10 Conversion Killers Destroying Your Sales

I'll start with the most boring problem because it's the most expensive. Page speed isn't a technical nice-to-have—it's a direct tax on your revenue. Google's research shows every additional second of load time increases bounce probability by 32%. I've measured this across dozens of stores: the correlation between speed and conversion is almost perfectly linear. A store loading in 2 seconds will convert roughly twice as well as the same store loading in 4 seconds. The culprits are almost always the same. Uncompressed images uploaded straight from a camera. App bloat from tools installed 'to try' and never removed. Heavy themes with features you don't use. Run PageSpeed Insights right now—I'd bet money your mobile score is below 50.

You have three seconds. That's the window between someone landing on your site and deciding whether to stay or leave. In those three seconds, they need to understand what you sell, who it's for, and why they should care. I review stores every week where I genuinely can't figure out what they're selling. Beautiful hero images that could be anything. Clever taglines that require a decoder ring. Brand stories above product information. This isn't sophisticated branding—it's confusion. The fix is almost insultingly simple: put what you sell, in plain language, where people can see it immediately. If a stranger can't explain your business after three seconds on your homepage, you're leaving money on the table.

Over 70% of your traffic is probably mobile. I've audited stores where mobile traffic was 85%. Yet most stores are still designed on large monitors and then awkwardly squeezed onto phone screens. Open your store on your actual phone right now. Not a browser simulation—your real phone, on a real cellular connection. Try to buy something. Note every moment of friction: buttons too small to tap, text too small to read, forms that require zooming, images that load slowly, menus that require precise finger gymnastics. The standard most stores miss: every tappable element needs to be at least 44x44 pixels. Your thumb isn't a mouse cursor.

Every additional step between 'add to cart' and 'order confirmed' costs you roughly 10% of buyers. Forced account creation alone can cut conversions by 25%. I worked with a store that required seven steps to complete checkout: cart review, email entry, account creation, shipping address, billing address, shipping method, payment. We consolidated it to three: information (with guest checkout default), shipping, payment. Conversion rate increased 40%. Guest checkout isn't optional—it's essential. Yes, you want customer accounts for retention. But the sale comes first.

Here's an uncomfortable truth: customers judge your product quality primarily through photography. A €200 product with €20 photos will feel like a €20 product. A €20 product with €200 photos will feel premium. I've watched stores double their conversion rate by upgrading photography alone. Same products, same prices, same everything—but suddenly customers trusted the quality enough to buy. This doesn't require a professional studio. It requires consistency: same lighting, same backgrounds, same style across all products. Customers zoom, and when they zoom into blur, they don't buy.

Humans are herd animals. We look to others before making decisions, especially when spending money online with a brand we don't know. Yet I regularly see stores with zero reviews, no testimonials, no user-generated content, no trust badges, no indication that anyone has ever bought from them before. You're asking customers to take a leap of faith that most won't take. The fix isn't complicated. Enable reviews and actually ask customers for them. Feature testimonials prominently. Show how many people have purchased. Display trust badges near checkout. Every signal that says 'others have trusted us and been happy' reduces the friction of that first purchase.

If customers can't find what they're looking for in under 10 seconds, they leave. Navigation seems obvious until you watch real users struggle with it. The most common mistakes: too many categories, unclear category names, buried search functionality, no filtering on collection pages, inconsistent naming between navigation and page headers. Record five people trying to find a specific product on your store. Don't help them. Just watch. You'll discover problems you never knew existed because you know your site too well to see them.

Most visitors who leave your store intend to come back. Most never do. Without a reason to buy now, they'll browse, compare, think about it—and forget. This doesn't mean fake countdown timers or lying about stock levels. It means legitimate reasons to act: limited-time offers, low stock indicators when genuinely low, first-purchase discounts that expire, seasonal promotions. The key is honesty. Fake urgency damages trust and trains customers to ignore your signals. Real urgency converts.

Unexpected costs at checkout are the number one reason for cart abandonment. Baymard Institute research shows 48% of abandoned carts happen because extra costs (shipping, taxes, fees) were too high—and 'too high' often means 'unexpected.' The solution isn't free shipping on everything. It's transparency. Show shipping costs on product pages. Offer a shipping calculator in the cart. If you can't offer free shipping, at least make the cost predictable before checkout. Better yet: build shipping into your prices and offer 'free' shipping. The psychology of €60 + free shipping converts better than €50 + €10 shipping, even though they're identical.

You've paid to get visitors to your store. When they're about to leave, that's your last chance to convert them—and most stores waste it. A well-designed exit intent popup can recover 3-5% of abandoning visitors. Not an annoying generic popup—a relevant offer. Someone leaving a product page might respond to a small discount. Someone leaving checkout might respond to free shipping. Someone who browsed but didn't add to cart might respond to a product quiz. The mistake is either no exit strategy at all, or generic popups that annoy without converting. Match the offer to the behavior.