Customer acquisition for online stores: prioritise the right activities

When sales are low, attracting more visitors seems the obvious answer. Before increasing advertising spend, look at the whole journey: where do potential customers come from, which page do they see first, and where does their visit end? These questions lead to different tasks.

Is the problem demand, visibility or an unconvincing answer?

People search differently for a familiar product than for a solution whose benefits need explaining. Organise your main product groups by the reason for purchase. Someone buying a spare part usually wants to establish compatibility quickly. A larger purchase may depend on advice, comparisons and clear delivery terms.

Also assess competitors from a customer’s perspective. What does another supplier explain better? Are you missing images, dimensions, variants or a realistic delivery date? These questions identify practical improvements before you send more visitors to the same unclear page.

Which activities should come first?

• Clarify your offer: define the audience, benefits and distinctive product features.
• Improve landing pages: answer common buying and service questions.
• Check SEO fundamentals: make important pages accessible, understandable and easy to find through internal links.
• Start targeted advertising: use suitable products and landing pages with a defined budget limit.
• Evaluate results: consider orders, costs, returns and margins together.
• Expand successful approaches: scale only when results justify it.

When does SEO help, and when does paid advertising?

SEO suits questions and product ranges for which you can provide useful pages over time. This includes clear categories, well-maintained products and answers to common buying questions. Building visibility takes ongoing work and does not guarantee a search ranking.

Paid search can help you test specific queries and offers. Decide in advance what cost per order is commercially viable. Keep tests for different audiences separate and record changes. With very small datasets, avoid reading too much into individual sales.

What role do useful content and AI search play?

Explain decisions your customers actually need to make: size, material, compatibility, care or differences between variants. Specific, well-supported statements help people and make it easier for search systems to interpret content. They do not guarantee a particular mention in an AI answer.

Start with our explanation of SEO, GEO and AEO. They share a foundation: accessible content that answers an identifiable question and makes clear that your company is responsible for it.

How do you measure business progress?

Assess new and returning customers separately. Check whether newly acquired orders make a worthwhile contribution after discounts, returns and variable costs. Rising visitor numbers may help, but are not yet a business result. Record which metric belongs to each activity.

At sjmedia, we combine ecommerce SEO, paid search and conversion optimisation. This lets us prioritise work where the clearest obstacle currently lies.