Getting Traffic But No Sales? Here Are All The Possible Causes and Solutions

In this week’s article, I’m going to answer one of the most asked questions online store owners have and provide possible solutions to fix it. If you’re getting a considerable amount of traffic to your Shopify store and have no sales, then this article is for you.

I’ll probably make this one a weekly series to help you in your e-commerce venture. Let me know in the comments if you want more and make sure to submit your burning questions – Maybe I’ll pick one and talk about it next week.

Lots Of Traffic But No Sales?

It’s probably one of the most popular questions out there, and a lot of online store owners are desperate to get that one solution which will fix their problem to finally convert the traffic they get into sales. Unfortunately, there isn’t a magic solution and this problem can’t be fixed with one simple tweak.

A lot of factors come into play here and figuring out the problem based on a simple Shopify dashboard solution is impossible. The only way for a person with knowledge in the e-commerce world to help in this case is only if he can get all the needed information like: Ads strategy(targeting, budget, campaign type, etc), store, product, price, product page, and more.

So as you see, you basically need to sit with an experienced person 1-on-1 and dive into your store and everything you did to get an answer and a possible solution. This will take at least an hour or two and this isn’t something a stranger on Facebook will do for free.

But don’t you worry because I’m here and I’m going to provide possible causes for this problem and the possible solutions to fix it. You’ll just need to identify the cause and follow one of my solutions. So let’s begin!

The causes to having lots of traffic but no sales and the possible solutions:

You’re using the wrong campaign objective – Even if your ad is excellent and the product you’re trying to sell is something your audience really needs, it won’t help you if you’re using the wrong campaign objective. If you want to get sales, you HAVE to choose a Website Conversion campaign and go for the “Purchase Optimization”. It doesn’t matter if your pixel is new and has no data, we always go for the purchase optimization. Don’t go for Post Engagement or Website Visits campaign because Facebook will deliver exactly what you asked for: Want more engagement? Then use an engagement campaign. Want more sales? Website Conversion campaign it is!

Your price is too high – I’ve seen plenty of cases where people took a great product and tried to make x3 from it’s original cost. It could be because they genuinely think the product is worth it or maybe because they were a bit too greedy. So the ad and everything else was perfect but in the end, you can’t fool the customer. If the price isn’t right, he’ll just go away.

Your store is slow – Customers don’t like waiting and it’s the same for both physical and online stores. You make him wait an extra second for your store to load? Congratulations! You just lost a customer. In order to maintain an online store with a healthy conversion rate, it’s important for your store to load fast – If you suspect your loading speed is slow, then make sure to run some tests on various “speed test” websites. Upload only compressed pictures and use Shopify apps that can automatically do it for you. Don’t bombard your product page with heavy GIFs and spammy apps. Make sure the customers gets a fast and clean buying experience.

Your store is spammy – Everyone hates spammy websites with annoying popups and notifications and if you do this on your store, your chances to get sales drastically decrease! Make sure you provide a clean buying experience for your customers and use non-spammy apps. If you’re using an exit popup app, make sure it only pops when the customer is about to leave your store. Are you using a Facebook chat button? Make sure it doesn’t bother the customer on your store and that you really need it(having this button with no real plan is just a waste so you better delete it). Timers, deals, bright red color text messages, etc are OK only if you use them in a correct way. Don’t just activate all the scarcity features for one product… It will look bad and drive your customers away.

Your product page is bad – A perfect ad cannot lead customers into a sh*tty(excuse my french) product page. Hey, even if your ad sucks, you still can’t allow your product page to look bad because if it’s good enough, it can save you and drive sales even if your ad was bad. So make sure your product page is PERFECT. Don’t forget any important details like special product features or sizes… The customer won’t buy a product if he can’t get all the necessary details. Use a logical structure and don’t just copy Aliexpress descriptions; You can always check my article on how to build a high-converting product page and follow it. OR just learn from other successful dropshipping stores.

Wrong targeting – You want to target buyers and not just random people around the world. Make sure your targeting is good and points your ad to the relevant audience. And don’t just target Worldwide because even if your ad is bad, targeting people from countries like Nigeria, Pakistan, India will still drive tons of traffic but this traffic will probably not convert.

Lack of Trust – If you’re driving traffic from Facebook, it won’t be a problem opening a page with the letter “S”(short for scam) as a logo profile picture and drive traffic to your store from this page. But once the customers are inside your store, they’re going to look around and check your store’s name, your logo, look for trust badges, etc. If you have a bad logo which looks like it was made by a designer in Thailand’s markets, you will lose your customers. If your store name sounds and looks like scam(“bestdealzzz”) then you can forget about getting any sales. And so on… Your store is your real business so make it look and feel like it is.

