Online Shop Optimisation: The 5 Ways to Boost Sales

When it comes to optimising an online shop, the order in which you tackle things makes all the difference: start with the product page, then move on to the shopping basket and checkout, the category page, the homepage and, finally, the header and navigation. Before you start, you’ll need two essentials: a clear understanding of your target audience and proper tracking. After that, use A/B testing to measure what actually generates more revenue.

This sequence and all the examples are taken from the work of Christian Waske, founder of Golden Web Age, and from two webinars with Raidboxes. Let’s do a quick calculation: If your shop generates €100,000 in monthly turnover and you increase your conversion rate by 10 per cent, that’s an extra €120,000 by the end of the year, without any additional advertising budget. Our conversion rate calculator shows you what this means for your figures.

Don’t feel like reading? Christian explains the basics and, from 11:22, the five levers in the video:

This article looks at the shop as a whole. If you want to make specific adjustments to individual settings on Shopify, read on to find out how to increase your Shopify conversion rate.

Before optimising your online shop: target audience and tracking

Without these two points, you’re just optimising based on gut feeling.

Understand your target audience. Note down how your customers feel before and after making a purchase, what fears and obstacles they face, and what they hope to gain from the product. Send your customers a survey with three questions: Why did you buy from us? What almost put you off? What do we do better than others? If you’re still in the early stages, industry studies and a look at your competitors can help.

Christian’s favourite shortcut: Upload product reviews – including those of your competitors – into an AI tool such as ChatGPT and analyse what is consistently praised and what is criticised. This will provide content for your product page and often also ideas for product development.

Accurate measurement. Google Analytics is a must. Tools such as Microsoft Clarity or Hotjar also show you click maps (heatmaps), scroll depth and recordings of individual visits. For example, our team discovered that a new client’s product page featured an enlarged image view (lightbox) from which visitors could no longer exit after clicking on the image.

Optimising your online shop: an overview of the 5 key strategies

1. Product page: This is where the decision is made

In a shop, you can touch, turn and try out a product. Your product page needs to make up for that. In our experience, this structure works best when presented from top to bottom:

• Images: at least three or four, taken from different angles, plus images showing the product in use. Explanatory graphics within the images reduce the amount of text required.
• Reviews displayed alongside the price: this helps customers weigh up price and quality. No product reviews yet? Start by showing your shop reviews and collect new ones via automated emails sent after a purchase.
• Price display: In our tests, a higher ‘strikethrough’ price combined with a lower current price came out on top. Whether a discount expressed as a percentage or in euros appears more significant depends on the price. Furthermore, for discounts in Germany, you must state the lowest total price over the last 30 days (Section 11 of the Price Indication Regulation).
• Show variants as tiles, not hidden in a drop-down menu. If there are a lot of variants, display the best-selling ones – around six – and include a button for the rest.
• State the delivery time and delivery charges clearly.
• Add accessories to your basket with a single click.
• Make guarantees, returns and payment methods clear. This reduces the risk associated with the purchase.
• A description in bullet points rather than pages and pages of continuous text, accompanied by evocative images and a list of technical details for anyone who wants to know the full story.
• Reviews featuring customer photos, followed by frequently asked questions. This is where you address objections and incorporate SEO-relevant content without overwhelming anyone with too much text.

A button for express checkout, on the other hand, isn’t a hard and fast rule. If your customers usually buy several products, ‘Add to basket’ often makes sense. If you only sell one product, going straight to the checkout saves a click. You’ll need to test this out.

A small step in Shopify optimisation that helps build trust: payment logos directly below the ‘Buy’ button. Christian shows you how to add them, including the code, in the video:

2. Shopping basket and checkout: trust rather than obstacles

Every buyer has to go through this stage. It’s less about your product and more about whether people can safely entrust you with their money.

• As few steps and fields as possible, with no obligation to create a customer account.
• The payment methods your target audience expects. In Germany, in Christian’s experience, PayPal is the most important one, followed usually by credit card, Klarna, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Amazon Pay. For expensive products such as furniture, payment by instalments or on account becomes more important; in B2B business, invoicing is the norm.
• Seals of approval, guarantees and a real face from the customer service team.
• Full cost transparency: delivery charges and the total price are visible at all times.
• In the side-loading shopping basket (Side Cart), state the minimum spend required for free delivery and suggest suitable additional products.
• Clear buttons in German. An English ‘Checkout’ undermines trust in the German market; ‘Proceed securely to checkout’ explains what happens next.

3. Category page: From the product range to the right product

Here, the visitor decides which product to take a closer look at.

• Products must be visible without scrolling. Above the products, include only the headline and, at most, a short teaser; place longer SEO text further down the page. Find out more in the article on Shopify SEO.
• In the vast majority of our tests, the mobile version has come out on top in a head-to-head comparison; on the desktop, Christian recommends three or four products side by side.
• Filter and sort by the features that really matter when making a purchase. This can be time-consuming when dealing with large product ranges, but it’s often worth the effort.
• Labels such as ‘Bestseller’ or ‘New’ and reviews on the product tiles make it easier to choose. However, ‘Bestseller’ should only appear on genuine bestsellers; otherwise, it loses its credibility.

4. Home page: Share rather than welcome

Many people consider it to be the most important page. This is often not the case in an online shop, as most visitors arrive via product, category or landing pages. The homepage must guide visitors with very different levels of prior knowledge to where they want to go.

In the area that’s immediately visible, you need a clear headline for your main topic, product benefits, a clear call to action and elements that build trust, such as reviews or quality seals. According to Christian, a headline like ‘A warm welcome to our shop’ is one of the biggest mistakes you can make here.

