How to Increase Sales on Shopify: Getting More Sales

How to increase Shopify sales depends on which of three situations a store is actually in, and most of the advice online doesn't separate them. A store with no sales yet needs a different fix to a store with traffic but no orders, and both need something different again from a store whose growth has simply flattened out. This guide covers all three: how to get your first sales, how to diagnose a store with visitors but no orders, and the conversion, average order value, retention and support tactics that move revenue for a store that has plateaued.

TL;DR

Most Shopify stores are leaving revenue on the traffic they already have, not on traffic they don't yet have. If there are no sales yet, the fix is free traffic, one small paid test and targeted outreach, covered below. If there's traffic but no orders, a 20-minute diagnosis will usually find the exact point shoppers are leaving. If sales have plateaued, the fixes that matter most, in order, are the product page, shipping-cost visibility, social proof, email and SMS recovery flows, live chat, average order value offers, and honest urgency, each covered as its own section with a 30-day plan at the end to put them in sequence.

Why Shopify Sales Plateau

Growth on Shopify is rarely one big breakthrough. It's a run of small gains, in conversion rate, in average order value, in how many customers come back, that compound into a much bigger number over a few months than any single tactic manages on its own. A store that fixes its product page and does nothing else will see a small lift. A store that fixes the product page, then shipping visibility, then its email flows will see those gains stack.

Shopify's own blog, citing Statista, puts the global average at 1.4% of ecommerce visits converting into a purchase as of Q1 2026, with other industry trackers running closer to 2.5-3%. Either way, most of a store's traffic was never going to buy today. The sections below are about moving more of the traffic a store already has across that line, not about finding new traffic to replace it.

Getting Your First Sales on Shopify

A store with zero sales has a different problem to a store with traffic but no orders: there's no data yet to diagnose, so the first job is simply getting real buyers in front of the store.

Free traffic first. Put the store URL on every social profile, forum signature and community account already in use, not just the obvious ones. Offer a modest launch discount to a personal network and ask them to share it rather than just buy it themselves, since the share is worth more than the one sale. Then look for the communities a store's actual buyers already spend time in: a relevant subreddit, a Facebook group built around the product category, a Shopify merchant community, or an industry forum. The one rule that matters here: post as a participant with something useful to say, not as an ad. A community that smells a drive-by sales pitch will turn on a new seller fast, and the damage follows the brand's name.

A small paid test, once there's something to point ads at. Do the keyword research first: find the exact terms a buyer would type when they're ready to purchase, not just terms that describe the product. Google Shopping is usually the better first paid channel for a physical product, since it shows the price and image before the click, which filters out a lot of the wrong traffic before it costs anything. Pick one platform, Google Shopping or one Meta campaign, set a fixed daily budget that the business can afford to lose entirely, and give it a real two weeks before judging it.

Outreach, aimed narrowly. Micro-influencers in the exact niche, not the biggest names, convert an audience already primed to trust that one voice. Product seeding, sending free product to a short list of creators for an honest review, works the same way and costs product, not cash. One partnership with a complementary, non-competing brand, sharing audiences through a joint offer, can bring in a batch of pre-qualified buyers in a single push.

What to skip: guerrilla marketing, flyers, and stunts built for attention rather than buyers. They photograph well and convert badly. A new store's early budget, time and credibility are better spent on the three things above, done properly, than spread across a dozen tactics tried once each.

Traffic but No Sales: A 20-Minute Diagnosis

A store with visitors and no orders almost always has one specific, findable blocker rather than a dozen small problems. Work through this list in order; each row points to the section that fixes it.

This diagnosis takes about 20 minutes and usually surfaces one or two clear blockers rather than a long list, which is the point: fix those first, then move to the growth tactics below.

Fix the Product Page First

A product page has to do the selling a shop assistant would do in person, in the space of one screen. Lead with the benefit, not the feature list: what the product actually does for the buyer, in the first line, before the specifications. Work the one or two keywords a buyer would actually search for naturally into the title and the opening sentences, not stuffed in afterward. Put specifications and dimensions in bullets further down the page, where a buyer looks for them once the benefit has already landed. Set the meta title and description deliberately rather than leaving them to default, and use real product images and, where possible, video, since both measurably reduce the uncertainty that stops a purchase.

Shopify's own built-in SEO fields cover title tags, meta descriptions and image alt text without needing an app at all. Apps can add more (Plug in SEO is one still active on the Shopify App Store at the time of writing), but app choices in this category change often, so check the current listing before committing to one.

For the full breakdown of what a converting product page needs section by section, see a product page that converts.

Make Shipping Cost and Policy Visible

Unexpected costs at checkout are the single most-cited reason shoppers abandon a cart, according to Baymard Institute's ongoing cart-abandonment research, last updated in September 2025: extra costs (shipping, tax and fees appearing late) are the reason 40% of respondents who abandoned a cart give first. The fix is visibility, not necessarily a lower price: show the real shipping cost, and the returns policy, on the product page itself, not for the first time at checkout.

A free-shipping threshold set just above the store's current average order value turns this into a conversion tool, not just a cost. If average order value sits at $45, a threshold around $60 gives shoppers a reason to add one more item rather than feel the shipping charge land as a surprise at $45. A progress bar in the cart ("add $12 more for free shipping") makes the threshold work harder than a one-line policy statement on its own.

Social Proof: Reviews and Customer Content

Shoppers trust other shoppers more than they trust a product description, which is well established in ecommerce research (Northwestern University's Spiegel Research Center has published repeatedly on how reviews shift purchase behaviour), even without pinning an exact lift to a single figure here. What moves the needle in practice: asking for a review at the right moment, right after the product has actually been used rather than immediately on delivery; making photo reviews easy to add, since a photo does more work than a star rating; and replying to negative reviews in public rather than letting them sit unanswered, which often does more for trust than the negative review itself costs.

