How to increase online store sales for a small brand

Why big-brand advice doesn't fit you

You have maybe six hours a week and a small budget. So you can't do 25 things, and you don't need to.

Skip the big-brand tools for now. Prices that change by themselves, virtual try-on and 3D product views are odd places to start at 40 orders a month.

You have advantages big brands can't buy. You know the product better than anyone. You can answer a customer yourself. You can change your product page in ten minutes without holding a meeting about it. The steps below are in the order that puts those advantages to work.

The math, in one minute

Monthly sales are visitors, times the share who buy, times the value of each order. Here's a made-up store with 3,000 visits, 1.3% buying and a $60 average order. That's 39 orders and $2,340 a month.

The money is the same on the first three rows, but the bills are different. Paid visitors stop when you stop paying. A better page works on every visitor you'll ever get.

Those starting numbers aren't random. In Littledata's study of 438 Shopify stores, a typical store gets 1.3 orders per 100 visits. The bottom fifth get under 0.5, and the top fifth get more than 2.7. What you sell changes this a lot. Typical beauty and skincare stores get 2.6, while fashion and home goods stores get about 1. The typical order is $111, but a fifth of stores sit at $59 or below. So don't panic if you sell $30 candles.

Get your own numbers now:

• On Shopify: go to Analytics, then Reports, and use the Category filter. Under Behavior, open Conversion rate breakdown. Under Customers, open New vs returning customers.
• On WooCommerce: the Analytics section shows your orders and average order value.

If you get under a thousand visits a month, you'll want to reach the visitors step sooner. But do steps 1 to 3 first. They take days, and they make every later visitor worth more.

Step 1: Ask your last ten buyers why they bought

This is the cheapest research you'll ever do.

Email them one at a time, from your own address:

Hi Sam, I run [store]. You bought [product] last month and I have two quick questions. What was going on that made you go looking for it? And what almost stopped you from buying? One line is plenty. Thank you.

The second question is the valuable one. Write down their exact words, including the clumsy ones. Your next customer is thinking in those same words, and searching for them too. Look for phrases that repeat.

If you don't have ten buyers yet, find ten people who fit. Ask them to try buying on their phone while you stay quiet. It's painful to watch and very useful.

Step 2: Pick one product to win with

Sort your products by sales for the last 12 months, using your store's sales reports. In many small stores, a handful of products brings in most of the money. Pick the one with the best mix of sales and profit. Steps 3 to 5 all happen on that product first, and any visitors you pay for later go there too.

While you're there, look at what a first-time visitor has to choose from. Too many products can freeze a shopper. You don't have to delete anything. Put your best sellers first and stop asking a stranger to compare 60 things.

Step 3: Rewrite that page in your customers' words

Open the page on your phone and change these:

• The first line. Use what buyers told you. "Hand-poured soy blend" describes the candle. "Finally a candle that doesn't give me a headache" describes why someone buys it.
• Who it's for, and who it isn't for. A big brand rarely dares to say this. You can, and the people it fits will trust you more for it.
• Every "what almost stopped you" answer. If three people worried about sizing, put the sizing answer next to the buy button. Don't leave it three clicks away on a page nobody reads.
• Proof that a person is behind this. A sentence from you, your name, and a photo of you or your workshop. A big store has to work hard to seem this human. You just have to show up.
• Photos that answer questions. Show it in a hand, on a shelf or on a person, so the shopper can judge the size.

Step 4: Get your first five reviews the honest way

You need fewer reviews than you think. Northwestern University researchers found that a product with five reviews was almost four times as likely to be bought as one with none. Each extra review adds much less after those first five. The effect was stronger on higher-priced items.

The same research found people were usually most likely to buy at ratings of 4.0 to 4.7 stars. They were less likely as a score neared a perfect 5.0. So one grumpy review won't sink you. It may even make the others more believable.

Ask the same ten people from step 1, once they've had time to use the product. Don't buy reviews, write them yourself or get your family to do it without saying so. US rules ban fake reviews. They also ban offering rewards for reviews that have to be positive.

Step 5: Take the surprises out of the cart

Baymard's average of 50 studies says about 70% of online carts get left behind. Don't lose sleep over all of that. In its US survey, 42% of shoppers had left a cart because they were just browsing. Set those aside and the top reasons were extra costs (40%), slow delivery (20%), not trusting the site with card details (19%) and being made to create an account (18%). A poor returns policy came in at 13%.

A small brand can fix most of those in an afternoon:

• Show shipping cost on the product page, or build it into the price.
• Give a delivery date range before the cart.
• Keep guest checkout on.
• Write your returns policy in two plain sentences, and put them near the buy button.
• Offer the fast payment options your platform supports, such as Apple Pay.

Guest checkout and a visible total are two of the ecommerce best practices worth keeping whatever size you are. They also sit at the heart of how to increase ecommerce sales from the visitors you already have.

