Fix Your Low Online Sales: 13 Problems & Their Instant Solutions

You've probably spent months, maybe years, selecting great products for your e-commerce stores. Or you’ve invested a lot of money in driving traffic and visitors to your e-commerce website. Then, you think you could simply sit and wait for these visitors to convert into buying customers and your online sales skyrocketing.

You have high hopes, but the reality falls short. You kept making unsuccessful endeavors to increase your e-commerce sales and often found yourself asking: “Why? What am I doing wrong?”

Based on the extensive insights from helping thousands of e-commerce stores grow sales and revenue for the past 10 years, we’ve identified the top 10 reasons why you’re failing to increase your e-commerce sales.  So, what are the reasons for low online sales?

Reasons for low online sales include misspelled searches, unhelpful content, slow website speed, complex checkout processes, difficulty in product discovery, abandoned carts, lack of mobile optimization, dormant customers, insufficient leveraging of reviews, and outdated website navigation/UX.

Here we have discussed each of the reasons in detail. Now, let’s dive right in!

Reason 1: You Are Losing Sales Over Misspelled Searches

Misspelling is a much bigger problem than what most e-commerce businesses anticipate.

Statistically speaking, up to 30% of digital shoppers use a site search when one is offered on the e-commerce website. And we've probably all seen this one: site searchers are 2-3x more likely to convert.

However, did you know that approximately 25% of all site search queries on e-commerce websites are misspelled? Many e-commerce businesses lost sales because of failing to convert shoppers who have high intent to purchase but misspell their search queries.

To solve the misspelling issue, you simply have to up the game of your ecommerce search engine. Maybe this is your que to know more about using neural networks in your ecommerce. 

Reason 2: Your Content Is Not Helping Customers Enough

What do customers do before making their final purchase decision and placing an order?

They do research first! Nearly 90% of consumers do product research before making a purchase.

However, one common reason why e-commerce stores have a hard time increasing sales is the lack of helping customers with product research!

When a customer is checking out a product on your site, they might want to do some further research (comparing products, features, prices, etc.) before making a purchase. In this case, if you don't assist customers with their product research, such as linking relevant blog posts and articles on the product page, they will have to leave your site and probably never come back.

Reason 3: Your Website Speed is Slow

Just imagine this: A visitor is super excited to check out your webshop or even buy a product from you, but they have to wait for your slow-loading pages. Most likely, they don't have the patience to wait for a slow site to load. They will just navigate away because they know there must be other websites selling the same or alternative products. Just like that, you lost a potential buyer.

In fact, a long list of studies and statistics have demonstrated the significance of site speed to e-commerce business success. For example, a study by Akamai shows that the bounce rate increases by 103% when a web page load time delays for 2 seconds! Furthermore, 53% of mobile site visitors will leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load.

Some tips here could be to optimize the images, and switch to a cloud based hosting. If the loading speed still persists then you could get in touch with a developer and see if you can do something with the codes. Sometimes, using themes result in having a huge number of unnecessary coding lines. 

Reason 4: You Don’t Have a Simple Check Out Process or Digital Payment Options

Checkout is a vital final step in converting window shoppers into actual buyers!

Consumers today hold high expectations towards a simple and frictionless checkout experience. To meet this expectation, many e-commerce companies digital payment services that provide customers with digital payment services which deliver an advanced level of simplicity and security.

Comparatively, does your e-commerce store still only offer traditional payment options like credit and debit cards?

With credit cards, your customers have to go through the long process of first digging out their card and then entering the number, expiration date, holder name, security code, billing, etc., every time! The painful truth is that 87% of online shoppers will abandon their carts if a checkout process is complex.

Don’t let a poor checkout experience make all of your previous efforts be in vain! And actually simplifying the checkout process might be one of the fastest ways to increase your online sales. 

Reason 5: You Are Not Helping Customers Find the Right Products on Your Site

You might have an extensive catalog, offering customers a wide range of products to choose from.

You have so much to offer, but customers couldn’t see that! Most customers are still only looking at one or two products and then leaving. ‍You look at your Google Analytics and find that the number of products viewed and the time customers spent on site are pretty limited.

Why is that? You fail at guiding customer’s product discovery journey around your site. To solve this, you need a new way to drive more traffic around the site and increase awareness of all the brand's product offerings. Maybe using collaborative filtering in your ecommerce might can help with the situation. 

Reason 6: Your Customers Are Not Completing Their Purchases

Did you know that, on average, only 5% of your website’s visitors will end up adding items to their shopping cart while a mere 1% will actually complete the purchase?

Abandoned carts are the biggest headache of online retailers and merchants! The latest data reveals the average shopping cart abandonment rate globally is 70.83%. Quite high, right?

Don’t panic - the silver lining is that, according to BI Intelligence, 63% of that can potentially be recovered by savvy online retailers.

If you're struggling with increasing your e-commerce sales, try to focus on the 4%! These customers are the gold mines since they have already added products to shopping carts but have not gone through with the transactions yet!

