If there’s one thing you can count on in the eCommerce space, it’s that it will always keep you on your toes. eCommerce is constantly in flux. Even the most successful online stores can experience high highs and low lows.
A surge in sales may be followed by a season of stagnation — especially if your business fails to keep up with the changes or stay on top of its internal systems.
If your eCommerce growth has hit a plateau and you’re going through a quiet spell, don’t worry. There’s always a way forward. Sales stagnation is often a signal that it’s time to dig deeper, audit your online store, and find the root cause of the problem so you can get back on track.
In this article, I’ll walk you through practical ways to test why your growth has stalled. From analyzing data trends to examining customer behavior, I’ll show you how to uncover the root causes so you can get sales moving again.
Is eCommerce growth slowing down across the board?
There are times when eCommerce growth will rise or fall across the board.
The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic is a prime example of when factors outside of your control can impact your business sales. The pandemic years accelerated the shift away from physical stores to digital shopping by five years, leading to astronomical eCommerce growth for many retailers.
Peak shopping events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday also lead to sharp, predictable increases in sales across the industry.
Just as these moments can drive record-breaking growth, there are also industry-wide factors that can cause eCommerce growth to slow down. Consumers may tighten their belts and shift their spending priorities during periods of economic uncertainty, for example.
Changes in consumer behavior, like a growing demand for sustainability, local shopping, or personalized experiences, can also disrupt people’s buying patterns. These changes in consumer behavior can leave eCommerce businesses scrambling to adapt.
Even technical shifts, like updates to Google’s search algorithm, can affect the visibility of your store and subsequently impact sales. While adhering to SEO best practices and focusing on quality marketing strategies can help protect your site from major disruptions, it’s a reminder that external factors are always at play.
If your eCommerce sales are stagnating, the first step is to assess whether broader market trends are a contributing factor. Take a look at industry reports, consumer data, and recent changes to better understand the wider environment. Staying informed about these trends can help you differentiate between external challenges causing industry-wide stagnation and internal issues that need addressing within your business.
4 Ways to check eCommerce growth with quantitative research
Tinkering with data and crunching numbers can often reveal rather telling answers for why sales have slowed down. Quantitative research lets you uncover patterns, bottlenecks, and opportunities that might not be immediately obvious.
By analyzing technical performance and monitoring key metrics, you can spot where things might be going wrong and (more importantly) where to focus your efforts to reignite your eCommerce growth.
Technical audit
If you notice a sudden drop in traffic or revenue, your eCommerce site could have been hit by a technical bug or issue. Conducting a thorough technical audit will help you uncover any nasty issues lurking under the hood of your online store.
There are a myriad of technical issues that could impact eCommerce sales. While I don’t claim to be a technical pro (I’ll leave that to the experts!) I have certainly played my part in helping development teams untangle technical eCommerce issues.
So, while you don’t need to be a technical pro, it helps to know where to look when conducting technical audits.
It’s not uncommon for eCommerce websites to run into browser compatibility issues. A site that performs flawlessly in Chrome on desktop, it might fail to launch in Safari or on mobile. Tools like BrowserStack are invaluable for cross-browser and cross-device testing.
As well as using cross-browser testing tools, I recommend you (or the technical lead) review your website’s code. Comb through any existing code, including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, to identify any errors that could impact functionality or performance. If you’re not a coding whizz, enlist the help of a developer to do this for you.
On a technical SEO level, you’ll want to check for indexing issues that might be preventing your store from showing up in search results. Use tools like Screaming Frog to find blocked pages, duplicate content, and other red flags. These issues could significantly impact your online store’s visibility, traffic, and ultimately, revenue.
Once you’ve identified potential problems with your technical audience, create a prioritized list of fixes. Address the most urgent issues first — those that directly affect revenue, user experience, or search visibility — and work your way down to the least critical issues.
Site speed analysis
A slow website might be the silent culprit behind your stagnant sales. The longer people have to wait to load your online store, the more likely they are to leave leading to abandoned carts and decreased sales. Data from Google states that 53% of people will abandon a mobile site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
Run your eCommerce site through PageSpeed Insights to look for any speed-related issues. If you think your drop in sales may be associated with a particular area of your website, put those URLs into PageSpeed Insights to review their performance.
