Most conversations about an underperforming online shop start with the same assumption, that the site needs replacing. Sometimes it does. Far more often the shop is perfectly capable and the problem is spread thinly across a dozen small moments, none of which looks like much on its own.
What follows is a walk through the journey a customer actually takes, in the order they take it. At each stage there is a decision the site is making on your behalf, and usually a better one available. Nothing here needs a rebuild, and most of it you could look at this afternoon.
Start with how people find what they came for
A shopper who cannot find the product does not email to ask. They leave, and you never learn they were there. The two usual causes are a menu built around how the business thinks about its catalogue rather than how customers describe what they want, and a search box that only matches exact product names.
Filters matter just as much, particularly once you pass a few dozen products. The right filters are the questions a customer would ask a member of staff in a shop, which is rarely the same list as the attributes in your product data.
Read the full pieceHelping people find the thing they came forNavigation, filters, and a search box that understands how customers describe your products rather than how your catalogue is organised.The product page is where the decision happens
Nobody can pick your product up, turn it over, or ask the person behind the counter whether it will do the job. Your photographs and your words have to stand in for all of that, and most stores ask far too little of both. A single image on a white background and a paragraph lifted from the manufacturer is not a product page, it is a listing.
The other half of the job is quieter. Most of the doubt a shopper feels arrives here, and most of it goes unanswered. Will it fit. How long will it take. What happens if it is wrong. Every one of those has an answer, and the sites that sell well put the answer where the question gets asked, rather than on a policy page three clicks away.
Read the full piecePhotographs and descriptions that do the selling for youNobody can pick your product up. The photographs and the words have to stand in for that, and most stores ask far too little of both. Read the full pieceAnxiety busters: what belongs on a product page, and whereThe small reassurances that answer a shopper's doubts before those doubts turn into a reason to leave, and the places on the page they need to sit.Proof that you are worth buying from
Reviews do two jobs, and most shops only use one of them. The obvious job is reassurance, showing a hesitant shopper that other people took the same risk and were glad they did. The quieter job is research. A run of reviews mentioning the same thing is your customers telling you, at no cost, what to fix next.
There is also the question of where your reviews live and what you are allowed to do with them, which catches people out more often than you would expect. Reviews gathered through Google, through a marketplace, and through a review platform you pay for all come with different rules attached.
Read the full pieceThe reviews you already have, and what they are telling youCustomer reviews are the cheapest research you will ever get. How to read them properly, and how to turn what you find into changes on the site. Read the full pieceWho owns your reviews, and what you can do with themReviews collected through Google, a marketplace, or a third-party platform come with different rules about where you may display them. Worth knowing before you build a page around them.Suggesting more, without pushing
Recommending something alongside what a customer is already buying is a service when it is done well and an irritation when it is not. The difference is almost always relevance and timing. A screen protector offered with a phone case is helpful. The same offer at the moment someone is trying to pay is an obstacle.
Discounts follow the same logic. A box asking for a promotional code, shown to someone who does not have one, is an invitation to open a new tab and go looking. There are usually better ways to pass on the same saving.
Delivery is where full baskets go to die
Postage that only appears at the final step feels like a bait and switch, even when the number itself is perfectly reasonable. The charge is rarely the real problem. The surprise is.
It is worth knowing what yours is actually costing you before you decide what to do about it, because the answer is not always free delivery. Sometimes it is a threshold, sometimes it is a cheaper slower option alongside the fast one, and sometimes it is simply saying the number earlier.
Read the full pieceAre your delivery charges costing you sales?Unexpected postage is the most common reason a full basket gets abandoned. How to work out what yours is doing, and what to do about it.The checkout should ask for as little as it can
By the time someone reaches the checkout they have already decided to buy. Everything the page does from that point either gets out of the way or gets in it. Forced account creation, fields that are not needed, and a payment method somebody does not use are all ways of asking a decided customer to reconsider.
After the sale is where the next one starts
The order confirmation is the most-read email your business sends, and in most shops it is doing nothing but confirming an order. What happens over the following days shapes whether that customer comes back, tells someone, or leaves a review.
Which brings the journey back around to where it started, because the reviews that reassure the next shopper come from the last one, and asking for them at the right moment makes a great deal of difference to how many you get.
Where to start
If you only look at one thing, make it the point where you are losing the most people, which is usually delivery or the checkout. Fixing something at the end of the journey pays back immediately, because those visitors had already decided to buy.
Everything above is worth doing eventually. None of it is worth doing all at once.