6 tips to increase your online shop’s conversions

To increase an online shop’s conversions you need to remove the obstacles between the visit and the order: pages that are fast on a smartphone, clear product pages, trust signals, reachable support, costs visible from the start and a short checkout. Then you measure the conversion rate before and after every change.

If you run an online shop, it’s the question you ask yourself at least five times a day. The good news is that you don’t need more advertising to sell more: often it’s enough to get more of the people who already visit to buy. Here are the 6 tips we apply when we work on a PrestaShop online shop, updated to what matters in 2026.

What is an online shop’s conversion rate and how do you calculate it?

An online shop’s conversion rate is the percentage of visits that end with an order. You calculate it like this:

conversion rate = orders ÷ visits × 100

Example: 10,000 visits and 150 orders in a month give a conversion rate of 1.5%.

There’s no single “right” value for everyone: it changes with the sector, the average price, the type of traffic (people coming from a newsletter buy more than people coming from a video) and the device. The comparison that counts is with yourself: month on month, and before and after every change. Alongside the conversion rate, always look at three other numbers:

Indicator	What it tells you
Average order value	Whether customers buy more with each order (related products, shipping thresholds)
Cart abandonment rate	How many start the purchase and don’t finish it
Mobile and desktop conversion rate	Whether the problem is the smartphone version

And if you also have a physical shop? The in-store conversion rate is calculated the same way: receipts divided by people who came in, times 100. Many of the tips in this guide apply in the shop too: clear prices, support, trust.

How to increase your online shop’s conversion rate: 6 tips

When it comes to conversion rate, there isn’t just one thing to work on. An online shop, like a physical one, is made of lots of details: each one can lose you a customer. Here are the 6 tips, in short:

1. Make your online store easy to navigate: speed and search
2. Take care of the product page
3. Put customers at ease, make them feel safe
4. Make support easy to reach
5. Make shipping costs clear (and light)
6. Handle abandoned carts well, starting with the checkout

1. Make your online store easy to navigate

The first step to increasing your online shop’s conversions is a shop that’s fast and easy to use on a smartphone, where most people discover products and often buy.

A fast, truly responsive online shop

Google measures page experience with the Core Web Vitals. Since 2024 there have been three, and these are the “good” thresholds, measured on 75% of real visits:

Metric	What it measures	Good value
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)	How long the main content takes to appear	Within 2.5 seconds
INP (Interaction to Next Paint)	How quickly the page responds when you tap a button or a filter	Within 200 milliseconds
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)	How much the page “jumps” while loading	Within 0.1

INP replaced the old FID and it’s the one you feel most in an online shop: slow filters, variants that don’t respond, an “add to cart” that seems stuck. What to check:

• Try the shop on your own phone, on mobile data and not on the office Wi-Fi.
• Measure home, category, product page and cart with PageSpeed Insights, mobile version.
• Remove the modules you don’t use: in PrestaShop every active module can add scripts and queries.
• Compress images and use modern formats (WebP, AVIF).
• Text readable without zooming and buttons big enough to tap with your thumb.
• Keep theme and modules up to date: an old theme on PrestaShop 9 is often a slow theme too.

The theme matters as much as the server. That’s why we developed Flag Theme, a PrestaShop theme designed to convert, for PrestaShop 9 (€499 + VAT). In a Lighthouse lab test on the demo, mobile version, run on 2 October 2026, it scored 97–98 for performance. It’s a lab test on the demo, not a measurement on a real shop: on your shop the result depends on catalogue, images, modules and server.

A search bar that understands the customer

People who use internal search already know what they want: they’re among the visitors closest to buying. A good search bar:

• is clearly visible on every page, on mobile too (not hidden behind a tiny icon);
• shows suggestions as you type, with photo, price and availability;
• tolerates typos and synonyms (“sofa bed” and “sofa with bed”);
• never shows an empty page: if it finds nothing, it suggests similar categories and products;
• shows you, in the data, what customers search for and don’t find: it’s a list of products to add or descriptions to improve.

Today many internal search engines for online shops use AI to understand the meaning of the query, not just the exact words. It’s especially useful in large catalogues.

2. Take care of the product page

The product page is where the customer decides. It has to answer every question they’d ask you at the counter, before they ask it.