Loox and Judge.me are both still active, well-reviewed apps on the Shopify App Store at the time of writing for collecting and displaying reviews, including photo reviews. Either can also feed genuine review content into ad creative, which tends to outperform studio product shots in cold-traffic campaigns.

For the fuller set of tactics on where and how to ask, see how to get online reviews.

Recover and Retain With Email and SMS

Email and SMS do the job of following up with someone who already showed interest, which is a fundamentally easier sale than cold traffic. An abandoned-cart sequence (typically three messages spread over about three days), a browse-abandonment flow for someone who viewed products but never added to cart, a welcome series for new subscribers, and a post-purchase flow that asks for a review and, where relevant, prompts a replenishment order, cover most of the recoverable revenue available without any new traffic at all.

Retargeting on Meta works the same recovery logic through ads instead of email: a custom audience built from cart additions and product views, shown dynamic ads of the exact items they looked at, with a roughly 30-day window and existing purchasers excluded so the budget isn't spent re-selling to people who already bought.

Klaviyo remains the standard integration for Shopify email and SMS flows. For the specific case of feeding helpdesk and order data into Klaviyo segments, see integrate your helpdesk with Klaviyo. For a deeper walkthrough of cart-recovery flows specifically, see reduce cart abandonment.

Answer Questions Before They Leave: Live Chat and Fast Support

A shopper with an unanswered question about sizing, delivery time or a return policy rarely emails and waits; they close the tab. Chat on the product and checkout pages specifically, not just a floating widget on the homepage, catches that moment of hesitation while it's still recoverable. Proactive triggers (based on time on page or exit intent), saved replies for the handful of questions that come up constantly, and a regular look back through chat transcripts to find where shoppers actually get stuck, are the three things that make chat earn its place rather than just sit there as an icon.

eDesk, eDesk's own product, is built to put Shopify chat, email and marketplace messages in one inbox so a small team isn't switching between tabs mid-conversation.

For the current options specifically, see live chat apps for Shopify; for support as a broader topic, including response-time targets and staffing, see the Shopify customer service guide.

Raise Average Order Value: Upsells, Bundles and Tiered Offers

A post-purchase, one-click upsell, offered on the thank-you page right after a customer has already committed to buying, converts at a meaningfully higher rate than trying to upsell before checkout, because the buying decision is already made. ReConvert is a current, well-reviewed app on the Shopify App Store for exactly this. Bundles work the same logic earlier in the journey: pairing a few related items at a small discount against buying them separately raises the order's total without touching the margin on any single item the way a blanket storewide discount would.

Tiered discounts ("15% off orders over $50, 20% off over $100") give a shopper a reason to add one more thing to hit the next tier, which a flat percentage off everything doesn't. Keep any time-limited campaign genuinely time-limited, with a real end date and a stated reason, both for honesty and because an offer that never actually ends stops motivating anyone.

Urgency, Used Honestly

Real stock counts and real end dates work because they're true; invented ones are a trust problem the moment a shopper notices the "only 2 left" counter never changes, and in the UK and EU, a fabricated scarcity claim is also a consumer-protection issue, not just a style choice. If stock genuinely is limited, show the real number. If a sale genuinely ends Friday, say Friday and mean it.

A countdown timer app can display a genuine sale end date cleanly; check the current Shopify App Store listing for an active one on the day of writing, since names and ratings in this category turn over quickly. What matters far more than the app chosen is that every number and date it shows is one the store can stand behind if a customer checks.

Quick Wins for This Month: A 30-Day Plan

Running every tactic at once is a good way to measure nothing clearly. A simple four-week sequence puts the fixes that matter most first and gives each one time to show a real signal.

Map the starting symptom to where to begin: low conversion with decent traffic starts at Week 1; high cart abandonment specifically starts at Week 2; revenue that's plateaued despite steady traffic and a healthy conversion rate starts at Week 3 or 4, since the product page and shipping basics are likely already working. For the automation side of running these flows day to day once they're live, see Shopify automation.

FAQ

1. Why is my Shopify store getting traffic but no sales? Usually one specific, findable blocker rather than many small problems: the wrong traffic source, a product page that doesn't answer price, shipping or sizing above the fold, a checkout issue on mobile, no visible trust signal, or a shipping cost that only appears at the last step. Run the 20-minute diagnosis to find which one it is.

2. How do I get my first sale on Shopify? Start with free traffic: the store's own network, relevant online communities, and every social profile already in use. Add one small, keyword-researched paid test, usually Google Shopping, once there's a product page worth sending clicks to. Outreach to micro-influencers and one complementary-brand partnership can add a batch of new buyers on top.

3. What is the fastest way to boost Shopify sales? For a store with existing traffic, the quickest results usually come from tactics that need no new traffic at all: turning on abandoned-cart email, adding live chat to the product and checkout pages, and making shipping cost visible before checkout rather than at the final step.

4. Should I use discounts or bundles? Bundles and tiered discounts tend to protect margin better than a blanket storewide discount, since they raise the order total rather than cutting the price on everything. A straight discount still has its place for clearing ageing inventory or winning a first-time customer, but it shouldn't be the default tool for raising average order value.

5. How much should I spend on Shopify apps to increase sales? There's no fixed figure that holds across stores; it depends on the gap the diagnosis actually finds. A store missing reviews, chat and email automation entirely will spend more filling those three gaps than a store that already has them and just needs the product page and shipping visibility fixed. Spend against the specific blocker the diagnosis in Section 3 surfaces, not a flat percentage of revenue.