Whenever you run a site speed analysis, it’s always worthwhile checking different page types. Make sure you analyze:
- Homepage
- Category pages or Product Listing Pages (PLPs)
- Product pages or Product Display Pages (PDPs)
- Cart page (if possible)
Remember to test both desktop and mobile versions of your site too. When you run pages through PageSpeed Insights, you’ll be presented with a Core Web Vitals assessment that details how your page performed against various metrics. Your performance score will be followed by a list of diagnostics with recommendations on how to fix them.
Once you have your PageSpeed Insights results, focus on fixing issues on key pages, such as PDPs for top-performing products. Then, similar to the technical audit, create a prioritized list of fixes.
Some PageSpeed Insights optimizations can be easily fixed with plugins or by doing it yourself. More complex issues, such as optimizing server response time, might need the help of a developer’s expertise.
eCommerce funnel analysis
Dive into your eCommerce traffic analytics to see where people have dropped off along the purchase journey.
Your eCommerce funnel represents the path shoppers typically take from their very first moment of brand discovery to completing a purchase. Along the way, it includes stages like browsing product pages, adding items to their cart, proceeding to the checkout, and reaching the purchase confirmation page.
Analyzing your eCommerce funnel can help you spot any holes in the typical customer journey that may contribute to a loss in sales.
Using tools like GA4’s funnel exploration feature, you can visualize how customers move through the eCommerce funnel. The funnel exploration feature by GA4 lets you pinpoint abandonment points in your funnel, showing exactly where potential customers leave before converting.
You might, for example, discover a significant drop-off on your checkout page, suggesting an issue with payment options or shipping costs.
Common culprits might include unclear product pages, misleading cart pages, or hard-to-use checkout pages.
After you’ve identified these drop-off points, focus on diagnosing and fixing the friction so shoppers have a smoother journey and your sales can get back on track. Regular funnel analysis will also help you stay on top of emerging issues so you can adapt to shoppers’ needs.
Traffic source analysis
Traffic is the lifeblood of your eCommerce store. Without it, your online shop simply wouldn’t survive. Now, I know that sounds dramatic. But, hopefully, it’s created a sense of urgency to stay on top of your traffic sources!
Traffic flows to your eCommerce store from a variety of acquisition channels such as:
- Paid campaigns on the likes of Google and Bing’s ad platforms
- Organic search results
- Social media posts — both Organic and Paid
- Referral links that may be mentioned on other websites, come from affiliates and partners or email marketing campaigns
- Direct traffic where people head straight to your website from their browser
Even offline sources like billboards, print marketing, and in-store adverts can send traffic to your online store. While there is a wide variety of traffic sources out there, the most commonly reported traffic sources are Paid, Organic, Referral, and Social.
Each source plays a special role in driving sales, so when growth slows, it’s important to know how each channel is performing.
Start by using your analytics platform to break down traffic by source. Platforms like Google Analytics do this for you, letting you easily see if there’s been a significant drop in traffic from any specific channels. For example, has organic search traffic dropped? Are your paid ad campaigns delivering fewer clicks than before?
If you notice a channel is underperforming, dig deeper. Here are some suggestions on how you can further analyze channel performance:
- Paid traffic: Review ad performance metrics like Click-through rates (CTRs) and return on ad spend (ROAS). Analyze which campaigns are running and whether these are working as expected or if they may need a refresh.
- Organic traffic: Check if your search rankings have shifted. Are competitors outranking you for key search terms? Has a Google algorithm update affected your visibility? Or, perhaps, your content is no longer visible in organic search results? Explore where organic traffic has dropped and get to the bottom of understanding why, and how to fix it.
- Social media: Analyze whether social media traffic has dropped from organic or paid social media. Then, review your recently published content, comparing it to previous top-performing content. Be sure to also check whether your content aligns with audience interests and explore why engagement might have dropped.
- Referral traffic: Investigate referral sources to see if affiliate partnerships, backlinks, and campaigns are still active and driving value. If any have dropped, further analyze them to understand why and try to get them running again.
Understanding where traffic losses happen gives you a clear starting point for resolving traffic-related issues. Whether it’s by adjusting your ad strategy, refining SEO, or revamping your social campaigns, addressing underperforming channels can help get customers back through your virtual doors.
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4 Ways to test eCommerce growth with qualitative research
Sure, numbers are great at telling you what’s happening. But numbers aren’t the only type of data you should be investigating. Qualitative research helps you understand why things are happening.