Photos and videos that let people “touch” the product

• At least 3–4 photos, one on a neutral background and one “in context”, with the product in use.
• Close-ups of materials, finishes, labels.
• A short video, even one shot well on a smartphone: it’s often worth more than a paragraph.
• Descriptive alternative text (alt) on every image: it helps people who use a screen reader and helps Google understand what you’re showing.

Optimising the order of products in categories

Users browse by category, but rarely scroll past the first few rows. The order of products should work for you:

• put available products and best sellers at the top;
• give space to the products with the best margin;
• push out-of-stock products to the bottom; they should never take the top spots;
• highlight the star product of the moment.

Doing this by hand across hundreds of products is impossible. To put the products that sell at the top on PrestaShop 9 we developed Smart Sorting (€49 + VAT): it works out the order of products in categories and brands based on the importance you give to products, categories and brands, on stock and on recent sales, and always pushes unavailable products to the bottom. The order updates itself every night and whenever stock changes.

Recommending related products

Recommending the right accessories helps you sell more with each order:

• cross-selling: products that complete the purchase (the case for the smartphone, the cartridges for the printer);
• upselling: a better version of the same product, if it’s really worth the difference;
• variants: other colours or sizes of the same product;
• “complete the look” or “same collection”, for fashion and furniture catalogues.

Put them below the “add to cart” button, not in its place: the related product mustn’t distract from the main purchase.

3. Put customers at ease, make them feel safe

People buying from you for the first time don’t know you. Your job is to give them the same trust they’d have looking you in the eye, with clear, verifiable information.

Take care of the reassurance block

The reassurance block is the strip, near the price and the buy button, that answers the most common doubts. It should include:

• Accurate, precise shipping times and costs.
• Accepted payment methods, including instalments if you offer them.
• Returns: whether they’re possible, within how many days and at what cost.
• Up-to-date availability, especially if you also sell in a shop.
• Customer service contacts, with hours.
• Reviews from real customers.

Reviews and struck-through prices that follow the rules

Two things that sell, but that now have precise rules in the EU:

• Reviews. If you show them, the rules introduced by the EU Omnibus Directive require you to say whether and how you check that they come from people who actually bought or used the product. A verified reviews platform solves the problem and reassures customers more.
• Discounts. Under the same directive, when you announce a price reduction you must show as the previous price the lowest price applied in the 30 days before the discount. An “inflated” struck-through price loses trust and risks a fine.

For PrestaShop 9 we developed Omnibus Compliance (€29 + VAT): it records price history and shows the lowest price of the last 30 days on the product page, in product cards and in structured data for Google.

An accessible site sells to more people

Since 28 June 2025 the European Accessibility Act has required many online shops to be accessible to people with disabilities too. Microenterprises, that is, those with fewer than 10 employees and turnover or balance sheet up to €2 million, are excluded. Even if you’re excluded, it pays off: readable contrast, clear forms and a checkout usable by keyboard improve buying for everyone. Run a free accessibility check on your shop.

4. Make support easy to reach

Many customers have a small doubt before buying: a size, a compatibility, a delivery date. If they find an answer straight away, they buy. If not, they close the page.

• WhatsApp: for many customers it’s the most natural channel (in Italy, practically the default). Put it on the product page and in the cart, with a pre-filled message.
• Chat on the site, with stated hours.
• AI assistant for repetitive questions (shipping, returns, sizes), with handover to a person when the question gets specific. AI answers at night, but it mustn’t make things up: it has to be fed with your real information.
• Phone orders for people who prefer to talk to someone, especially for expensive products.
• Questions and answers on the product page: customers’ questions become useful content for Google too.

5. Make shipping costs clear (and light)

Shipping costs discovered at the last minute are the top cause of abandoned carts: according to Baymard Institute research, 40% of people who abandon do so because of extra costs that are too high (shipping, taxes, fees). Free shipping helps, but for a small online shop it can be expensive. Here’s how to handle it without losing money:

• Show the costs from the start, already on the product page or with a calculator in the cart.
• Free shipping above a threshold: it encourages people to add a product to reach it and raises the average order value. Show in the cart how much is left to reach the threshold.
• Click and collect or pick-up points, if you have a physical shop or use couriers with lockers.
• Free shipping as a reward: on the first order, or for newsletter subscribers.
• One campaign a year with free shipping for everyone, to attract new customers.
• Build the cost into the price only if you have few products and margins that allow it.

