Low eCommerce ROAS? 18 Tested Ideas to Boost Conversions

While eCommerce as a whole continues to experiment with and move towards trends like AI personalization, brands will also hyper-focus on returns. 

And that means just one thing: how you optimize your on-site experience will have a huge impact on the ROAS you generate. 

In this piece, we’ll discuss 18 critical areas (+ ideas you can implement) in which optimization will mean better returns and along with it, lesser ad spends. 

18 On-Site Customizations to Increase Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)

1. Optimize landing pages for ad traffic 

Best-converting landing pages grab people's attention, explain why a product is great, and nudge shoppers to complete the purchase.

✔ ️ Align messaging with ad: Consistency in messaging increases trust and reduces confusion.

✔ Implement subtle micro-interactions: Animated buttons, hover effects and interactive tooltips enhance user engagement.

✔ Feature relevant social proof: Display the right reviews to the right demographics and prioritize quantifiable data over generic statements. 

✔ Look at mobile-first design: A simple landing page design with a single powerful CTA as well as crisp forms that are super easy to fill. 

2. Get shoppers to spend more time on your site

Considering almost two-thirds of all shoppers resort to weekly online shopping, you’ve got a huge opportunity waiting to tap into to improve your eCommerce ROAS. As long as you’re able to increase the time on site (TOS) on your website. 

✔ Make UX on high intent pages shine: Amongst other things, that would mean getting social proof right on the homepage, filtering & sorting sharp on category pages, highlighting the most critical info across product pages and prioritizing a sense of safety & reassurance on the checkout page. 

✔ Showcase highly specific offers: Personalize them based on past browsing, buying and even cart abandoning behavior, apart from finetuning them in context to seasonal behavior as well. 

✔ Feature engaging product content: Right from benefits to FAQs to competitor comparison charts, your visitors will love you and even buy from you when they find what they want (and don’t forget to optimize SEO!)

✔ Use the right psychological nudges: Pick the right ones based on your findings by studying purchase data, customer feedback and on-site behavior. 

eCommerce brand Warby Parker ensures sharp UX on their website apart from creating nudges throughout that support customers in their journey towards better buying:

Further Reading: 29 Best Examples of Nudge Marketing in eCommerce

3. Have UGC speak for your brand

Highlighting user-generated content means leveraging content created by your customers to enhance the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns

Here are some tips on how to improve return on ad spend (ROAS): 

✔ Focus on showing results-based content: The average shopper trusts “has helped 3000+ people with cleaner gut health” more than “3000 people have reviewed our product.”

✔ Feature Q&A sections across product pages: To facilitate customer interaction and address common queries.

✔ Choose UGC content with a clear narrative: Avoid UGC with a lot of inflating adjectives but a lack of benefit-driven pointers that can actually help potential shoppers make a choice. 

✔ Highlight elaborate reviews: If you have 6 markers across your review form, pick reviews that have all of them marked instead of just “this product fits great.”

If you look at eCommerce brand Aerie’s reviews, some show up as highly detailed such as this one, likely to help high intent shoppers more:

4. Make seasonal marketing *more exciting*

Seasonal promotions, done the right way, can help attract more customers, increase sales, and maximize return on ad spend during key holiday events. 

✔ Offer quality content that helps quicker, quality purchases: Make marketing campaigns complement your on-site promotions and drive traffic to your website. Create blog posts, gift guides, or holiday-themed videos that reinforce the seasonal messaging.

✔ Create an upsell / cross-sell strategy: Focus on pushing out related products, accessories, or add-ons that complement customers' purchases. See how Wayfair does it for St. Paddy’s Day:

✔ Make gift cards stand out: Incorporate seasonal designs and themes that customers would love to send to friends & family. 

✔ Make price comparisons drive buying: Recommend multiple products of differing prices, and ensure to make better offers on quantity purchases, subscriptions etc. 

Further Reading: 32 Holiday Marketing Ideas for eCommerce Stores (2025 Update)

5. Collect zero party data

Unlike first-party data, which is collected implicitly through user actions or transactions, and third-party data, which is acquired from external sources, zero-party data is voluntarily provided by shoppers with their explicit consent.

