Agency decisions · Practical answers
How to tell whether your ecommerce agency is doing useful work
Ask for the decisions, evidence, and commercial reasoning behind the work instead of judging an agency by edit counts.
Ask what changed, why it changed, and what the evidence now supports. Useful agency work connects tracking, products, creative, and spending decisions to business outcomes. Neither a busy change log nor one attractive ROAS screenshot establishes that on its own.
Activity is easy to show; judgment takes explanation
An account can need careful observation without daily restructuring. It can also remain neglected while a polished report arrives every month. Counting edits cannot reliably distinguish those situations.
Ask the team to explain its current diagnosis in ordinary language. Which products are worth backing? Where is demand coming from? What is limiting the next sensible increase in investment? The answers should relate to your store rather than a generic list of platform features.
Use a four-question review
- What was the most important decision during this period?
- Which evidence supported it, and what was uncertain?
- What happened to purchases, cost, and commercially useful revenue?
- What will the team do next, and what would change that decision?
Include measurement quality in that review. Google’s conversion-value documentation explains how supplied values support bidding decisions. A team cannot make a revenue-based target meaningful if the values feeding it are unsuitable or unreliable.
Account for what the agency cannot control
Stock shortages, pricing changes, delivery restrictions, and checkout failures can affect results. A useful review identifies those factors without using them to avoid responsibility for campaign choices.
For example, advertising a popular product during a stockout is an operational issue the marketing team should detect and discuss. A competitor lowering prices is an external change requiring a response, not proof that any particular response will work.
Compare incentives as well as deliverables
Ask how the commercial arrangement rewards activity and outcomes. Then read the scope and measurement terms. Different models can suit different stores; vague promises are not a substitute for an understandable agreement.
EP4P funds and manages the advertising and charges an agreed percentage of ecommerce sales directly tracked to clicks on our ads. That puts our own investment behind the work. Contact us if you want to explore whether that arrangement fits your business.
Sources and further reading
References checked November 9, 2026. Platform settings and policies change; check the documentation that applies to your account.
Discussion inspiration: Reddit PPC: questioning agency account performance. Community discussions help identify questions; the technical answer is checked separately.
Let our team handle the marketing.
You can hand the campaign work to a team that also puts its own advertising money behind the decisions.
We build, fund, and manage your campaigns. You pay an agreed percentage only on ecommerce sales directly tracked to clicks on our ads. Our work and the ad spend are included. No monthly retainer or setup fee.
Explore the relevant EP4P capability · How our funded model works