A new women’s clothing/accessories boutique reported three months with no online sales and asked whether visitors would buy from the site. The main consensus is that the products are not necessarily the core issue; trust, positioning, and fit confidence are.
Key recommendations centered on making the store’s strongest claimed differentiator—XS–5X sizing plus personal styling—visible immediately on the homepage and product pages. Several commenters said the current site feels like a generic boutique, and one detailed review found that only a small portion of the catalog appears to offer plus sizes, with plus items separated and labeled differently, which may undermine the size-inclusive promise.
Other recurring issues included inconsistent product photography, possible AI-looking model images, lack of reviews/social proof, an oversized hero image, early discount popups, missing or weak fit/fabric/shipping details, and a phone link pointing to a placeholder number. Technical feedback also flagged layout shifting and a slow-loading homepage hero image on mobile.
Suggested next steps are to fix trust issues first, clarify sizing and measurements per product, use real consistent photos, add reviews/About page, improve homepage messaging, and delay popups. The store owner acknowledged some feedback and planned changes, but the discussion remains unresolved.
The thing that would move me from browsing to buying is copy that speaks to fit, since XS to 5X is your real advantage. Right now items read as women’s clothing and accessories, which could be any store. On each product I would name who the piece flatters and how it actually fits: does it run true to size, is the waist forgiving, is the fabric structured or stretchy, where does the hem land. For a curvy or plus shopper those details are the difference between adding to cart and closing the tab.
I would also open each description with one plain sentence about the moment the piece is for, like work, date night, or everyday, so it reads like a person styled it rather than a catalog. Your personal stylist service is a strong hook too, so mention it right on the product page for anyone unsure about sizing.
The range feels curated, and the XS to 5X positioning is useful. The biggest purchase hesitation for me is the price-to-proof gap. Your homepage asks $90.79 for a bracelet, $194.54 for shorts, and $256.79 for a jumpsuit, but the jumpsuit page gives only a few lines of copy and three similar photos. At those prices I would want to understand the label or designer, fabric and construction quality, how the piece looks in motion, and what makes it worth the price.
I’d test one product page with a short try-on video, close-ups of material and stitching, model measurements, delivery and returns beside Add to cart, plus one specific paragraph explaining the value. Then compare its product-view-to-cart rate with similar items. If the stronger page still gets views but no carts, test the price or assortment next. Your personal stylist service could also help justify the premium if it appears beside sizing.
Took a look at the store. The range and the XS–5X positioning can be a genuinely strong “branding” if done right. Someone already made a good point about the price-to-proof gap. I’ll add the thing that I noticed first when I visited your store: your product photos don’t feel like they belong to the ‘same’ store.
I saw some products that have clean studio images on a clean background while a couple are still on the supplier’s packaging card and others look like they are your own photos in a dim room or out on the sidewalk. Each is fine on its own, but side by side the mismatched backgrounds and lighting make a premium-priced boutique feel less trustworthy, and that really matters when you’re asking for that price point.
If you can, I strongly recommend giving your product photogs one consistent look - the like the same clean background with similar framing and look. That alone makes the grid look intentional and more ‘expensive’. I’d start with your best-sellers and the first image of each product, since that’s what shows in collection pages and search.
Thank you for your recommendations. I will make adjustments 
Thank you for your feedback and recommendations. I guess I wanted to showcase my personal styling techniques and threw in pics from a recent fashion show. Maybe adding a tab with pics from the show specific to Personal Styling would be better received. Thank you again
Thank you for your recommendations. I too was thinking about pricing being a deterrent. I will implement a video to focus on the quality of the items
three months with no sales is rough but honestly not unusual for a new clothing store. the size-inclusive angle (xs to 5x) is a real differentiator though, i’d lean way harder into that on your homepage because right now it reads like a generic boutique and that’s your biggest strength.
the other thing i’d look at is how many pop-ups and overlays are hitting visitors when they first land. discount pop-ups, chat widgets, and cookie banners all competing for attention will make most people bounce before they even see a product. pick one thing to show new visitors and delay everything else by at least 30 seconds.
The clothes and the product pages are genuinely good: real model photos, video, and size charts with actual bust/waist/hip measurements. That’s further than most new boutiques get.
A few honest things that would give me pause as a first-time visitor:
The 10% popup fires the second the page loads. I’d delay it a few seconds or make it exit-intent, and make the X obvious.
Zero reviews or testimonials anywhere. For a store I’ve never heard of, that’s the biggest single thing stopping a first order. As long as you have zero, hide that widget. In the meantime, do everything you can to get at least 10 or 20 reviews. Even gift the product if necessary.
Your best differentiator is buried. “XS-5X, regular and curvy/plus” plus a personal stylist service is a real reason to buy. But the homepage hero is just a big image with no text or shop button. I’d change that to a more typical 16:9 banner with headline + CTA.
Last one, and my own bias: you’ve already got Shopify Inbox, but you have to sign in to use it (which kills engagement). I run a more full-featured AI assistant called Carti that proactively engages customers, answers fit and sizing questions, recommends products, and overcomes sales objections. Plus, at your size it’s 100% free, so really a no-brainer for the conversion lift.
