Shopify Visitors But No Sales? [Top 5 Conversion Boosting Tips]

So you have a Shopify eCommerce Store and you are acquiring a lot of visitors but unfortunately, you are not making sales. Maybe you are struggling to make any conversions at all, or perhaps your conversion rate is low and you are not getting as many as you initially had hoped.

Try not to worry – we’ve all been there. In fact, many of us go through this regularly when testing new products and building new stores.

In today’s article we will take a look at the top 5 reasons why this can happen and occur.

We will then run through some actionable recommendations and things you can do to prevent it from happening and reserve it when it does. Thankfully, there is always something that you can do to improve your sales.

These are some effective strategies to boost your conversion rates, and for some of them, it will only takes a couple of changes!

Shopify Visitors But No Sales?

One of the foremost things to do is to first identify where your traffic is coming from. The Shopify Dashboard and Analytics Functionality along with other analytics software (like Google Analytics) can help here.

Have you just launched a new advertising campaign or have you just started marketing your store and your products?

If so, one thing to consider is that if you are going down the Facebook Ad/ Instagram Ad route your campaign may not have yet optimized and may have been put in front of the wrong audience.

If this is the case; sometimes a little patience is all that you need. But I get it, nobody wants to sit on the sidelines and just burn through their budget with little to show for it.

For the most part, its good to account for the increase in traffic and know exactly how and where it is coming from.

This way you can start to identify what the problems may be and the potential solutions for your own specific store and context.

Nonetheless, and without further ado, lets take a look at the most common causes and best solutions:

Reason #1 – Promoting Undesirable Products

The first reason may sound slightly obvious, and you may have even had a gut feeling that this could be a reason before you started reading this article.

It doesn’t matter if you send thousands of targeted visitors, if you are trying to sell products that people do not actually want to buy then you’ll never make a sale.

What makes a product undesirable you may be wondering:

• Its a common item (can be picked up in a grocery store or other common shop),
• There’s no unique branding,
• It doesn’t serve any particular purpose,
• Its not solving a problem, providing a solution.

Solution #1 – Conduct Effective Niche/Product Research

Conducting effective Product Research is paramount to the success of your eCommerce store and will make or break your success.

This is one of the first things you should actually do when building a store, but depending on the niche or industry you operate in, you may want to add new products regularly or from time to time.

Effective Niche and Product Research is about entering the market in the early phases or during periods of expansion and growth.

Products will be in high demand and trending, and preferably, there is a lack of supply in the market.

Taking this a step further you want to find unique products or ones that offer something a little extra compared to typical styles or models.

However, you want to be careful that you do not enter ‘craze’ markets, like the Fidget Spinner, whereby after a period of time there is no demand.

So preferably you want to build a store around a long-term profitable niche that continues to grow. Google Trends is a great tool for this.

If you have created a General Store (selling products in a range of niches then this will be easier to fix.

If however you have started a store around a micro-niche then you may find that you need to back out of it if sales are hard to come by following a range of marketing methods and campaigns.

Reason #2 – Advertising Incorrectly/Sending the Wrong Traffic

Another common problem for a high visitor count yet lack of sales is that the wrong traffic is landing on your store and/or product pages.

This could be for a number of reasons; but if you are actually sending the traffic via paid ads then you may need to look at how each campaign is set up.

Take Facebook Ads for example, you could be targeting your audience too broadly, you could be focusing on the wrong interests, or even demographics that notoriously do not buy (teenagers, low income countries etc).

If you have a broad and general product, then targeting your audience will inherently be even harder so it may take some time and money testing until you get it right.

Other common advertising mistakes is setting up your campaign with the wrong objective (view oppose to convert), not giving the ad enough time to optimize, spending too little on ads (too low an ad budget) and writing ineffective ad copy or using ad images/videos that do not capture the attention of your potential customers.

This could be the case for any paid advertising method, be it Facebook/Instagram Ads, Google Ads, Bing Ads etc.

Beyond just paid advertising, you may be promoting your store or your products in places where you acquire the wrong type of traffic.

For example if you are using forums or other free traffic methods like Instagram and YouTube, consider that not all of your visitors may not be looking to purchase but instead browse around your store.

Solution #2 – Optimize Your Advertising

Advertising takes trial and error which is why there are a lot of businesses out there that sell this as a service.

If you want to do it yourself it will take time and patience until you start to gain a knowledge and understanding of what your niche or audience wants.

Alternatively, you could invest in a course that teaches you step by step how to set up and optimize various advertising campaigns from scratch. Facebook/Instagram/Google Ads etc. Again, eCom Elites covers this all at length.

Either way, you are going to want to make sure you get your advertising right, or you could go through your advertising budget quickly.

Testing will ultimately give you the insights you need and as unfortunate as this may be to read, is part and parcel of the eCommerce business model.

Reason #3 – Cold Traffic vs Warm Traffic

Unfortunately, not all traffic converts right there and then.

Cold traffic refers to anyone who visits your store and is not aware of who you are and what you have to sell.

This is likely to be the majority of your traffic, especially if you have just launched your store and have just started promoting your products.

In fact, Cold traffic is renown for having low conversion rates because they are yet to trust you or have any inherent reason to buy from you (especially if another reputable online eCommerce store also sells it, e.g. Amazon).

Solution #3 – Warm Your Traffic

One of the best ways to boost your conversion rates is to warm your cold traffic and build a relationship with your prospective customers. By doing so you build trust and give them confidence to buy from your store.

Warming your traffic up can be done in a number of ways. Most notably, sending regular communication like emails.

This is where Email Marketing comes in, and why all of the major eCommerce websites collect your email address and send you emails often. Ever received an email asking why you didn’t finish purchasing an item? This is that very concept in action.