Reason 7: Your Webstore Is Not Optimized for Mobile

Mobile commerce is a big e-commerce trend you cannot ignore!

Nowadays, most consumers carry a virtual shop in their pocket, in the form of smartphones or tablets. Over the past decade, mobile devices have grown into a primary channel that consumers use to shop online.

As Statista’s latest report presents, the estimated mobile as a share of total e-commerce is projected to reach 72.9% worldwide by this year. The revenue of the global mobile commerce industry is expected to reach 3.56 trillion USD by this year 2021.

Yet, if your e-commerce store is not optimized for mobile and doesn’t comply with consumers’ changing behaviors, you can risk alienating a huge chunk of customers! So, optimize your webstore for mobile, if you want to increase your sales fast. 

Reason 8: You Are Letting Customers Slip Away

Your customers are not all the same – they have different life cycles and purchase patterns.

While having active customers who repeatedly purchase from you, you also have a group of customers who are becoming dormant and quietly slipping away.

However, if you let them go without doing anything, you are losing a fortune. Remember that these dormant customers have already shown interest in your business. So reactivating them is much less costly and difficult than converting prospects into new customers.

To reactivate these customers, consider sending targeted emails with special offers, personalized recommendations, or updates on new products/services. You can also use retargeting ads to remind them of your brand and incentivize them to return.

Reason 9: You Are Not Leveraging Customers’ Reviews and Ratings

With declining trust in traditional advertising, the presence of social proof - voices coming from customers - tends to carry more weight than branded messages from e-commerce companies themselves.

In fact, 88% of consumers claim that ratings and reviews have an impact on their buying decision.

Social proof is critical in driving and convincing customers to choose your business and place a final purchase. The lack of it can surely result in low conversions and sales. This could be one of the strategies of increasing sales through social media. 

Reason 10: Your Website’s Navigation and UX Is Not Up to Date

A good navigation system can help e-commerce businesses to leverage their full potential, generating more sales and revenue! On the contrary, poor site navigation kills the UX (user experience, frustrating the users and leading to a higher bounce rate!

Visitors to your e-commerce site will decide whether they want to stay or leave within just a few seconds.

For example, your visitor lands on a product page of your site. But the product is not exactly what they're looking for, and there's no recommendation banner showing them alternative options. With this poor user experience, your visitor will immediately bounce away, and you will lose a potential customer.

Reason 11: Poor Customer Support

Lack of responsive and helpful customer support can deter potential buyers. Customers expect quick answers to their questions and effective solutions to their problems. If your support is slow or unhelpful, they'll likely go elsewhere.

In online retail, effective customer support is crucial for success. Poor support deters buyers, eroding trust and credibility, leading to increased cart abandonment and negative word-of-mouth. This significantly reduces customer lifetime value, as dissatisfied customers are unlikely to return.

To boost online sales, businesses must prioritize responsive, helpful, and proactive customer support. This includes offering multiple channels (live chat, email, phone) with fast response times, ideally 24/7. Support agents should be well-trained, knowledgeable, and capable of personalized problem-solving. Proactive measures like comprehensive FAQs, chatbots, and clear website policies minimize the need for direct inquiries.

Finally, continuous improvement through customer satisfaction surveys, metric monitoring, and ongoing training ensures support quality. Investing in robust customer support not only prevents lost sales but also builds loyalty and drives sustainable growth.

Reason 12: Insufficient Marketing Efforts

Even with an exceptional product and a beautifully designed website, sales will inevitably suffer if potential customers remain unaware of your online store or the compelling offers you provide. A significant contributing factor to low sales is often a lack of targeted marketing. This encompasses a range of crucial digital strategies, including robust Search Engine Optimization (SEO), strategic social media advertising, and well-executed email campaigns.

Without these vital components, your reach and visibility are severely limited, preventing your store from connecting with its intended audience and ultimately hindering your ability to generate the sales your product deserves.

Reason 13: Seasonal or "Down" Periods of the Year

Sometimes, even if your marketing, website, and products are top-notch, online sales can simply dip because of the time of year. Most businesses see their sales go up and down throughout the year. For instance, retail sales usually spike around holidays like Black Friday or Christmas, but then naturally slow down during off-peak times.

It’s really important to understand these cycles so you can manage your expectations and plan your sales strategies. If you’re wondering how to boost online sales fast, just remember that sometimes the market itself is just less active.

For a Shopify store, this means you should adjust your marketing budget and campaigns to match typical shopping habits. It's all about knowing when to really push hard for sales and when to save your resources during quieter periods, instead of constantly trying to figure out how to quickly increase sales when people aren't really in the mood to buy.

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How to Fix Low Online Retail Sales

Here's our checklist of the top 10 common mistakes that stop you from growing online sales. Did you find yourself making some of these mistakes? If so, are you now looking for the solutions?

To guide you through fixing these deadly mistakes, we've prepared a scientific, data-driven guide:

‍You can get this guide for free right here!

Do you want to see how our tools can help you increase your sales? Book a demo now.