But honestly, fix the hero and add testimonials too. Those will also add an instant bump.
Consider offering Feedback Rebates (instead of your “10% OFF” discount). Your banner might look something like this:
“Buy now and get 10% cashback for your honest review after purchase”
No need to verify the order or mail anything. The link is already encoded with all the necessary info.
This way, you accomplish two things:
Feedback Rebates convert better than Discounts because they give people additional assurance. You’re literally betting money on their after-purchase experience. That immediately makes you look more trustworthy.
Plus, you get reviews that people can actually trust.
Rebates are also cheaper than discounts because not everyone will leave a review to redeem them, so you get to keep more of your profits.
We’ve seen sales increase almost immediately after switching from discounts to rebates. I honestly don’t know why anyone would offer discounts. I guess very few people know about this.
Just make sure you’re using a Feedback Rebates app, not a Reviews app, and not a Discounts app. You cannot be the one who moderates your own reviews or decides who gets the rebate (that’d be against FTC guidelines).
hi. i have several feedback points.
this is not the entire list of feedback. i had more points. i was actually using AdNabu’s free store design reviewer that gives a detailed 30-point checklist for Shopify stores helping them enhance store design to improve sales, engagement, etc.
i would say for more insights, you should try the tool yourself.
The writing itself is good, but two things are quietly killing your sales:
Your models look AI-generated (the shorts and dress pages especially). For clothing, that’s a trust killer, shoppers can sense it and immediately wonder “is this a real store, will my order actually arrive?” The one real photo (the crop top styled by you) is far more convincing. Use real photos or real models consistently.
Your biggest selling point is invisible. You offer XS-5X size inclusivity and a personal stylist, that’s genuinely rare and valuable. But the size charts only show XS-L, and nothing on the page shouts “we fit everyone.” Plus-size shoppers are desperately searching for stores that actually carry their size. Put “XS to 5X” front and center, on the homepage, in titles, in descriptions. That’s also exactly what people search for (“plus size shorts 4X”), so it helps Google and AI search find you too.
Real images + loud size-inclusivity messaging = your fastest path to trust and sales.
Full disclosure since it’s relevant here, I build a tool (Optaru) that generates real-looking product images and descriptions written for both Google and AI search, so I’m biased. But even without it, swapping those AI models for real photos and putting “XS–5X” everywhere will move the needle more than anything else right now.
You asked if I’d purchase — honest answer: the products themselves aren’t what stopped me. Actually browsing the site was.
Ran it through PageSpeed Insights on mobile, and two things stand out.
1. The page moves around while it loads. Not slightly — enough that it’s a real problem. On a clothing store this hurts more than on most sites, because browsing is the experience. You go to tap a dress, the layout jumps, and you land on something else. Do that twice and people assume the site is broken rather than assuming they mistapped.
2. Your main image takes about 12 seconds to appear. Google’s target is under 3. But here’s the interesting part — your images are barely oversized. So this isn’t a “compress your photos” problem.
What the report points to is that the browser isn’t finding your main image early enough. It’s not the file size, it’s when the download starts. On Shopify that’s usually one of two things: the homepage hero is a slideshow/carousel, or the main banner has lazy-loading applied to it. Both delay the one image that shouldn’t be delayed.
Worth checking: if your homepage banner is a slideshow with multiple images, try swapping it for a single static image and re-testing. On a lot of stores that alone cuts several seconds off.
Some genuinely good news — your site responds to taps quickly, so you don’t have an app-bloat problem. This is a narrower fix than it first looks.
Worth flagging for anyone else reading this thread: layout shift is the one thing you basically never catch on your own store. Once your browser has everything cached the page loads instantly and nothing jumps — while a first-time visitor gets a completely different experience.
Happy to share a full breakdown if that’d be useful.
You asked whether I’d buy, and why not. I want to answer the version of that question nobody in this thread has answered yet — not “is the site fast,” but “what happens in a shopper’s head between landing and leaving.”
I pulled your full catalogue and measured the homepage. Three findings, in the order I’d fix them. Full honesty as you asked!!!
This is the big one, and it’s invisible from the admin.
You describe the store as size-inclusive, regular and plus. Here’s what’s actually live right now:
Not one garment in the store lets a woman pick between an M and a 2X. The two ranges live in separate products entirely — and 9 of the 11 plus items carry “Plus Size” inside the product name, while straight-size items are just named normally (“Amber French Terry Hooded Dress” vs “Allie Plus Size Ribbed Mock Neck Crop Top”).
Put yourself in the shopper’s shoes. A plus-size woman arrives — she came because you said inclusive. She taps four things she likes. Statistically, all four are unavailable to her. She isn’t reading that as “out of stock.” She’s reading it as the thing she has experienced in every store: this is not for me, and they marked me on the label.
That shopper doesn’t bounce annoyed. She bounces certain. And she doesn’t come back, so she never shows up in your returning-visitor data.
