Organic social growth slowing down? 

ROAS not what it once was? 

Been hit by the latest Google algorithm update?

If you’re finding it hard to grow or maintain traffic levels right now, you’re not alone; many e-commerce brands have found their traffic growth plateauing, or the cost of acquiring it rising sharply. 

Why you might be finding it harder to grow traffic right now

The struggle to grow traffic comes down to a perfect storm of adverse conditions for e-commerce brands:

You have more competitors

It’s now easier than ever to start an ecommerce store, so you’re up against more competition than you were previously. 

You’re competing in the attention economy

Social media is saturated, both on the organic and paid sides. The constant need for fresh creatives and footage can put a strain on small businesses, and they aren’t seeing the return on investment that they’re used to. 

The goal posts are always shifting 

Whether it’s new ad restrictions, or an algorithm update that impacts your organic traffic, getting new traffic to your website is only within your control up to a point – and things can change quickly. 

We’re in a ‘scam epidemic’

Cases of fraud increased by 87% in 2023, with the vast majority taking place online. Your potential customers are wary of visiting and shopping from websites they don’t know. 

“There are more e-commerce websites than ever before, and we’re more impatient and untrusting than ever before, too.”, explains FERO founder, Craig Savage. “For many of us, our internet experience and the pool of websites we’ll browse, trust and buy from, is in fact shrinking rather than growing – even though things feel noisier than ever.”

Focus on converting more of your existing traffic

In smaller businesses, it’s easy for conversion rate to fall through the cracks. 

Many businesses will only make it a priority once it drops, and this is a waste – in our experience, there’s a selection of conversion rate quick wins in pretty much every small ecommerce website, particularly when we look at the bottom of the funnel (checkout and abandoned cart experiences). 

The problem is that most businesses don’t know how to optimise their site, or what to start with first. And it doesn’t help that an ‘optimised’ experience looks different to every user; one change might make things better for one segment of your user base, but make it slightly worse for another one. 

We built FERO to give smaller ecommerce businesses (and their busy founders) a way to start optimising their checkout experience on autopilot. Our Shopify app uses 430 data points to show each of your customers their ideal checkout experience, so you can shift your conversion rate in the right direction, and make more of the traffic you worked so hard to get. Try it free for 30 days. 

Running the numbers: traffic versus conversion rate

According to Shopify, a 3% conversion rate is ‘good’ for an e-commerce site. And that’s not a lot, when you really stop to think about it. 

So let’s assume you’re operating with a 3% conversion rate, and that your average order value remains the same:

• If you grow traffic by 10%, your revenue will increase by 0.3%
• But if you improve your conversion rate by 10%, your revenue will increase by 10%

Which is why we think it’s such an underrated place for founders to focus their efforts today.

Try FERO for free and start feeling the impact of a better checkout experience on your bottom line.