Use qualitative research to dive into your customers’ thoughts, behaviors, and experiences. By doing this, you can uncover valuable insights that numerical data alone might miss. From exit polls and session recordings to heatmaps and customer service logs, these qualitative analysis methods will help you pinpoint customer pain points and identify opportunities to make meaningful improvements to your eCommerce store.
Exit polls
Exit polls, also known as exit-intent surveys, are a simple yet effective way to understand why visitors leave your site without making a purchase. These surveys catch people at the point of exit, giving you the chance to gain firsthand insights into what might have gone wrong — and what you can do to fix it.
If you want to make exit polls effective, keep them short and straightforward. Your goal is to make it easy for people to respond before they leave. Some questions you might want to ask in your exit poll are:
- Did you find what you were looking for today?
- Is there anything we could have done better?
- What should we do to improve your experience?
- If you didn’t buy anything from us today, can you tell us why?
- Is there anything you’d like to ask us before placing your order?
Pick one question and focus on that. You can always change the question later down the line.
You can also target exit polls strategically by placing them on cart pages to capture feedback from people who abandon their cart during the checkout page. This could also minimize frustration by making sure the exit-intent survey doesn’t pop up whenever they move their cursor off the page while in the middle of an intense browsing session.
Tools like Hotjar and Wisepops make it simple to create, customize, implement, and analyze exit-intent surveys.
Add an exit poll to your eCommerce site, give it time to gather results, and then analyze them. By giving your shoppers a space to share their thoughts, you can uncover actionable insights to reduce friction, address concerns, and create a smoother shopping experience.
Session recordings
Session recordings are akin to being able to tag along with shoppers while they browse your site. You can gain some valuable insights into eCommerce growth stagnation by simply watching and reviewing recordings of people engaging with your online store.
You can use tools like Hotjar or FullStory to record eCommerce sessions. As you review these sessions, you might be able to pinpoint the exact points in the shopping journey that cause people to drop off and, in turn, cause your sales to grind to a halt.
Hotjar, for instance, automatically tags session recordings with a “frustration score,” highlighting moments where users experience difficulties. Shopper frustrations might look like rage-clicking, rapid scrolling, or hovering over elements without engaging. These behaviors are a sure sign that something isn’t working on your site, causing customer confusion and risking sales.
Use session recordings to uncover problem areas such as:
- Confusing navigation: Are visitors struggling to find key product pages?
- Technical glitches: Are there broken links, slow-loading elements, or a broken checkout experience?
- Unclear calls-to-action: Are shoppers unsure of what to do next?
- Limited product descriptions: Do shoppers scroll and click around on product pages expecting to find more information?
Watching real sessions gives you a frontrow seat into your customers’ frustrations, making it far easier for you to address those issues before they lead to cart abandonment and a drop in sales so you can put a stop to stagnated growth.
Heat, click, and scroll maps
Lean into heat, click, and scroll maps for more ways to visually analyze slow eCommerce sales. Heat, click, and scroll maps give you a clear picture of how users interact with your online store.
These maps highlight exactly where people are clicking, scrolling, and spending their time. This makes it easier for you to identify on-site frustrations or missed opportunities.
Heatmaps show you which areas of your page get the most attention, based on user clicks or hovers. This could show a myriad of reasons why people aren’t completing purchases. You might find your “add to cart” button isn’t getting as much attention as expected. If it’s not visible enough in the current site layout, this might be a sign to rethink the design of your eCommerce store.
Click maps take this a step further by showing exactly where users click (or don’t click) on a page. Analyzing this data lets you see whether key elements like CTA buttons or product links are being missed by shoppers.
Finally, scroll maps show how far down the page people are scrolling. If important or high-converting information is buried at the bottom of the page, you might want to reposition these higher up to make sure they are seen and acted upon.
Review heat, click, and scrollmaps for your eCommerce store to see how you can improve user experience and get out of an online sales slump.
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Chat logs and customer service transcripts
Your customer service team is likely sat on a goldmine of shopper insights. They are at the frontline of your business, directly interacting with customers and addressing their concerns. So, while you’re digging around in quantitative reports trying to figure out why people aren’t buying, your customer service time might be holding all the answers you need.