✔ Offer a product finder / bundle builder quiz: This helps customers discover products tailored to their needs or preferences.

✔ Use pop-ups as preference centers: Alongside offering rewards, discounts, or exclusive perks in exchange for providing information about their preferences, interests, or shopping habits. 

✔ Make it easier & more rewarding to wishlist: Find out who the users share these wishlists with, what they put into the wishlists and if they engage with products recommended on the basis of what’s in their wishlist. 

✔ Introduce a sticky feedback button on the website: Ensure you ask questions on the shopping experience as well as on website usability. 

6. Optimize SEO to offset paid ad costs

You can reduce your dependence on paid advertising, attract more targeted traffic to your site, and ultimately offset advertising costs with better SEO results.

✔ Aim to be featured in rich snippets: These are enhanced search results that provide immediate answers to user queries. Structure your content in a format that addresses common questions, FAQs, or "how-to" guides to increase the likelihood of being featured prominently in search results.

✔ Create content optimized for long-tail keywords: Hyper-specific, layered content helps to draw more traffic—so make sure your blogs are interlinked and you show targeted content across product & landing pages. 

✔ Localize to personalize: Optimize your website for local search by creating and optimizing Google My Business listings, local citations, and location-specific landing pages. 

✔ Build landing pages based on product comparisons: You can either feature charts comparing different products of the same theme from your own brand or compare with competitor products. 

eCommerce brand Vogue Candles features a number of product variations on their paid landing pages so that visitors can make their pick more easily without having to come back later:

7. Get your mobile optimization right

Many eCommerce brands forget that high intent traffic coming from ads have high expectations around a mobile experience. After all 66% of the eCommerce orders placed, come from mobile users.

To make your average ROAS for eCommerce grow with mobile optimization: 

✔ Opt for responsive design: This will automatically adjust and optimize the layout, content, and navigation based on the user's device screen size and orientation. 

✔ Prioritize hand gestures: Especially one-handed navigation that includes clicking, tapping and other actions like pinching, zooming etc. 

✔ Simplify forms: Make use of mobile HTML5 input types that naturally integrate keyboard methods, provide inline validation for instant error correction and break down complex sections with labels. 

✔ Minimize checkout steps: Provide one-click payment methods, feature social login options and fall back on a single page checkout with a progress bar. 

Further Reading: 30 Mobile Optimization Tips For eCommerce (+ Examples)

8. Incorporate key conversational commerce elements

In 2024, conversational commerce is more than simply adding a live chat on your homepage.

Here's how you can apply conversational advertising to improve ROAS:

✔ Embed a quiz that helps product discovery: For example, if you create custom-fit shirts, interested buyers would want their actual size to be replicated as closely as possible, or which a “What’s My Size” quiz can be highly beneficial to fetch style & fit recommendations. 

✔ Feature a “chat with an expert” functionality: This trumps a simple live chat functionality any day and helps build trust for audiences who may be relatively new to the brand. To improve UX, mention the expert’s name, what they do and how they can help in a blurb while the visitor waits to chat. 

✔ Show a Whatsapp chat widget: This is a key way of improving eCommerce return on ad spend by letting shoppers access a familiar channel of communication—since it’s more personal, more shoppers are likely to use it as well!

✔ Link to your community page: Feature it as a significant callout across product pages, as a prominent link on the footer as well as your loyalty program page. 

One eCommerce brand that’s high on conversational commerce is Begin Health, which creates prebiotics for kids—apart from a FAQ-enriched live chat (that also clearly mentions staff hours), the brand features links to active community groups on Facebook as well: 

Further Reading: Conversational Commerce: 21 Amazing Real-World Examples (eCommerce Brands)

9. Craft your value proposition with care

If shoppers are to consistently choose your brand from a sea of other competitors, you’ll have to clearly establish how you’re different and what you do differently.

That’s where how you craft your value proposition comes into the picture:

✔ Look into customer feedback to track repetitive pain points: This will reveal the kind of reassurances they’re looking for and what you can realistically state based on how you produce, curate or innovate. 

✔ Identify gaps in what competitors are selling: Getting a closer look at how competitor brands are positioning their products will tell you which unsaid factors to cover in your own communication. 

