Conversion
How to increase your Shopify conversion rate: 15 fixes that work
Your conversion rate is the share of visits that end in an order. If you’re not sure where yours stands, work it out first with the conversion rate calculator. The typical Shopify store converts about 1.4% of visits.
These are the fixes I check first on Shopify stores, in roughly the order I’d work through them: the ones that most often make a difference, and that you can do without a redesign.
Start by finding where people give up
Before changing anything, open Analytics in your Shopify admin and look at the conversion rate breakdown. It shows how many sessions:
- added something to the basket,
- reached checkout,
- completed the purchase.
Wherever the biggest drop is, start there. Few add to basket? Focus on product pages. Plenty of baskets but few checkouts? Look at the basket and delivery costs. Do it for mobile and desktop separately: phones are usually where the biggest gap is.
Product pages
1. Keep Add to cart within reach on phones
On a phone, people scroll through photos, the description and reviews. By then, the button is far above them. A sticky Add to cart bar that appears once the main button scrolls away fixes this, and many themes include one.
Then check it actually shows. On one store I checked recently, a wide logo made the header taller than the theme expected, and the header covered the sticky bar completely. The free store check opens your product page on a virtual iPhone and tests exactly this.
2. Put delivery and returns next to the button
Delivery cost, delivery time and returns are what people check just before they buy. One short line under the button does the job: “Free UK delivery over £50 · Free 30-day returns.” If they have to hunt for it, many leave to look, and don’t come back.
3. Show a star rating under the product name
Reviews are one of the strongest reasons to trust a store you don’t know. Collect them after every order, and show the rating and the number of reviews near the top of the product page, linking down to the reviews. Having a review app installed isn’t enough if the rating doesn’t show. More in why customer reviews matter.
4. Use photos that answer questions
Show the product from every angle, close up, in use and at a scale people can judge. For clothing, add the model’s height and size. Every question a photo answers is one less reason to leave.
5. Make options easy to choose
Show sizes and colours as buttons, not drop-downs, mark sold-out options clearly, and put a size guide link right next to the sizes.
6. Make the description easy to skim
Lead with the main benefit in one or two short lines. Put details like materials, sizing and care in tabs or drop-downs, so the page stays short on a phone.
Speed and mobile
7. Make the product page fast on a phone
Run your product page through PageSpeed Insights and look at the mobile results. The most useful number is Largest Contentful Paint: how long the main image takes to appear. Google counts 2.5 seconds or less as good. Start with my 5 quick wins for a faster Shopify store.
8. Remove apps you don’t use
Every app adds code, and some keep loading after you’ve uninstalled them. Go through your apps, remove what you don’t use, and check their code has gone from your theme too.
9. Don’t cover the page as soon as people arrive
A sign-up pop-up that opens the moment someone lands, especially on a phone, often gets the tab closed instead. Show it after some scrolling or time on the page, keep it small on mobile, and make the close button easy to tap.
10. Test your whole store on your own phone
Open your store in a private window, on 4G rather than Wi-Fi, and buy something from start to finish. It’s the quickest way to find what your customers are struggling with. My Shopify mobile checklist lists what to look for.
Basket and checkout
11. No surprise costs
Unexpected extra costs, usually delivery, are consistently the top reason people abandon a checkout in the Baymard Institute’s research. Show delivery costs on the product page and in the basket, before checkout.
12. Show progress to free delivery
If you offer free delivery over a certain amount, say so in the basket: “You’re £8 away from free delivery.” It gives people a reason to add one more thing, and makes the threshold feel reachable.
13. Turn on express payments
Shop Pay, Apple Pay and Google Pay let people pay in a couple of taps instead of typing card and address details on a phone. Check they’re enabled in Settings → Payments and that they show on product pages and in the basket.
14. Don’t force people to create an account
Let people check out as a guest. Being asked to create an account is one of the most common reasons for abandoning a checkout in the same Baymard research. You can offer an account after the order, when they’ve already bought.
Measure what you change
15. Change a few things at a time, and write down the date
If you change ten things at once, you won’t know which one helped. Make a small set of changes, note the date, and compare the four weeks before with the four weeks after, for mobile and desktop separately. If you have enough traffic, test the bigger changes properly with an A/B test.
A free tool like Microsoft Clarity shows recordings and heatmaps of real visits, which is often where the “why” becomes obvious.
Small improvements add up
Conversion rates are small numbers, so small changes matter. A store moving from 2% to 2.2% gets 10% more orders from the same visitors, without spending more on ads.
In short
- Find where people give up first, using Shopify’s conversion breakdown, on mobile and desktop.
- Fix the product page basics: Add to cart within reach, delivery and returns by the button, a visible star rating.
- Make it fast and uncluttered on a phone.
- No surprise costs, express payments and guest checkout in the basket.
- Change a few things at a time, and measure.
Want to see where your store stands? Run the free Shopify store check: it checks your product page, including on a virtual iPhone, in about 15 seconds.
Or, if you’d rather have the fixes built for you, my Product Page Sprint covers the most important of these on your top product pages, with a before-and-after report.