What I’d do: stop treating plus as a separate product. Where the supplier offers extended sizing, add it as variants on the same product. Where they don’t, say so plainly on the page (“this style runs XS–XL”) instead of letting her discover it after she’s already pictured herself in it. And take “Plus Size” out of the titles — put it in the size selector where it belongs.
If extended sizing genuinely isn’t available from your suppliers for most styles, that’s fine — but then the store shouldn’t lead with inclusivity.
Measured on desktop, 835px viewport:
A first-time visitor has to scroll past two and a half screens of one photo before the site tells her what it sells or what anything costs. Most won’t. And you’ll never see this yourself, because you don’t land on your own homepage cold and scroll it like a stranger — you go straight to admin.
There’s a second, sharper problem inside that hero. The model is straight-size. So the very first signal a plus-size visitor receives — before any words — is a body that isn’t hers. Combined with finding #1, the store is telling her “you’re welcome here” in text and “you’re not” in every other channel. System 1 believes the picture.
What I’d do: cut the hero to roughly one screen, put a real headline on it that names who the store is for and what sizes you carry, and show two bodies, not one. This is a theme setting, not a developer job.
The email popup appeared while I was still inside the hero image — before a single product, price, or size had been shown.
A discount is an answer to the question “is this worth the money.” She hasn’t asked that yet. The question she’s actually holding at that moment is “do they have my size.” Offering 10% off in response reads as a demand, not a gift: you want her address before you’ve given her anything.
What I’d do: delay it until she’s viewed a product or two, and change the hook. For this store, “find your size first” beats “10% off” — the offer should answer the question she actually has.
Your site responds quickly to taps and the product photography, while inconsistent, isn’t your bottleneck. Fix the catalogue contradiction first. Everything else in this thread — including the speed work, which is real — is worth less until a plus-size visitor can actually buy something.
You got this. Bye.
Hi @Tryiton
I took a look, and I don’t think the issue is your products. It’s the first impression the site gives.
The biggest problem for me was that the homepage didn’t load properly (I just saw a blank/black page), so if that’s happening for other visitors too, I’d prioritize fixing that before anything else. A broken homepage is one of the quickest ways to lose potential customers.
Assuming that’s just a temporary issue, here are a few things I look for when deciding whether to buy from a new clothing store:
Since you’re selling apparel, I’d also make sizing as easy as possible. A detailed size guide and fit notes (“runs true to size”, “size up for looser fit”, etc) can reduce hesitation and returns.
Once the homepage loading issue is resolved, I’d be happy to take another look and provide more detailsd feedback on navigation, product pages, mobile experience, and the overall shopping journey.
“Brand Values” says intentional design, made with care, a team with a goal. Genuine, but it could sit on literally any boutique’s homepage. People want to see what actually makes your brand different. And that’s your XS-5X with real measurements and a personal stylist behind it. That is just buried one click away in a nav bar instead of doing the heavy lifting.
A couple other things jumped out reading through this: no reviews or social proof anywhere yet, and the hero image is eating most of the screen while the products themselves get squeezed down below it. Both already came up above, just connecting them.
Happy to write a rewritten hero and product-page pass built around all of this if you like, just say the word.
Hi,
You’ve got real bust, waist and hip measurements on the clothing, which is further than most boutiques bother going. The jewellery has nothing though. On the Butterfly Wooden Earrings there’s no drop length anywhere on the page, and with earrings that size it’s the first thing I’d want to know before buying. Same on the other pairs I clicked. One line would probably save you a few messages a week.
The reason I was on those pages is what Pixc said about your photos not looking like they belong to the same store. Worth saying I made the tool I’m about to show you, so I’m hardly impartial. I took the Butterfly earrings shot, the one where they’re still on the Fashion Jewelry card, and ran it through. It’s AI, but it starts from the photo you already have instead of inventing a product, so those are your actual earrings in all of them.
I’ve attached a few, feel free to use them.
If they’re useful I can do the rest of the ones still sitting on supplier cards, just say the word
Hi there,
I had a look at your store, and there are a couple of trust signals you could improve for first time visitors.
Your contact information isn’t consistent. The phone number displayed is +1 (267) 245-2461, but clicking it dials+1 (555) 123-4567, which is a placeholder number. I’d recommend updating the phone link so it dials your actual number.
I’d also suggest adding an About page. For a new boutique, it’s a great way to introduce yourself, share why you started the brand, and add a photo to help customers connect with your business.
These are small changes, but they’ll make your store feel much more trustworthy.
Hi @Tryiton — your strongest differentiator is not simply “women’s boutique”; it is XS–5X sizing combined with personal styling. I would make the first screen a size-confidence promise, then check each product for fit notes, garment measurements, model size and exchange information near the buying decision. I would also fix the phone-link mismatch mentioned in the thread immediately, because a placeholder number is a direct trust problem. After that, the useful audit path is homepage → plus-size collection → one representative product page, rather than redesigning everything. If helpful, I can structure that path into a short list of priority fixes and practical English rewrites.
3 long replies in less than a minute! Dang you’re good! You deserve the copy/paste award 