Review chat logs from on-site chatbots and transcripts from live customer service conversations to identify recurring issues, points of frustration, and common objections that might prevent visitors from completing a purchase.
Frustrations that might be unearthed through customer service transcripts and chat logs include:
- Shipping costs
- Product availability
- Return policies
- Payment options
Speaking with the customer service team and reviewing chat logs can help you find gaps in product information, poor trust factors, and bad customer experiences in your eCommerce store.
Don’t just limit your research to customer service interactions. You can also apply this analysis method to social media mentions, forum discussions, customer testimonials, and product reviews. Negative sentiment or recurring complaints in these channels might highlight issues stagnating your eCommerce growth.
How to do a practical performance analysis to investigate issues with eCommerce growth
Quantitative and qualitative research offers essential insights into slow eCommerce sales. But pairing these findings with a hands-on, practical performance analysis will really shine a light on what’s causing your growth to stagnate.
Conduct a practical performance analysis to find real friction points in your eCommerce store. This lets you put yourself in your customers’ shoes as you analyze key stages along the eCommerce funnel to see exactly where issues arise.
Here’s my step-by-step guide for conducting a simple yet successful practical performance analysis for your eCommerce store:
1) Choose top-performing product pages
Start your practical performance analysis by selecting the top 5-10 product URLs that historically generate the most revenue. These are the pages that have the most at stake and can give you a clear sense of how your site is performing where it counts the most.
2) Review product pages against eCommerce best practices
Review each product page to make sure it follows critical eCommerce best practices. Examples of best practices to look out for include:
- High-quality images
- Clear, detailed product descriptions
- Customer reviews and ratings
- Visible shopping policy and delivery options
- Product demo or video (if suitable)
- Easy-to-choose variants for size, color, etc.
Make a checklist so you can easily see where your product pages are falling behind.
3) Move through the sales funnel
Act like a customer by moving through the sales funnel. You can do this by setting yourself a clear objective such as “Buy a red t-shirt in size small.” Then, starting on the homepage, record yourself as you make that journey to purchase.
As you move through the sales funnel, analyze each step and make note of any points of frustration or complexity and any barriers that get in the way of your purchase.
4) Analyze the cart page
When you reach the cart page, analyze the customer experience on this page to make sure it builds trust and they can easily complete their purchase.
When analyzing the cart page, I recommend:
- Make sure it includes trust signals like security badges and guarantees
- Test it works as expected – are items correctly added, are prices clearly shown, and can they make amends easily?
- Look for points of frustration such as unexpected shipping costs, complex coupon code fields, or short cart timeout lengths
- Check if progress indicators (such as “Step 1 of 3”) are clear and reassuring
5) Evaluate the checkout process
The checkout page is critical to conversion. You want to make sure every part of this page is as perfect as can be.
Make sure any checkout forms are short, easy to fill out, and free of errors. Check the payment process to see whether this is secure, easy to use, and open to a variety of payment options. Overall, the entire process should be straightforward with minimal distractions or unnecessary steps.
6) Review abandoned cart emails
If you have abandoned cart emails in place, check their performance. First, make sure they are firing correctly when shoppers abandon their carts. If they are, move on to analyzing the email performance and content. Look at open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates to assess whether they can be improved.
When analyzing your abandoned cart emails, look for opportunities to improve the email content. You may want to add more helpful information or incentives for completing their purchase.
Not got abandoned cart emails in place? Take this stage as your sign to set them up!
7) Analyze other email workflows
While reviewing your email marketings, check other transactional email workflows to see if you’re engaging with customers at the right time.
While analyzing your email workflows, you might want to ask:
- Are you sending targeted discounts to loyal customers?
- Do you have a re-engagement campaign for users who’ve gone cold?
- Are your welcome emails engaging and aligned with your brand voice?
- Are emails sent in a timely manner?
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8) Assess your marketing strategy and brand experience
The broader customer experience begins long before a purchase is made. Review your eCommerce marketing strategy to make sure it builds a positive brand experience.
Your marketing content should align with your brand values and goals. Any promotional campaigns should be both clear and compelling. When reviewing your marketing strategy, be sure that your online presence engages shoppers, nurtures your community, and builds trust with existing and potential customers.
9) Evaluate the product experience
Finally, check your products actually live up to the expectations set by your marketing. While product experience isn’t directly tied to marketing, it plays a huge role in the overall customer experience.
