will automatically segment your entire customer base for you based on the valuable data Shopify has already collected for you. Ranging from 5 to 30 to over 125+ different segments using RFM and other models, you can pick how much power you want to harness.