My store gets traffic but no sales. What's wrong?

How do I find where shoppers are leaving?

Open Shopify’s conversion rate breakdown report, which counts the sessions that added to cart, reached checkout and completed checkout. The biggest drop between two steps is where to look first.

Shopify’s behaviour reports show each step as a share of all sessions, so you can see at a glance whether people leave on the product page, in the cart or at the final step.

Is the wrong traffic the problem?

Often, yes. Visitors from a campaign set up to get clicks, a giveaway or a burst of bot visits can fill the visitor count without anyone meaning to buy, so check where the sessions came from before you change the store.

• Ads set to win clicks or visits, rather than sales, find people who click and leave
• A spike of visits from a country you do not ship to usually means bots or the wrong audience
• Giveaways and viral posts bring people who are curious, not shopping
• Influencer mentions to an audience outside your price range bring browsers, not buyers

Compare sales by traffic source. If email subscribers and people who searched for you buy, and visitors from social do not, the store works and the traffic needs fixing. Whether it is the ad or the store covers the paid side.

What on a product page stops people buying?

Unanswered questions. If a buyer cannot tell the size, the material, the total cost or whether the store is a real business, they leave to check somewhere else.

• One or two photos, or supplier photos that appear on other stores too
• No sense of size, and no close-up of the material
• Delivery cost and timing hidden until checkout
• No reviews, no returns policy and no way to reach a person
• A page that is slow or awkward on a phone

Start with the photos, because that is where shoppers start. Baymard Institute found that 56% of users began by exploring the product images as soon as they arrived on a product page. The guide to building a product page that converts goes through the rest of the page in order.

Why do people add to cart and then not buy?

Usually a cost or a delay they did not expect. Delivery charges that appear only at checkout, slow delivery, too few payment options and being made to create an account all end sales at the last step.

Show the delivery cost and timing on the product page, offer the payment methods your buyers already use, and check that creating an account is optional at checkout. There is more in why add to carts do not turn into purchases.

Could my store look untrustworthy?

Yes, and a new store is judged hardest. Visitors who have never heard of you look for signs that a real business is behind the site: photos of the actual product, a returns policy, contact details, reviews and pages that look consistent.

Two answers go further: how to make a store look trustworthy and what makes a store look premium.

What should I fix first to get sales?

The step where most visitors drop out. If that is the product page, start with your best-selling product: give it photos that answer the buyer’s questions, put delivery and returns beside the add to cart, then compare its add-to-cart rate over the next few weeks with the weeks before.

Bartley Studio makes those photos from a couple of phone photos of each product, made with AI and finished by hand, with the first look in 2 to 3 working days. The smallest order is one product with six images for $350 plus GST. If the page itself needs rebuilding, product page design is quoted per project after a short brief through the contact page.