✔ Zero in on how your brand / products are different: Do you source your ingredients from ethically run farms? Do you have a policy of reusing materials that you end up not selling? 

✔ Drill it down to a hyper-specific message: Avoid generic ways of acknowledging what your brand is doing right and instead, focus on quantifiable information and facts to support your claims. 

Here’s a look at how eCommerce mattress brand has figured out measurable outcomes make potential shoppers interested—and how this in turn significantly improves their returns on ad spend:

10. Make your UX super smooth

There’s a reason why micro-conversions happen faster than conversions for a lot of clients we work with. 

And it tells a promising tale about how you can grow your ROAS while giving visitors ample opportunity to browse & buy:

✔ Sort out those landing pages first: Check if the ads you float are making visitors arrive at the right landing pages. Also check if elements like the hero image, the CTAs and trust signals are optimized. 

✔ Improve your main site’s loading speed: Bring in lazy loading, compressed images and get rid of redundant files, no matter which platform you’re using to host your eCommerce shop. 

✔ Make navigation simpler: Check if categorization is easy for shoppers to understand, transactional categories are higher up in hierarchy and if the site search function is optimal. 

✔ Pay special attention to the checkout flow: After a product is added to cart, find out how easy it is for shoppers to actually checkout—consider bringing in functionalities like express checkout on the product page itself, automatic discount application and auto form fillups where necessary.

11. Target repeat customers more effectively 

Repeat sales happening actually depend on how repeat customers feel about coming back to your store. 

And the more it is, the better are your profit margins, and the better your chances of offsetting your eCommerce ad spends. 

✔ Offer better value on subscriptions: For example, if your one-time purchases are available at $X, put a 20% discount on subscriptions and ensure you mention the value they’re deriving (“Valued at $200, subscribe for $170). 

✔ Talk about channel-specific deals: Increase the impetus of certain actions like email sign-ups and app downloads by declaring channel-only deals and discounts. 

✔ Have customer support stay up-to-date: You don’t want shoppers to repeat their pain points to customer support if they’re especially trying to resolve something across channels—so, maintain a centralized customer data platform and pick the right tool for omnichannel data integration. 

✔ Celebrate brand & customer milestones: Whether it’s your 10th year or the customer’s 2nd birthday spent buying with you, milestone offers go a long way in developing great relationships that in turn improve eCommerce ROAS considerably. 

Clothing brand The Limited is known to honor repeat customers by sharing special discounts on their birthdays:

Further Reading: 26 Brilliant Ways To Boost eCommerce Repeat Sales

12. Convert first-time visitors 

Every eCommerce brand knows how tough it can get to convince a potential customer to shop before they actually have—especially if they don’t have high intent or the brand operates in a crowded market. 

But to really max out on ROAS, it’s the first-time visitor you’ll need to court and coax into action:

✔ Focus on building trust: Since many of your first-time visitors won’t know your brand differently from competitors’, how you get them to see results, nudge them towards bestsellers and get their buy-in on your brand story becomes everything. 

✔ Let ‘em build their own bundle: Shoppers find more value in being able to make an informed choice when they’re first buying from a brand, making this a great starting point. 

✔ Feature first-time only offers: Mention it as microcopy on the product page or show it up as a pop-up when they first enter your site. 

✔ Make your welcome email powerful: Getting your first-time visitors to believe that you can be their go-to for a long time to come, is what will move them towards a purchase. 

Makeup brand Glossier sends welcome emails that tell first-time visitors what the brand’s vision is and what they can expect to get if they engage with the brand:

Further Reading: 18 Brilliant Ways To Convert First-Time Visitors Into Buyers (eCommerce)

13. Improve your localized targeting efforts

This can especially make a fundamental difference to improving your eCommerce ROAS during high-spending seasons.

Localizing your selling efforts could mean a bunch of things, though we’ll suggest only those we’ve really seen fly with clients:

✔ Go hyperlocal with recommendation updates: Factor in local weather conditions, cultural biases and language preferences to make these more on-point. For example, the same clothing store targeting residents in Colorado and residents in Nevada, would take different weather hooks into account (while Colorado shoppers would take more to winter clothing, those from Nevada would appreciate lightweight, summery recommendations.)

