Why Store Owners Avoid Product Data Audits
Product data audits feel daunting because most store owners imagine manually reviewing hundreds or thousands of products one by one. That's not how it's done. A good audit uses exports and formulas to identify patterns, so you fix categories of issues rather than individual items.
Here's a realistic afternoon audit that any store owner can do.
Step 1: Export Your Catalog (15 minutes)
Shopify: Products → Export → All products, CSV format WooCommerce: Products → Export (requires WooCommerce Product CSV Import Suite or a plugin like WP All Export)
Save the export. Name it: Products_Audit_2026-05-31.csv
Step 2: Open in Google Sheets and Count Blanks (30 minutes)
Create a new tab called "Audit." For each important column (Title, Body/Description, Vendor, Type, Tags, Image Src, Variant Price, Variant SKU), count non-blank cells:
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=COUNTA(Products!B:B) counts non-empty cells in column B.
Compare against total row count. Any gap is a missing value. Calculate a completeness % for each column.
Red flag thresholds:
- Description completeness < 90%: serious SEO and conversion problem
- Image completeness < 95%: customers will bounce
- SKU completeness < 100%: inventory and fulfillment risk
Sohovi profiles every column in your dataset for completeness and flags the exact rows where values are missing — free to try.
Step 3: Check Title Quality (30 minutes)
Scan titles for:
- Titles under 20 characters (too vague — probably placeholder or product code)
- Titles that are all caps (formatting inconsistency)
- Titles containing "COPY" or "TEST" (draft products accidentally published)
- Duplicate titles (two products with the same name)
A quick sort alphabetically surfaces most of these patterns.
Step 4: Check Category Consistency (30 minutes)
Look at your Product Type or Collections column. List unique values:
=UNIQUE(Products!F:F)
Look for:
- The same category spelled two ways ("Men's Clothing" vs. "Mens Clothing")
- Deprecated categories that should have been consolidated
- Products with no category assigned
Step 5: Spot-Check 20 Products (45 minutes)
Pick 20 products at random from your export and verify them against your live store:
- Does the price match?
- Does the stock status match?
- Is the primary image correct?
- Does the description match the actual product?
These spot-checks catch the type of issues formulas can't: factually wrong content.
Step 6: Document and Prioritize (30 minutes)
Create a priority list:
- Published products with no description (immediate SEO fix)
- Published products with no image (immediate conversion fix)
- Products with wrong prices (immediate customer trust fix)
- Category inconsistencies (search/filter fix)
Share this list with whoever maintains the catalog and set a deadline.