By sending regular communications to your potential customers, you remind them of your store, your brand and your products. You can give them a reason to return and this will give them another opportunity to consider the purchase.

Again, eCom Elites contains an entire module on how to build an Email Marketing campaign from scratch and how to optimally send these kind of emails for higher conversion rates.

Reason #4 – Poor Site Design/User Experience

Your Site Design and User Experience are other fundamental reasons why people may not be purchasing your products.

If they cannot navigate your store, find what they want, understand how to buy etc., then you’re going to be leaving money on the table.

If you are relying on a free theme then I am sorry to say but now is the time to change. They are just not optimized for sales and more often than not can deter your visitors from purchasing on your store.

Free themes are chunky and load slowly, and they do not have the various elements in the right places for optimal effect. For example, the ‘Add to Cart’ and ‘Buy Now’ buttons are often hard to find, or below the fold when your store is loaded on a mobile device.

They are also for the most part missing key functionality that is known for their conversion boosting effects like Countdown Timers, Scarcity Timers, Discount Pop-ups etc.

Getting a premium theme that can provide this kind of functionality on your store can work wonders.

Solution #4 – Optimize Your Store

When it comes to optimizing your store, you want to focus on a number of things to help make it easier for your customers to come and purchase.

For one, you want to remove any excess information that is not needed. You want to write effective product descriptions (engaging copy), you want each element to be in the right place and you want buttons like the add to cart and buy now buttons to be easily found and evident.

Beyond this you want to overcome any technical issues on the site and make sure there is nothing wrong from a technical perspective.

I’d suggest running a through test purchases to ensure there is not an issue preventing customers from actually being able to pay for products.

You also want to make sure your store loads as quick as it possibly can. Shopify do a pretty good job already, however some free themes will slow down your store due to the way in which they are coded. Using the Pingdom Page Speed tool is a good way to check your speed.

Finally you want to roll out functionality on your store that will help convert your visitors. Unfortunately, free themes do not come equipped with these as standard, and signing up to these apps individually via the Shopify Store can become expensive, fast.

They will cost you recurring monthly fees (for each and every app).

A great solution is to purchase a theme designed for conversions that comes with all the significant apps.

As previously mentioned, eCom Turbo is available for a one off price ($97) you can gain lifetime access to all these apps and forgo the monthly app fees.

Plus you can completely customize your store, improve your store loading page speed, collect email addresses and more!

Reason #5 – Product Pricing Strategy Incorrect/No Incentives To Buy

Some of the other significant reasons why you may be seeing slow sales is all down to prices. Perhaps your product pricing is off, or there are no real incentives for a visitor to become a customer.

Have you considered that your profit margins could be too excessive or that you are charging too much for your products.

What are competitors charging and what do similar products typically sell for in your niche? If you have a unique product that other stores do not seem to be selling than this will be hard to work out so may require some pricing changes over time to see what provides you with greater sales.

Product Pricing Strategy issues can often occur on products that you cost quite a bit to source and ship and the only way to make a decent profit on them is to charge more.

Make sure therefore that you run the calculations properly before you import products to your store. Also be wary that import costs and product prices may go up over time, so make sure you have some extra lee-way to cover these potential gaps.

Secondly, despite constant sale and huge discounts on all of your products looking spammy if applied incorrectly, incentives like discounts and offers are a great way to convince your customers to purchase from you.

Scarcity Timers, Countdown Bars, Low Stock Counts etc are some of the most effective to make your customers purchase.

Solution #5 – Provide Offers, Promotions and Discounts

If you are yet to provide offers, promotions or discounts to your customers then this is a good strategy to quickly see a boost in sales from your current traffic.

Unfortunately, a lot of this functionality is not available to you on the Shopify platform by default. It is possible to discount prices, but you are unable to really drive your visitors attention to these offers without using applications which come with a monthly charge.

A premium Shopify Theme can provide you with a complete suit of applications that incentivize purchases on your store. And again, eCom Turbo is the theme to get here (its one of the most inexpensive to purchase, easy to set up/manage and comprehensive in functionality) .

Conclusion

If your store is acquiring traffic but not making sales then by now hopefully you have acquired some strategies to overcome the issue.

In summary, and as a quick recap – you first need to identify who, when and how your visitors are arriving at your store. Pinpointing these things will give you a better understanding of the solutions you should prioritize from the list above.

This process will be a lot easier if you have just started advertising and chances are there is a breakdown in the ad itself or some on-store issues preventing conversions. If this isn’t the case, be sure to check your analytics and dashboards as these will often give you the insights that you seek.

If your not making sales, the good news is that there are things you can do to help overcome this – a comprehensive training course and a premium converting theme are my top suggestions.

When it comes to running a profitable Shopify store, you need to ensure a number of important facets and foundations are in place. A lot of your stores success ultimately relies on the products you sell and how and where you advertise them.

But don’t overlook the importance of your Advertising Techniques, Store Design and End User Experience. In fact, changing my store theme led my store to a 32% increase in sales (with all other factors remaining constant).

If you would like comprehensive training dedicated training on how to conduct thorough niche and product research, build and scale profitable paid marketing campaigns and leverage important conversion boosting strategies like Sales Funnels, Email Marketing and more, then I suggest you check out the eCom Elites Course. Its one of the best ways to learn the eCommerce business model, and having been a student myself, I can only thoroughly recommend it.

In addition, or alternatively depending on your own store and unique context, if your store is not yet optimized and you want to overhaul your store design and install 12 conversion boosting applications that will help push your visitors over the line, then take a look at eCom Turbo. It came out as the #1 and recommended Best Converting Shopify Theme against a number of other premium themes that are currently available.