Website not converting how you’d like it to?
It’s a tale as old as time – eCommerce websites that look good, but don’t drive sales as they should.
Traffic is coming in, campaigns are running, products are competitive, but you’re just not shifting stock. Your first instinct might be to push harder on your ads, spending more and putting more campaigns out across more channels.
This can help, if you do it right, but if you’re driving traffic to a suboptimal website, you’re not going to see the return you’re after.
When you look pragmatically at an eCommerce website, you often see the same issues time and time again:
- People arrive with intent
- They encounter small points of friction
- They leave
Your products aren’t the problem; your website’s user experience is the issue – you’re not making their decision easy enough.
In this blog, you’ll learn how to make your eCommerce website convert more visitors into customers.
Let’s get started:
What’s really happening when someone lands on your eCommerce website?
According to Statista, 1.6% of global eCommerce visits convert into purchases. That means that 98.4% of visits to your website will not convert.
This can be because of many reasons. Your job is to ensure that your eCommerce website design and user experience are as good as possible to increase conversion rates as much as possible.
Because when someone clicks through to your site, they arrive with a level of intent. Sometimes they’re excited and ready to buy, sometimes they just want to learn a little more about you, but there is always a reason they clicked.
The problem is when your electronic storefront doesn’t capture that intent in the right way.
Instead, people land on your website and are overwhelmed with options; your landing pages are too broad, too generic or just difficult to navigate.
This often isn’t a catastrophic issue, but it does create a little rub of friction, and friction kills sales.
Here are 7 reasons why your eCommerce website might be failing to convert (and how you can fix them)
We’ve also included some tips and tricks you can try to improve conversion rates (although, disclaimer: we don’t know your products, and we don’t know your sales process. If you want tailored, actionable advice on how to improve your website’s conversion rates, give us a shout).
1. The landing page experience doesn’t match user intent
We’ve touched on this already, but it’s really important, so we’re going to do it again!
When someone clicks through to your site, they arrive with a clear expectation. That expectation is shaped by the search query, the ad they clicked or the link they followed.
Where ecommerce websites struggle is in how they respond to that intent.
Being dropped onto a generic category page, seeing messaging that doesn’t quite align, or having no clear next step immediately visible creates friction straight away. It forces the user to do the work themselves, and many won’t.
The fix isn’t complicated, but it does require intent to be taken seriously. Map your key traffic sources properly and stop sending fundamentally different audiences to the same place. The page should reflect what they came for, and the next step should be obvious without thinking.
We recommend setting up different landing pages for different purposes, then testing which ones get better conversion rates. Once you’ve done that, you can apply your learnings to future landing pages and iterate from there.
2. Product pages don’t make the decision easy
We’ve all been there – clicking on an ad, only to be greeted by a wall of AI-generated text that you have no desire to read.
You’re instantly put off; nobody’s got time for that.
A surprising number of eCommerce product pages do this; they’re built to display information rather than support decisions.
They list features, show a few images and present a price, but they don’t answer the questions the customer is asking. Is this right for me? How does it compare? What happens if I choose the wrong option?
If you’re not answering those questions nice and early in the journey, you’re going to miss out on sales.
This is usually a content problem, not a website design one.
Let’s have a look at your product pages: try visiting both your best-selling products and your lower-performing pages. Pretend you’re looking to buy. How long does it take before you’re getting real, benefit-led information that’s making you want to buy?
Better yet, show someone unfamiliar with what you sell. Ask them what they think.
Compare the pages; identify what it is about the high-performance page that other pages are lacking. Use these learnings to rewrite product pages around real buying concerns, not internal descriptions, and introduce simple cues that help people choose without overthinking it.
3. Trust is there, but not where it matters
Most ecommerce businesses have invested in trust signals.
- Reviews
- Delivery info
- Returns policies
- Case studies
It’s all there, but how are you presenting it?
If all this reassurance content only appears on a dedicated page or is buried in your footer, it’s not doing its job. Trust needs to show up the moment someone is deciding whether to buy.