When reviewing the product experience, do this from a marketing lens by asking:
- Is the product as described in your product pages and marketing materials?
- Does the unboxing experience live up to your branding?
- Is the product functionality smooth, and does it meet customer expectations?
If the product experience falls short of expectations set by marketing, this could be a clear reason why repeat sales have stopped and newer sales are slow to emerge.
Bonus action for analyzing eCommerce stagnation: Conduct heuristics analysis
One of the best ways to spot issues along the customer journey before they snowball into something more significant is to frequently walk through the key pages on your website with a heuristics analysis. As you do this website walkthrough, review performance from the perspective of your target audience.
Heuristics analysis helps you analyze your website content’s performance, evaluating whether it’s causing or reducing friction and determining how effectively it communicates value. It also lets you see if the content is clear, relevant, and engaging, and if it drives shoppers to take desired actions — whether that’s making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or completing another key goal.
Get the most out of your eCommerce heuristics analysis by following these steps:
Create a checklist of key observations
Before you begin, write a checklist that outlines the key things you’ll evaluate as you walk through the site. Common aspects to review include:
- Is the value proposition clearly communicated on every page?
- Is the content easy to understand?
- Are CTAs visible, compelling, and easy to follow?
- Are there any obstacles or confusing elements that might cause friction?
- Is the design user-friendly?
- Does the design and messaging align with your brand’s positioning?
Walk through the site
Now, go through the key pages on your eCommerce site. As you do this, picture it from the perspective of your target customer. For each page, use your checklist to make detailed observations. Take notes on any areas where you think improvements could be made.
Assess the entire journey
Don’t just stop at individual pages. Consider how the pages work together as part of the larger journey. Are visitors able to easily navigate from category pages to product pages? Can they then move from product pages to the cart and checkout without any barriers?
As you review the entire journey, make sure it offers a smooth and intuitive experience for shoppers.
Review your notes and identify areas for improvement
When you’ve completed your heuristics analysis walkthrough, review your notes to identify any patterns. Spot common areas where friction occurs or where shoppers get stuck. Consider whether these pain points could be contributing to stagnated eCommerce growth then create a prioritized plan for overcoming these issues.
Plan further research or analysis
Sometimes, a heuristics analysis might point to areas that require deeper investigations. Treat your heuristic analysis as a first step for testing why eCommerce growth has slowed down. Then, build on it with more in-depth analysis.
If, for example, you notice confusing CTAs or unclear messaging in your heuristics analysis, you might want to dig into heat maps, session recordings, or customer feedback to get more context before making any changes.
Tools you can use to analyze eCommerce growth
Now you now where to look to start unraveling the reasons behind slow eCommerce sales, here are some tools you might want to use.
Tools for technical site audits
For a comprehensive technical audit, tools like Semrush, Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, and PageSpeed Insights offer helpful features for spotting technical issues like broken links, slow loading times, and other site errors.
Session recordings and heatmap tools
Visualize how your eCommerce site looks by using tools like Hotjar, Mouseflow, VWO, and Microsoft Clarity. These tools offer features like session recordings and heatmaps so you can track clicks, scrolls, and user behavior.
eCommerce website analysis tools
For tracking website performance and understanding on-site behavior, platforms like Google GA4, Mixpanel, Plausible, and Adobe Analytics are powerful analytics tools for measuring traffic, conversions, and customer journeys. While Google is working to make GA4 fully GDPR compliant, be careful when using it for sites served in European regions.
Exit-intent surveys and polls
Use tools like Typeform, SmartSurvey, or Wisepops to create exit-intent surveys and polls for gathering valuable customer feedback. Many session recording and heatmapping tools also offer this feature to capture user feedback at key drop-off points.
Final thoughts — Do your research to recover from slowing eCommerce growth
If your eCommerce growth has ground to a halt, the first thing you need to do is understand why.
By combining quantitative research, qualitative research, practical performance analysis, and heuristics analysis, you can find the root causes behind slow sales and start implementing meaningful solutions.
Recovering from stagnant growth won’t happen overnight. But, taking a data-driven and customer-focused approach will help you make necessary changes for uplifting your eCommerce sales.
Start small, prioritize the biggest issues, and remember that growth is an ongoing process. Stay on top of eCommerce analysis at all times to make sure you prevent eCommerce stagnation before it becomes a problem.