The leaky bucket problem
E-commerce brands pour money into acquisition — ads, influencers, SEO — without fixing the fundamental problem: the store itself is leaking.
If 2% of your visitors are converting and your industry average is 3.5%, you’re not underspending on ads. You’re losing half your potential revenue every single day.
The five most common conversion killers
1. Slow page speed
A one-second delay in page load time reduces conversions by 7%. Most e-commerce stores test on fast connections and never feel how bad the experience is on mobile data.
Use Google PageSpeed Insights. If your score is below 70, it’s costing you money.
2. A checkout with too many steps
Every additional step in checkout is a door you’re giving customers to leave through. Guest checkout, one-page checkout, and saved payment methods aren’t nice-to-haves — they’re conversion requirements.
3. Missing social proof at decision points
Reviews matter most right at the point of purchase — on the product page, not just in a separate reviews tab. If a customer has to go looking for proof that your product is good, many won’t bother.
4. Vague shipping information
“Shipping calculated at checkout” is one of the most abandoned-cart-causing phrases in e-commerce. Customers want to know costs and timelines before they commit to the checkout flow.
5. No post-cart recovery system
Cart abandonment is around 70% across e-commerce. If you’re not running an automated email or SMS sequence to recover abandoned carts, you’re leaving the easiest revenue on the table.
The compounding effect of fixing these
These aren’t independent problems. Each one you fix compounds with the others. Fixing speed + checkout + recovery flows together can double conversion rates — which doubles revenue without touching ad spend.