No currency converter – If you’re targeting worldwide, it’s best to convert your currency according to your customer’s location. Some people don’t like it when only $USD is shown and prefer getting the price in their own currency. This will save them time and the checkout process will go faster. It’s not a critical issue but if possible, show them their own currency for a better experience – the checkout process will still be in USD.

These are the cases when you have just views but not any other events like Add to Carts and Initiate Checkouts – But what if you have some Add to Carts but no sales?

If you have some Add to Carts, it means people were interested enough in your product and felt confident enough to add it to their cart. There are multiple reasons why they didn’t continue with their purchase and I’m going to list them below and offer a solution(if such exist).

They’re not ready to purchase at this exact moment – It happens when a customer can’t purchase your product at the exact moment and in order to “save” it, he clicks the Add to Cart button and leaves your store. The customer thinks that he will eventually get back to your store and buy it so it’s like a reminder for him(which almost never works). In this case, it’s our job to remind him about the product he added to his cart by using retargeting ads and email reminders. Hopefully our retargeting ad or email will pop exactly when he gets his pay and he will finally complete his order.

Something unexpected happened and he had to leave – In the end we’re dealing with real people and sometimes there’s stuff happening. Maybe he got a call and had to take it? Maybe he was on his way to work and it was his station so he put his phone back to his pocket? Etc… So the solution is again to get the customer back to our website by using retargeting ads, email marketing and other techniques.

Lack of Trust on your checkout page – You need to have all the needed policies and trust badges for your customers to feel confident enough to enter their details and move to the next page. If it’s just a blank checkout page with no policy links and logo, then you’ll see a lot of customers just leave and not continue with the checkout process.

Mandatory fields  – One of the most common mistakes that pushes a lot of customers away is having the phone number or company name set up as mandatory. A lot of customers don’t care about giving their home address and email but when it comes to their phone number, they’ll never expose it if it isn’t necessary. And it doesn’t matter if the phone number is only used by the shipping carrier, they simply don’t want to give it to you and you need to make this field optional.

What if you have Add to Carts and Initiate Checkouts but no sales?

So the customer loved your product and trusted your store enough to add it to their cart and enter his shipping details. But something stopped him in the last steps and here are the possible reasons + solutions(if such exist).

Shipping  – It’s possible your shipping price is too high and the customer was expecting free shipping or a much lower price. Giving free shipping can be a great solution but it’s not a magic cure. Sometimes a lower product price with shipping will work much better than a higher priced product with free shipping. For example: A $16.99 product + $2.95 shipping may convert much better than $19.99 + free shipping. It’s up to you to test it out and figure out what will work better.

Limited Payment Gateways  – Some customers prefer ordering only with PayPal and some just hate PayPal and order everything online with their credit cards. As a store owner, it’s best if you have both options available and even more to make it easy for your customers checkout with their preferred method. If you have only PayPal and can’t get CC payment processors like Stripe because of your location, then make sure you let your customers know they can checkout as a guest on PayPal with their credit cards. Another solution is to use intercart app which can transfer customers straight to credit card payment page on PayPal – This can help a lot of sellers who have only PayPal available increase their sales.

Payment Gateway Bug  – Always check if the checkout on your store works by buying from your store or asking a friend to do it. Nothing’s worse than getting traffic and no sales because of some bug or error at the last stage.

Problems with Shopify  – Yep, that happens too and Shopify can sometimes go down or have some weird bug that can block your customers from paying. Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about it but to wait. It rarely happens so usually it isn’t Shopify’s problem but it won’t hurt to check their status and see if they had some down time.

And of course there are the random customer issues which I talked about… Like not having time or other stuff, so this can happen too.

To Sum It Up:

It’s up to you now to identify your problem and fix it by using the solutions I provided above. The important thing is to not give up and to never expect “easy sales”. Dropshipping is a real business and it takes time to get your stuff to work. Keep learning from your mistakes, learn more from various sources and continue testing!

Hope you loved this week’s article, let me know if you have any questions in the comments.

Good Luck!

Struggling to find good products to sell? Not sure who’s your target audience? Tired of losing money on products you were sure were “winners”?

Then Ecomhunt is what you need! Find hot winning products that are added daily, spy on their ads & stores and import them into your store in 1 click and Start Selling Today!

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Daniel Aloni

Daniel Aloni is one of the leading mentors in the Ecomhunt family. Daniel is a highly experienced Print On Demand seller with multiple 6 figures successful launches.

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