Running a single-product Shopify store selling a kitchen gadget (vegetable chopper) at $54.99. Driving cold US traffic via Meta video ads (Reels + Stories).
The numbers (Jul 1-5):
~155 sessions
18 adds to cart (approx 12% ATC rate)
12 real checkouts initiated (excluding my own test orders)
0 completed purchases
Funnel setup:
Meta ad to advertorial page, then to product page (not direct to cart)
Homepage with bundle selector (1x $54.99, 2x $89.99, 3x $119.99)
Cart drawer with express checkout (Shop Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal)
15 customer reviews imported (4.9 avg rating), visible on homepage
No price shock at checkout — FREE shipping confirmed before payment step
US Market configured correctly in Markets settings
Meta Pixel + CAPI enabled via Shopify FB&IG app
ATC to checkout rate is 82% which suggests no cart friction
What the checkout looks like:
Standard Shopify checkout. Express checkout row (Shop Pay, PayPal, Apple Pay) at top, then contact email, delivery address (defaults to US for US visitors), shipping method (FREE, dates shown), payment section (credit card selected by default, Apple Pay and PayPal as alternatives). Everything renders correctly on mobile.
What I cannot explain:
12 people completed the checkout form and reached the payment step. 0 purchased. The $15 discount did not move the needle. There is no technical error I can identify.
I am starting to think this is purely a cold traffic trust issue on an unknown brand, but 12 checkouts with 0 purchases feels statistically unusual enough that I want to rule out any technical cause first.
If you have seen this pattern before or have ideas on what to check, I would really appreciate it. If you want to take a closer look at the actual store or checkout flow, feel free to send me a DM and I will share the link and real data directly.
Not even remotely enough traffic to make any judgement of any kind. This isn’t a get rich quick scheme, so please don’t treat it as such.
This may be an understatement. People are wary and cautious now more than ever. Do more to earn their trust.
Don’t have time to spend messaging back and forth trying to obtain a store link when you could post it here.
Overall, I think you should spend some time reading through previous posts on the matter. There are so many “why no sales” posts, plenty for you to compare and get already written advice.
Thank you for checking and pointing that out - really appreciate it. After investigating, the issue was caused by a Microsoft Clarity script I had just installed manually, which was conflicting with the cart functionality and causing 503 errors on /cart/add. It was working fine earlier this morning (we had ATCs and checkouts before the install). Removed the duplicate script and cart is working again.
However, this was a new bug introduced today - it does not explain the original 0 purchases issue which existed before this script was added. The core problem remains: 18 ATCs, 12 checkouts initiated over 5 days, 0 completed purchases, with all payment methods verified working. Any thoughts on what else could be causing checkout abandonment at that scale would be very welcome.
i just tried it now again. On both firefox and Chrome. You say that you fixed it. But the console log is still showing the error code 422 on the cart API not 503.
Context: I am not logged in. Directly went to the landing page, tried to hit that Start Slicing…button and the browser’s console says 422 error. And the cart is still empty.
Thanks for checking again. The 422 error is intentional - we only ship to the US, so the cart is restricted to US visitors only. Non-US visitors cannot add to cart by design. The original issue with 0 purchases is separate and predates this.
There is only 1 short video clip and 1 tiny product image. That’s not much to go by.
It seems like the price is much higher than it needs to be. 54 bucks for what looks like a 5-20 dollar product isn’t a very good deal.. I personally would never spend that much on a slicer that looks eerily similar to the alibaba versions. Here, look at what the brand name ones are going for:
Now these are top quality brand names in a trusted store. How are you competing against that? You said you are only marketing to the US. Well, we want quality and durability.
If your product is good to go, then you should start selling it at some shows, fairs, and Sunday Markets.
That ATC to checkout ratio is actually the part I would pay attention to. If 12 real people started checkout and none purchased, I would pause the question of “is the product good?” for a moment and isolate what they see after cart.
A few things I would check first:
Run a fresh test order from a new browser/device and watch for any surprise at checkout: shipping cost, taxes, delivery time, forced account steps, discount behavior, or payment buttons changing once you reach the final step.
Compare the advertorial promise to the product page and checkout. If the ad/adverÂtorial creates one expectation and the product page frames the offer differently, people can still click through and then hesitate when money is involved.
Look at the exact checkout-start sessions if you have recordings. With 12 checkout starts, you do not need a huge dataset yet. You need to see whether people are backing out after shipping, payment, delivery estimate, or after seeing the final total.
The bundle pricing and reviews may be fine, but the drop from checkout started to purchase is specific enough that I would debug the last mile before changing the ads. If you can share the store URL, I may be able to give much more targeted feedback.
