Finally Resolved: “Traffic But No Sales” – and how to easily fix it by looking at your Shopify dashboard even if you get overwhelmed with numbers

You’ve landed here because you have probably opened your Shopify store or an online business, maybe recently, and have started to get lots of traffic to your website but have no sales (or at least not as many as you’d like).

Running an online business and converting that traffic to sales requires taking a few steps in the right order and in this article, we’ll be explaining that step by step so that you can finally forget about that ‘traffic but no sales’ problem and instead focus on actually running your online business.

Whether you’ve got a Shopify store or another website, first of all, I just want to pause for a moment and say congratulation, you’ve succeeded in opening that business and succeeded in getting a lot of traffic which is fantastic and all we’re doing here is working on the next step.

Diagnosing why you’re getting lots of traffic but no sales is the most important step

To be able to fix it, first of all, we need to understand ‘the why’ behind the problem and most specifically, why you’re getting a lot of traffic or perhaps even ‘add to carts’ here and there yet no sales.

To diagnose your store and understand why this problem exists, take a look at some of the simple information available to you inside your Shopify store or if you have another ecom platform, inside the analytics of that tool.

The first piece of information I like looking at when I’m diagnosing why a Shopify store is getting lots of traffic but no sales is the Shopify Dashboard.

Shopify Dashboard

The Shopify dashboard is a super simple overview that gives you a snapshot of what’s going on inside your store.

Looking at an example of a Shopify dashboard below which you can find under Analytics inside your Shopify store, there are a few important numbers that you can see.

Of course, you can see total sales, online store sessions, what is the return customer rate, what’s your online store conversion rate, what’s the average order value and how many orders have you had in total.

Reading your Shopify dashboard is crucial in being able to fix the traffic but no sales problem

The way you want to read this Shopify dashboard to fix the traffic but no sales problem, is that you first select a time period you’d like to be reviewing, I like to look at last 30 days so that you’re looking at something statistically relevant and not information that could be skewed towards the last few days.

So once you’ve set your Shopify dashboard for the right time period, then you first look at the online store visitors – how many did you get in the last 30 days?

How many online visitors is your store getting will help you determine where to start fixing the traffic but no sales problem

The reason why this is important is because many people think that they have a lot of traffic but little sales whilst in fact they don’t realise that for an online store and particularly for a new one, you really need at a very bare minimum 100 visitors to get 1 sale. Yes, you heard me, for relatively new stores, we’re really looking at 1% conversion rate to start with and that should be your benchmark. And you can always look at how to increase your eCommerce conversion rate at a later stage.

So if you’ve had less than 100 visitors, please don’t expect to get a sale just yet and don’t perform analysis paralysis but instead focus on getting highly converting traffic to your store as right now, that’s how you’re going to get the most value out of your efforts.

As a guide, ideally you want to start getting 100 visitors to your store each and every day so that you actually have some decent data to work with and can really thoroughly analyze why you’re getting a lot of traffic but no sales.

So now that you’ve established that you are actually getting lots of traffic (that traffic is not the problem), the second super important part in your Shopify dashboard is to look at your online store conversion rate breakdown.

The online store conversion rate breakdown inside the Shopify sales dashboard will guide you to what you need to do next

Looking at the online store conversion rate breakdown, you want to understand not just your overall store conversion rate (which we already established that it needs to be above 1%), but also at the information about your conversion funnel.

To be able to start getting not just traffic but also lots of sales, you’ve got to understand if people drop off from your website more than usual and if so where do they drop off. Once you understand this, fixing it will be super easy. In fact, one of our customers has tripled their business purely with what you’re just about to learn now.

It’s very normal that people will be browsing inside your store and that most won’t add anything to cart or buy anything either. Think about the countless times you walked inside a store and just browsed.

And then how many times did you walk inside a store, browsed a little, you might have even tried something on but still haven’t purchased anything. This kind of behaviour is super normal and the numbers on your Shopify dashboard will reveal if it’s within the norm or if there’s any deeper problem.

It’s normal that for every 3 people who add products to cart only 1 converts

So if you’re looking at this conversion funnel and you can see that your add to cart rate is let’s say 3% and your conversion rate is 1% then that drop off is normal and in this case if you want to get more sales, you’ve got to make your offer more irresistible for your customers so that more of your website visitors are compelled to add your products to cart.

If this is the reason why you’re getting a lot of website traffic but no sales then I suggest you revisit your product pages, expand your product description, use high quality images and also clearly communicate why the customer should be buying from you and not from your competitors. This is quite important.

If however, a lot more people have added products to cart and only a very few have converted, then most likely you’re making your potential customers very frustrated

In this case, your problem lies elsewhere but it’s also easy to fix. If many people have added to cart but you’ve got no sales, the problem is about the ease of your checkout process.

Test your checkout process on your mobile and make sure that it flows very easily, that you’re not asking for too much information too fast and also that you’re clear on the shipping options.

This is very important because at this point, your customer is committed and really wants to proceed and give you money. So by you making it really hard for the customer to check out, you’re not just losing money but you’re also making someone who wants your products very frustrated.

For example, one of our customers was missing out on appx. $1,500,000 revenue each year purely because their checkout process was quite clunky. They have a lot of people add products to cart, but there was no information about shipping and nowhere to be found on the website so once they presented their customers with a long form to fill out, customers just gave up and dropped off. They were able to fix this literally in just a few days and capture the additional sales that were ready waiting for them.

Once you’ve done the above, one Ninja trick is to add a timer to your checkout page. It doesn’t have to be anything over the top or too salesy, but just a simple timer stating that these are popular products and hence the product is only being reserved for the next 7 minutes or so. You will see how this will influence people to proceed to the next step and convert.

Wrapping Up

So there you have it, you don’t have to worry anymore about getting lots of traffic and add to carts to your Shopify store but no sales as now you’ll be able to fix that literally just with a few simple steps after looking at your Shopify dahsboard.

And if you decide that you want more resources to help you get more Shopify sales, remember that there are plenty of tools and resources out there for you.

Comment below to let us know about any questions you’ve got and if this was helpful for you and we’re looking forward to seeing you around the Traffic Ninjas community!