Ecommerce conversion optimisation that starts with the cause

What a low conversion rate can and cannot tell you

Conversion rate is orders divided by sessions. It is a simple ratio, and that is its weakness: it mixes the quality of the traffic, the appeal of the offer, the trust a shopper feels and the ease of buying into one number.

• It cannot tell you who arrived.

  A campaign sending poorly matched clicks lowers the rate without anything changing on the site. A better site with the same traffic often gives the same result.

• It cannot tell you whether the offer works.

  If the price, bundle or delivery cost does not make sense to the shopper, the product page is only where they find out.

• It cannot be compared with someone else's.

  A benchmark from another store, with different prices, products and traffic, is not a diagnosis of yours.

• It is unreliable at low volume.

  On a store taking a few dozen orders a month, a handful of extra orders moves the rate noticeably. One month's change can be noise.

• It cannot survive broken tracking.

  Duplicate purchase events, bot traffic or missing checkout data change the number without any shopper behaving differently.

What it can do is point to where to look next, especially once it is broken into steps. If you want to work through this yourself first, our guide to website traffic but no sales sets out the checks in order.

Investigating traffic, offer, trust and purchase friction

We follow the order the money flows, the same order Mareike sets out in what to fix first. Four areas get examined before anyone proposes a change to the site.

Traffic

Sessions are split by source and campaign. Paid social clicks behave differently from people searching for your brand. If one source converts far worse than the others, the problem may be the ad or the audience, not the page. Our guide on Facebook ads getting clicks but no sales covers that case.

Offer

Price, average order, bundles and delivery cost. This is often where the answer is. For Apothecary by Justin, cost per customer fell from $400 to $52 between January and August 2026. That was not cheaper traffic. The average order went from $69 to $137, and a $137 offer with real margin behind it can outbid a $69 one and convert better. The full Apothecary by Justin case sets out the sequence.

Trust

Reviews, a clear returns policy, realistic delivery times, product evidence and some sign of who is behind the store. A first-time visitor who cannot find these has a reason to leave.

Purchase friction

Mobile usability, page speed, shipping costs revealed late, forced account creation, limited payment options and checkout errors. Our guide to improving product pages for real shoppers includes a practical checklist.

The overall rate here is 0.9%, which says only ‘low’. Broken into steps, two weak points stand out, and they point in different directions. Few product viewers add to cart, which suggests the product page, the price or the offer. Only a third of checkouts complete, which suggests shipping cost, payment options or an error in the checkout itself. Each needs a different fix.

Choosing improvements and measuring them

Once the causes are clear, the question is which to fix first. We rank them by what each is worth in your dollars, how confident the evidence is, and what the fix costs in time and money.

1. 1

   Size the leak

   Estimate what a step is worth if it improved, using your own order value and margin rather than a benchmark.

2. 2

   Fix the cause, cheapest first

   Missing delivery information, a confusing variant selector or a hidden returns policy can be fixed in days. A new offer takes longer, and a rebuild longer again.

3. 3

   Change one thing where you can

   Several changes at once make it impossible to tell which one worked.

4. 4

   Measure on the right basis

   With enough traffic, a split test. Without it, a before-and-after comparison over a set period, read alongside changes in traffic mix and season, and treated as a direction rather than proof.

5. 5

   Judge by profit, not rate

   A discount can lift conversion and reduce profit. The measure that matters is what each visitor leaves behind after costs, not the conversion rate alone.

For Holtsee, a premium eyewear brand, conversion was up 74% by month three and orders went from 147 to 303, with 80% gross margins held. That came alongside creative and retention work, so it is the result of a combined plan for one client, not a figure to expect from page changes alone.

Want a first read on where your store is stuck? Run the free Growth Bottleneck → (opens in a new tab)

When a rebuild is justified and when it is not

A new website is expensive, slow to deliver and resets a lot of what already works. It is also the easiest thing to sell to a founder whose sales are flat. Sometimes it is the right answer. Often it is not.

Two in three founders who ran our diagnostic did not have a marketing problem, and for many of them the website was part of the answer. So we do not assume the site is fine, and we do not assume it needs replacing. The Sprint tests whether it converts the traffic you already pay for.

On the Launch route, if the plan needs the website rebuilt, that is included and costed in the plan rather than sold to you separately. On the Accelerate route, site improvements are part of the work scoped in writing before it starts. The investigation works the same way whichever platform your store runs on. What can be changed, and at what cost, depends on your platform and theme, and that is set out in the plan.

Every engagement starts with a four-week Validation Sprint, $4000 + GST, paid upfront, with any test media on a new business agreed and capped before it starts. You keep the findings whichever way it ends. For the rest of our work across strategy, ads and email, see what SSO delivers.