✔ Send inventory-based promos: With the help of geo-fencing it’s possible to trigger messages to shoppers when they enter a relevant area—something like “You’re close to our <enter name> warehouse. Order today to get an instant delivery and save 30% on your purchase!” can be compelling. 

✔ Show up payment methods preferred in that area: Incorporating geo IP tracking can help you do this, especially if you do crossborder commerce. 

✔ Allow them to choose a preferred language on live chat: A “chat in…” dropdown prompt right at the top of the chat window can create instant reassurance for shoppers. 

14. Use psychological nudges more strategically 

Ultimately, even if shoppers love the products you’ve got on your site, most of them need that last bit of push to actually buy. 

So, how you use psychological nudges across your site can contribute to your ROAS:

✔ Live purchase notifications on product pages: New shoppers on your site are always looking for extra reassurance when it comes to the first purchase, something live purchase updates can help to a great extent—consider using a “<Enter customer name> from <Place name> just bought <product name of the featured product on the page>” format. 

✔ Feature countdown timers alongside CTAs: Even if you’re not showing an actual countdown timer, ensure your microcopy drives urgency through statements like “Hurry Up! The sale ends tonight” and “Only 3 pieces left in stock!”

✔ Draw attention to the best-loved products: Though more subtle, recommending the “trending” and “bestseller” products on your site through prominent visual hierarchy can have a huge impact on your eCommerce return on ad spend. 

✔ Create value while showing nudges: Apart from the transactional assistance with deals & discounts, shoppers also look to brands for non-transactional help like blog guides, a money-back guarantee or a limited time risk-free trial. 

One eCommerce brand that specifically uses pop-ups as a psychological nudge to make messaging more targeted for paid ad visitors is Bille, a women’s grooming brand—here’s an example from their landing page when we went looking for “men’s grooming gifts for Christmas”, clearly targeting those who’re looking for gifts for multiple genders:

Further Reading: 29 Best Examples of Nudge Marketing in eCommerce

15.  Feature offers that prompt purchases instantly

As a CRO agency that works continuously on helping clients achieve more on-site conversions, we wish we could say all kinds of discounts help improve ROAS in eCommerce, but that wouldn’t be true. 

✔ Go for those quantity & tiered discounts: Shoppers love it if you're able to feature multiple quantity sizes and help them see they’ll get better discounts when they opt for the larger sizes. 

✔ Display bundles that “complete an experience”: The more complementary the products in a bundle, based on a shopper’s preferences, the more chances they’ll sell and improve eCommerce ROAS. 

✔ Feature a super-short flash sale: And make it exclusive to only your repeat customers—this way, you can even send them more targeted information on the sale. 

✔ Personalized deals based on browsing & buying behavior: Consider milestone offers as well as browse & cart abandonment deals to wheel shoppers back. 

16. Create lookalike audiences based on high spenders

When you’re trying to reduce ad spends and improve returns, targeting high spending behavior is a must. But how will you know which areas to specifically work? Here are a few suggestions:

✔ Look for buys across categories: This indicates shoppers who’re genuinely interested in exploring your brand at a greater depth, helping you make note of which categories are most bought from as well!

✔ Target 3x AOV spending behavior: This is a clear indicator that such shoppers are already happy with your brand and may even be part of your loyalty program to be able to earn better deals & offers. 

✔ Look for those who’ve purchased X times every month: Consistency is key in identifying who purchases, let’s say, twice at least in three months across a year’s time. 

17. Optimize social proof display across the site

While you may have great product reviews on your site, shoppers may still be looking for other kinds of social proof for a quick glance—so, to enhance return on ad spends, consider showing social proof on high intent pages like this:

✔ Highlight review snippets from diverse segments on the homepage: Alongside, mention the reviewer’s name, what they do, what they bought and the price point of the product. 

✔ Feature use cases along with reviews on the product page: Highlighting phrases like “great for a Sunday ritual” or “ideal for last-minute gifting” can draw attention from shoppers who’re actually looking to buy. 

✔ Show an overall category rating snapshot on the category page: This is ideal when you place it right below the banner image & a short banner description.