5. Header and navigation: Everyone sees it just once

Shopping basket on the right, menu on the left: that’s what customers have come to expect. Stick to a maximum of seven main menu items and include a search function if you have a large product range. Use the bar above the header (top bar) to build trust, for example by highlighting free delivery, a guarantee or the number of reviews you have.

Although not one of these five factors, loading time is something you’ll notice throughout the shop. You can find out how to tackle this in the article on Shopify page speed optimisation.

Bundles, upselling and more: Higher turnover per order

Optimisation isn’t just about conversion rates. As a rule of thumb for most B2C shops, Christian cites an average order value (AOV) of €40 to €60 and a margin of 60 to 70 per cent for advertising to be cost-effective. If you’re below these figures, here are six techniques that can help:

1. Product sets (bundles): Bestsellers plus matching accessories with a higher margin.
2. Subscriptions: For consumables, this generates predictable revenue and increases customer value.
3. Upselling: on the product page and in the shopping basket, such as gift wrapping or a gift voucher.
4. Limited editions: Your bestseller in a different colour or with a special design justifies a higher price. The limited quantity must therefore be genuine.
5. Digital add-ons: Pakama combines a fitness rucksack with a training app. Once developed, such products can be sold alongside the main product on an ongoing basis.
6. Free delivery threshold: Set it at around 10 per cent above your average basket value.

How this has played out in real-world shops

Christian mentions these results in the webinar. They apply to the shops in question and are no guarantee for yours.

In the case of a small shop, a comprehensive best-practice optimisation even resulted in a +311.83 per cent increase in the conversion rate. You shouldn’t base your planning on a figure like that: the lower the starting point, the greater the improvement tends to be.

Measuring results with A/B testing: How to find out what works

What works for our customers may not necessarily work for you. That’s why, in an A/B test, you split visitors 50/50 between the original and the new variant, over the same period and with the same mix of visitors. If, on the other hand, you compare two months side by side, campaigns and the origin of the visitors will skew the result.

Three practical rules:

• The key metric is revenue per user (RPU). A higher conversion rate is of no use if the average basket value decreases as a result.
• Data volume: As a rule of thumb, Christian suggests at least 1,000 orders per month and at least 1,000 – or, better still, 1,500 – orders for the test. Small effects require significantly more data, whilst very large ones require less.
• Don’t stop too early: wait for statistical significance – typically 95 per cent. Tools such as ABlyft display this directly; there are also online calculators available – Christian uses the one from CXL.

If you have fewer orders, a one-off basic optimisation based on best practice is the better approach. We explain how the two approaches differ on our conversion optimisation page.

The most common mistakes from our live reviews

In a second webinar, Christian took a live look at the shops that had been submitted. We won’t name the shops here, as the same patterns keep cropping up. The reviews begin at 20:11 in the video:

Trust is made or broken on the homepage. One fashion brand featured reviews, customer testimonials and payment logos on its homepage, but none of these were visible on the product page. Yet, with around 8,700 Instagram followers, there were plenty of product photos available, and the compelling founder’s story was only featured on the ‘About Us’ page. Suggestion: Display reviews next to the price; list benefits as a bulleted list; make free delivery and delivery times clearly visible; include photos from the community; and feature the founder’s story on the product page.

Promises at the top, confusion at the bottom. A shop selling wedding invitations advertised ‘free delivery on orders over €25’ in the top banner. The product page simply stated ‘plus delivery costs’; you had to calculate the costs yourself in the shopping basket. You could filter by occasion. Christian’s suggestion: additional filters for features that matter when making a purchase, such as style or colour scheme.

It’s unclear what’s being sold. On a motorbike fashion website, an eye-catching pop-up appeared first, followed by the cookie banner, and there were no motorbikes to be seen anywhere. The stars looked as though there were no reviews at all. Customers are used to seeing yellow or orange stars on Amazon.

Ingredients rather than benefits. A collagen supplier focused primarily on describing the quality of the product. However, customers buy the results. The shop was already performing well in other respects, so A/B testing, tracking and a customer survey would be the next steps here.

The wrong approach for this product. Nobody buys test strips on a whim. An emotional founder’s story is less important here than proven safety, reviews and the number of customers. You must always adapt best practices to your product.

Your shop under review

Would you like to know which areas will make the biggest difference for you? As part of our shop audit, following a kick-off call, we’ll assess your shop for loading times, usability, conversion elements, branding and user guidance. You’ll receive a presentation detailing specific issues and suggestions for improvement, ranked by their impact on your turnover, including actions you can implement straight away. If you’d prefer to get started on your own first, you can download our e-commerce CRO checklist for free.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do AI-generated images work in online shops?

It depends on the quality. If they look authentic and show your actual product in use, they can boost your conversion rate. If they look generic, AI-generated images and stock photos can undermine trust. Really good, genuine photos are often better, but AI is a good place to start on a tight budget. You should test both.

Do I need to change my shop system to optimise it?

Usually not; the five levers apply to every system. However, a switch might be worthwhile for other reasons: in Christian’s experience, WooCommerce becomes difficult to manage when there are around 5,000 to 10,000 products. Shopify works very well with standard products, but special cases such as dates and vouchers for events are difficult to implement there.

How do I let customers know that they have to pay for the return themselves?

Not on the product page – there, such a message is likely to cause anxiety. Communicate this clearly on your returns page and make the process as straightforward as possible, for example by providing a pre-printed return label.

What should I do if my delivery time is long?

Even so, state this clearly and, if it’s true, explain that it’s an advantage. For many customers, handcrafted quality is a good reason to wait a little longer.