6. Handle abandoned carts well

People who abandon a cart wanted to buy, but something stopped them: they’re a warm customer. Work on two fronts: fewer abandonments during checkout, and more recoveries afterwards.

A short checkout with no surprises

Baymard documents an average cart abandonment rate of about 70%. Among the reasons, besides extra costs, are having to create an account (18%) and a checkout that’s too long or complicated (17%). So:

• Guest checkout always available: suggest registration after the order.
• One-page checkout, or at least a few clear steps. Since PrestaShop 9.2, released on 30 September 2026, the one-page checkout is included in the software, as an alternative to the four-step one.
• Few fields, with autofill where possible. Ask for business details such as a VAT number only when customers need an invoice.
• Fast payments: card, PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay, and instalments if your average order justifies it. From 20 November 2026 the new EU Consumer Credit Directive brings most “buy now, pay later” services under stricter rules: choose reliable providers and inform customers clearly.
• Useful error messages: “Enter an email like name@example.com” works, “Invalid field” doesn’t.

Winning back people who left their cart

• Reminder email after a few hours, with the cart ready and a friendly tone. You can only send it to people who left their email and, for promotional messages, gave their consent.
• A discount or a small gift only in the second reminder, not the first: otherwise you train customers to wait.
• A message or a call, for high-value carts and registered customers.
• Read the data: if lots of people abandon at the same step, the problem is there and no email will fix it.

How do you analyse an online shop and its checkout?

To analyse an online shop you start from the numbers, find the step where you lose the most customers and then try the site as a customer would, from a phone, all the way to the order confirmation. The checkout deserves more attention than anything else: that’s where you lose orders that were almost done.

Here are 5 practical checks, in the order it’s worth doing them:

1. Look at the funnel, not just the total. In Google Analytics 4 (or whatever tool you use) follow the steps visit → product page → cart → checkout → order. The step with the sharpest drop is the first one to fix.
2. Buy from your online shop, on a smartphone. Search for a product, put it in the cart and go all the way to payment. Note every moment you hesitate, wait or can’t find some information: your customers do the same, they just leave.
3. Analyse the checkout field by field. Count steps and required fields. Check that people can buy without registering, that shipping costs appear before the last step, that the payment methods your audience uses are there (card, PayPal, wallets, instalments) and that error messages say how to fix things.
4. Measure the speed of the pages that sell. Test home, category, product page and cart with PageSpeed Insights, mobile version, and look above all at LCP and INP. A slow page weighs most right where the customer is about to decide.
5. Check trust and visibility. Reviews, returns, shipping and contacts must be easy to find (it’s the reassurance block from tip 3). In Google Search Console check that product pages are indexed, which searches they appear for and that there are no 404 errors on pages that brought visits.

Once you’ve done these checks, you know which of the 6 tips to work on first.

Which modules should you use to improve a PrestaShop online shop?

Before installing modules, sort out speed, product pages and checkout: a module won’t save a slow or confusing shop, and every extra module is more code to load and update. Then choose a few targeted modules, one for each problem you’ve measured:

Problem measured	Type of module
Few customers trust you enough to buy	Verified reviews
Internal search doesn’t find products	Search with suggestions and typo tolerance
Lots of abandoned carts	Email reminders, respecting consent
Out-of-stock products take the top rows	Automatic product sorting
You often run discounts	Lowest price of the last 30 days (Omnibus)
The checkout is long	One-page checkout (included from PrestaShop 9.2)

Choose modules compatible with your PrestaShop version, recently updated and with support that responds. If you have doubts about a module you’ve already installed, our PrestaShop support will check it for you.

How to improve your online shop’s conversions

Improving an online shop’s conversions means getting more people to buy with the same number of visits. The 6 points you’ve just read are the main levers: fast, simple navigation, well-crafted product pages, reassurance, support, clear shipping and a checkout without obstacles. Start from what weighs most in your online shop, measure the conversion rate before and after, and you’ll increase your site’s conversions without spending more on advertising.

If you’d like help from people who build online shops and also run their own: Flag Agency, a PrestaShop web agency in Frattamaggiore (Naples, Italy), handles PrestaShop e-commerce development and support for online shops that are already live. Message us on WhatsApp: a real person from the team will reply, within 24 hours.