The quickest win here is placement. Bring all the above content closer to key actions (such as buy now) so users don’t have to go looking for confidence. The last thing you want is a potential customer clicking away from your product page to go find reviews.
4. The buyer journey has too much friction
Conversion is highly sensitive to effort.
Every extra step, unnecessary field or moment of confusion increases the likelihood that someone will drop out. Most eCommerce websites don’t have one major point of friction; they have several smaller ones that accumulate.
It might be an overly long checkout, forced account creation, or unexpected costs appearing too late. It might be something less obvious, like unclear copy or error messages that don’t help the user recover.
Go through your own checkout like a customer and be honest about where it feels slow or frustrating. Reducing even a small amount of friction here tends to have a disproportionate impact on conversion.
We’ve all grown accustomed to things working flawlessly. You need to ensure your digital experience delivers.
5. You’ve not properly considered mobile experience
How many of your sales are on mobile? Worldwide, mobile eCommerce accounts for about 59% of all sales.
This means that if your website isn’t properly optimised for mobile, you’re going to have issues. If your eCommerce website design isn’t mobile-first, then:
- Navigation becomes harder
- Key info is less visible
- Interactions become unintuitive
Designing for mobile isn’t just about resizing elements. It’s about understanding how people use their phones. Quick scanning, limited patience and a preference for simplicity.
Test your site properly on mobile, not just visually but behaviourally. If key actions aren’t easy to reach or information takes effort to find, that’s where conversion is being lost.
6. Discounts are doing a lot of work
It’s so easy to get addicted to running sales.
Sure, they’re great at driving conversions, but they shouldn’t be the main reason someone buys.
If your ecommerce website only performs when there’s an offer running, it usually points to deeper issues:
- A weak brand
- A lack of clear messaging
- Weak product positioning
- Insufficient trust-building content
If you rely too heavily on promotions, your customers will know this. They’ll wait for the best deal (especially if you run sales at predictable times of the year).
Instead of running another discount, consider what’s missing in your experience. Improve your brand, tighten your messaging, and focus on demonstrating the value of your products.
In most cases, tweaking how you communicate can have a sustainable impact on your ongoing sales. And sure, run a sale every now and then, but don’t make it your whole business.
7. There’s no strategy for bringing people back
Most users won’t convert on their first visit. In fact, 71.72% of shopping carts are abandoned, on average.
What do you do with potential customers that bounce?
They’ve already shown intent. They’ve browsed your products and spent time on your site. In many cases, they’ve left things in their basket. They are RIPE for the picking; you just need to do something to bring them back.
That’s what remarketing is for.
Build ads around what products users have viewed and put a structured basket abandonment workflow in place. Make sure your ads are present wherever they go next. It might take a few days to bring them back, but if you do this right, you’ll dramatically improve conversion rates.
So, what now?
If you’ve read the above and recognised your own eCommerce website in a few of these points, are you equipped to do what needs to be done?
Most brands we speak to aren’t struggling because they lack traffic or ambition. They’re investing heavily in SEO, paid search and social, but their eCommerce website hasn’t kept pace with that investment.
This means you end up paying a fortune to attract customers.
The frustrating part is that this spend is often excessive. All you have to do is improve your website experience. It sounds simple, but it often isn’t; we’re here to help.
At Catalyst, we work with ecommerce brands to close that gap between acquisition and conversion. That might mean refining your eCommerce website design so it actually supports better decision making, reworking your eCommerce website development to remove friction, or aligning your landing pages with your paid campaigns so you’re not losing customers the moment they click.
In most cases, it’s not one change that moves the needle; it’s a combination of improvements across your buyer journey.
If your eCommerce website is underperforming and you’re not sure exactly why, give us a shout. We’ll conduct a free website audit to let you know what’s going wrong.
No vague recommendations, just clear, actionable next steps.
It’s free – what have you got to lose?