Why adding traffic without fixing conversion solves nothing
Raising ad spend to compensate for a store with weak conversion just makes acquisition more expensive without fixing the underlying issue. In one of my Sextas Ímpares classes I put it directly. You should optimize the conversion of visitors already there, because that work leaves a lot of money on the table.
The math behind conversion rate is particularly important. Moving from 1% to 1.5% represents a 50% increase in total sales with the exact same volume of visits. Closing one more sale out of every two hundred visitors lowers the impact of customer acquisition cost and leaves more margin to reinvest.
When conversion rate is lower, acquisition cost tends to rise, and that eats directly into margin. Less margin means less capacity to invest and less room to run campaigns with confidence.
Where homepages and product pages quietly lose sales
A homepage full of sliders and pretty phrases with no commercial purpose scatters the visitor's attention instead of guiding them to buy. The homepage has to be objective and intentional, showing what you sell right away, without turning into a disorganized catalog or relying on slideshows cycling through different messages.
The problem with slideshows is that they create a loss of narrative. One slide talks about a spring campaign, another about a discount, and the visitor has to wait for the image to change to see what matters. If a piece of information is important, it should appear immediately, without detours.
The product page works as the true landing page of the e-commerce store, and that's where conversion actually happens. A name, image and price aren't enough. You need full descriptions, quality images and videos, reviews, everyday practical use, and above all answers to the common objections of someone buying at a distance: fear the product won't fit, doubts about warranty, return periods. If customers worry the item won't work for them, the page must clearly state there are free exchanges or a trial period.
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The checkout mistakes I consider unforgivable
Forcing customers to create an account before paying, or asking for data that isn't necessary for the purchase, breaks the trust of someone who has already decided to buy. I call this bluntly a conversion killer: the customer already said they want to buy, and at the moment of payment obstacles appear that make no sense at all.
I gave the example of stores asking for an ID card number or date of birth for a simple purchase, like a stove. My question is direct: why is that necessary, unless the store is actually going to use that information for something relevant? If there's no reason, it shouldn't be requested.
Another point I stress is price surprises at checkout. If the price shown during browsing excludes tax and then appears taxed, or unexpected shipping fees show up only at the end, that's a surprise that should always be avoided. Checkout should work like a supermarket register: the customer picks the product, fills in shipping details, chooses a payment method, and that's it. No obstacles.
The link between real stock and active ads
Keeping ads running for out-of-stock products wastes budget and frustrates whoever lands on a page they can't buy from. If a product is running low on stock, my recommendation is to turn off the ads, because continuing to advertise something people can't buy is throwing money away and kills conversion rate.
On keeping sold-out products in the catalog, it depends: it makes no sense to have most products out of stock, and items that won't be restocked soon should be hidden. In Google Shopping, when the Merchant Center integration is properly set up, the system already detects the lack of stock and hides the product automatically. On social media that doesn't happen the same way, so it's worth staying alert and turning off the ad manually.
Email automations I consider basic and mandatory
Without an abandoned cart flow, welcome messages and transactional confirmation and order status emails, a store is leaving avoidable money on the table. I describe these as basic, almost mandatory automations: not having an abandoned cart flow is as simple as this, you're leaving money on the table, period.
After the purchase, the most common problem is capturing the customer's email and doing nothing further with it, or only reaching out again months later, which makes people wonder why a store they bought from long ago is suddenly emailing them. My suggestion is to run recurring campaigns, including reminders about products back in stock, to keep the store's existence present without always depending on fresh paid traffic.
Measuring the funnel and setting up tech correctly before optimizing for ROAS
Without measuring where people drop off along the journey, and without the pixel or analytics correctly recording the value of each sale, it becomes much harder to optimize campaigns based on real return. I describe e-commerce as a funnel: a visitor enters the homepage, moves through category, product, cart, checkout, and reaches the thank-you page.
You need to understand where the bottlenecks are along that journey.
A technical error I often highlight is the pixel firing the purchase event without reporting the conversion value. Without that metric, it becomes much harder to optimize campaigns by ROAS, because you're missing exactly the data that feeds that calculation. I also recommend measuring activity on smaller page elements, like image zoom clicks or newsletter signups, to see whether they're worth keeping.
A well-designed entry product can help fund the acquisition of new customers
Not every product in the catalog needs to be profitable on its own, as long as it helps bring in new customers who then buy more through cross-sell. I gave a concrete example in class: an entry product priced at 30 euros, with free shipping starting at 50 euros.
The customer comes in for the 30-euro item, but ends up adding more items to the cart just to reach the free-shipping threshold.
Even if the margin on that entry product is close to zero, the gain lies elsewhere: the customer enters the client database, can later be contacted by email or WhatsApp at no extra acquisition cost, and the cross-sell strategy on that first purchase already helps raise average order value and lifetime value. What matters is the overall strategy working, not each individual product being profitable on its own.
Class source
This class is Sextas Ímpares #113, "DESTRUIDORES de Resultados em E-COMMERCE: O Que Não Fazer!", which I recorded on March 21, 2025. You can watch the full class at www.youtube.com/watch?v=khhjuPwuhJw. Worth checking the segment on conversion rate math around 02:52, the checkout friction block starting at 10:00, and the entry product and cross-sell part near 23:36.