Why an online store does not sell: six reasons you can see immediately

The store is live, the products are uploaded, the ads are running — and there are few orders. Usually it is not the product and not the price. Below are the six reasons we see most often, in order of how much they cost you.

1. The catalogue is slow

The catalogue is the heaviest page in a store: dozens of images, filters, prices. If it takes five seconds to open, people leave before they see a product.

What to do: compress images to WebP, load them as the page scrolls, and serve the page assembled from the server instead of building it in the browser. The difference between two seconds and five on a catalogue shows up in orders.

2. Filters do not match how people choose

The standard “price — brand — new arrivals” set does not fit everything. Perfumery is chosen by notes, concentration and collection. Clothing by size and fabric. Gift sets by occasion.

If the filter does not mirror the buyer’s logic, they scroll the catalogue by hand and leave. We worked through this on Sintar Group: eight filter parameters plus brand sections of their own, because that is how perfumery is actually chosen.

3. Delivery cost appears only at the end

The classic mistake: someone fills a cart, reaches checkout and sees a delivery fee that changes the total by a third. A share of those carts never comes back.

Show delivery cost and timing on the product page, or at least in the cart — before the person starts entering their details.

4. Forced registration

Registration before purchase is the most expensive step in the funnel. An order should be possible with a name, a phone number and an address. Offer an account afterwards, once the order is placed.

5. The product page does not answer questions

If a page has only a name, a price and one photo, the visitor goes elsewhere for details — and often buys there. The page needs what actually drives the decision: attributes, composition, sizes, availability, delivery time and related products.

Neighbouring products from the same collection work better than a “popular” block: the buyer has already picked a direction and needs to compare within it.

6. The mobile layout was an afterthought

More than half of store traffic is mobile. If the filter opens full-screen with no way to close it, if the “add to cart” button hides under the browser bar, and if address fields do not autofill — you will not get those orders.

The mobile view has to be designed on its own, not compressed from the desktop one.

Where to start checking

Open your store on a phone on mobile data and walk the whole path: find a product through the catalogue, add it to the cart, place the order. Time it and count the steps.

That walk usually writes the task list for you. If you want an outside view, write to us — we will look at your store and name the three changes that would give you the most.