Step 6: Set up two emails and write them yourself

Before you start a newsletter, set up the automatic emails. Klaviyo's 2026 numbers cover over 183,000 of its customers. Automatic emails brought in nearly 41% of email sales, even though they were only 5.3% of the emails sent. Klaviyo sells this software, so read that with an eyebrow raised. But the logic holds. An email sent because of what someone just did is more useful than one sent to everybody.

Start with two:

The abandoned checkout email. On Shopify, this now lives in the Shopify Messaging app. The older version under Settings, then Checkout, keeps working until Shopify removes it. It only reaches people who gave their email at checkout. By default, the new version only emails your marketing subscribers, and you can change that in its To: field. Most of these emails read like a robot nagging, so write yours as yourself:

Subject: Did something go wrong?

Hi, I saw you got as far as checkout on [product]. If something put you off, just reply and tell me. It comes straight to me. Your cart is here if you still want it: [link]

Leave the discount out of the first one. Discount every abandoned cart and regular customers learn to abandon carts on purpose. The replies you get are also step 1 all over again, for free.

The welcome email. Anyone who signs up gets one short note: who you are, why you started, your best seller and the question people ask most before buying. That's it.

Step 7: Give a first buyer a reason to order again

Shopify's Returning customers report lists everyone with two or more orders. It also shows whether they agreed to marketing. Look at how short that list is. Then do some of what a big store can't:

• Put a real note in the box. Handwritten, one line, with your name on it.
• Check in two weeks later. "How's it going with [product]? Anything I should know?" That email brings you problems, reviews and second orders.
• Remind people when it runs out. If a bottle lasts six weeks, email at week five with a link straight to it.
• Tell past buyers first. New product or restock, they hear before anyone else.
• Sell something people buy once? Ask for a referral or suggest it as a gift. Nobody needs two identical sofas.

Step 8: Raise order value without a discount

Three things that work for small stores:

• Bundle what people already buy together. Your order history will show you the pairs. Sell the pair as one item with a sensible name.
• Set free shipping just above your average order. If your average is $60, try $75, and suggest a $15 add-on in the cart. Check your profit first. Free shipping you can't afford is just a slower way to lose money.
• Put a larger size beside the regular one. Shoppers judge a price by what's next to it. That's one of the simplest bits of sales psychology you can use.

Step 9: Add visitors, one source at a time

You can now work out what a visitor is worth to you. Multiply your profit per order by the share of visitors who buy. At $20 profit an order and 1.3%, a click is worth 26 cents. Pay more than that and you lose money on the first sale. Raise the share who buy to 2.6% and the same click is worth 52 cents. That's why the page came first.

Choose one source that suits your product and give it six weeks. Only then consider another:

Big sale dates don't change the order. A rush of visitors makes whatever your store already does bigger. So black friday conversion work is mostly this same list, done weeks ahead instead of the night before.

Ask the people who are still deciding

Your buyers told you why they bought. The people leaving your page know the other half. On your best product page, show one question to someone who has been there a while: "What's holding you back?" Give them tappable answers such as price, fit, delivery time and "I'm not sure this is right for me." A survey app can do this. Asking can also sell by itself. Shopify reports that a recipe quiz from Skinny Mixes brought in 13,000 customer emails and $500,000 in sales.

A survey tells you what's stopping someone, but that person still leaves. That's the gap we built Possible for. It's our own product, so weigh this accordingly. It's an AI built on real sales psychology. It asks each visitor the right question at the right moment, remembers the answers and guides them to a sale. It's free to start, and here's more on our AI sales assistant for online stores. If you sell three products and the choice is obvious, do the steps above first.

What to ignore for now

• A redesign. Unless the store looks broken, new words on one page will teach you more.
• Five social platforms. Pick the one your buyers named, or skip it until step 9.
• Testing two versions of a page. At 40 orders a month, a test can take months to tell you anything. Read customer replies instead.
• Countdown timers and fake scarcity. Use urgency only when it's true, such as a real delivery cutoff or a batch that really is limited.
• Sitewide discounts as a habit. They move sales from next month to this month, and teach everyone to wait.

Your 30-60-90 days

1. Days 1 to 30: Email your buyers, pick your product, rewrite the page, collect five reviews, clear the cart surprises and switch on the two emails.
2. Days 31 to 60: Add the note in the box, the check-in and the reminder. Set up one bundle or a free shipping minimum.
3. Days 61 to 90: Work out what a click is worth, then choose one source of visitors and give it six weeks.

Be careful how you judge this. A store with 40 orders a month can easily see 30 or 50 with nothing changed, so a good week proves very little. Change one thing at a time. Compare four weeks with the four before, and watch all three numbers. The replies you get will often tell you more than the charts will.

Questions about increasing online store sales

Go deeper on conversion tactics.