✔ Display shipping/ delivery related snippers on cart & checkout: This can act as last-minute assurance for those with complex customer objections or even the tendency towards cart abandonment.

Sephora is an eCommerce third-party aggregator brand that knows social proof can override a whole lot else to create confidence in customers across the funnel—here's an example of how effectively the brand uses different kinds of social proof (including numbers an UGC images) on their membership program page:

18. Don’t forget to tell a great story!

Last but not the least, eCommerce brands that see better ROAS and continued growth in customer lifetime value, have one thing in common: almost all of them tell a story that helps shoppers emotionally connect with the brand. 

✔ Embed customer pain points into your narrative: After all, customers need to know what they will experience differently with your brand to be able to make a purchase!

✔ Talk about the impact purchases create: Even if you don’t use cause marketing as a year-round tactic, telling shoppers if you’re donating a part of the cost to a charity or helping an NGO reforest a region, helps the “community” mindset of a typical shopper. 

✔ Set the standards in a buyer’s mind through BTS content: This is a great way to repurpose content that comes from either the UGC space or from your own employees to build trust and in turn, improve eCommerce ROAS. 

Outdoor Voices is an eCommerce brand that weaves its entirely storytelling around their values, which are about helping people connect with the “fun” element in being outdoorsy:

eCommerce businesses also ask:

How to calculate ROAS?

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) is a key metric in e-commerce marketing that measures the revenue generated from advertising relative to the amount spent on those ads. 

It's calculated by dividing the revenue generated from ads by the cost of those ads. 

For example, if you spend $1000 on advertising and generate $5000 in revenue, your ROAS would be 5:1, meaning you earned $5 for every $1 spent on ads. 

ROAS is a critical indicator of the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns in driving sales and is used to assess the profitability of your marketing efforts.

What is considered a good ROAS in eCommerce?

On an average, a 4:1 return to ad spend ratio is considered healthy in eCommerce. But definitely speaking, there’s no right answer for this because how much ROAS a brand needs to make largely depends on profit margins. 

While some businesses may need to make 9:1 ROAS to be able to keep afloat, larger, profitable brands with higher ad budgets may get away with only 3:1. Generally speaking, eCommerce businesses that face a longer sales cycle like luxury and furniture need a higher ROAS to justify ad spends, while businesses that belong to the food & beverage or even retail spaces, naturally bring in much higher ROAS. 

What contributes to low eCommerce ROAS?

Even if you have really great product offerings and also a decent ad budget, your ROAS could still remain low, and here are the top 5 reasons why:

❌ Poor targeting: Since every segment of your larger audience is crucial to ad success and returns, if there’s no match between the messaging / offer and what a particular segment really cares about, ROAS is going to suffer. 

❌ Misaligned landing pages: Imagine a situation where the ad talks about a specific product, but when the visitor gets into the landing page, they see multiple listings and the product (& possibly offer) they want right away, is nowhere in sight!

❌ Value & pricing mismatch: When shoppers see that the price of a product is either too low or high compared to the value they perceive of the product, the tendency is to either find it too cheap or too expensive for purchase, leading to low eCommerce ROAS. 

❌ Ad copy not reflecting the value proposition: Typically, because a shopper will anyway see multiple ads when they key in a query, your ad copy has to differentiate from them effectively for the ad to make sense to the shopper. In the absence of that, shoppers will not click on the ad at all. 

❌ Lack of trust signals at key junctures: New visitors to an eCommerce store need multiple layers of trust building, period. This is why lower levels of social proof are always tied with poor eCommerce ROAS. 

How does ROAS differ from ROI (Return on Investment)?

ROAS specifically focuses on the return generated from advertising spend, while ROI considers the return on overall investment, which may include factors beyond advertising, such as operational expenses or product development costs. ROAS provides a more targeted view of the effectiveness of advertising efforts.

Effective UX precedes high ROAS

98% of visitors who visit an eCommerce site—drop off without buying anything.

Why: user experience issues that cause friction for visitors.

And this is the problem Convertcart solves.

We've helped 500+ eCommerce stores (in the US) improve user experience—and 2X their conversions.

How we can help you:

Our conversion experts can audit your site—identify UX issues, and suggest changes to improve conversions.