How to increase online sales: 25 steps for your store by impact

In short: to increase online sales, work on the three multipliers of revenue: visits × conversion rate × average order value, plus repeat purchases. Sales grow fastest when you fix checkout and the mobile version first, then raise the average order and recover abandoned carts, and only then buy more traffic. A 10% gain on each of the three multipliers lifts revenue by 33%.

This guide is the map of every step: 25 changes ranked by impact, from measurement to the second order. Each topic is short and leads to a detailed guide. It is written for merchants selling in Bulgaria, from Bulgaria or across the EU, and the CloudCart facts come from the documentation of CloudCart, the ecommerce platform from Bulgaria, and from the Analytics, Campaigns and Store with an AI assistant pages, with admin menu names as they appear in English.

What online store sales depend on

Online store revenue depends on three multipliers: how many people arrive (visits), what share of them order (conversion rate) and how much one order is worth (average order value, AOV). The fourth source is repeat purchases from customers who have already bought. The formula is: revenue = visits × conversion rate × average order value.

The multipliers multiply, so small changes in all three make a large difference in money. Take a store with 10,000 visits a month, a 1.5% conversion rate and a €40 average order:

Measure	Now	+10% on each multiplier
Visits per month	10,000	11,000
Conversion rate	1.5%	1.65%
Orders	150	181
Average order value	€40	€44
Revenue	€6,000	€7,986 (+33%)

The order of the steps follows the cost of each multiplier. More visits cost money every month (ads) or months of work (SEO). A better conversion rate and a higher average order are set up once in the store and work for every later visit, paid ones included. That is why ads come last on the list and checkout comes near the top.

Why is my online store not selling: 6 causes and how to find yours

An online store does not sell for one of six reasons: too few visits, a product page that does not convince, a surprise in the cart, a hard checkout, a weak mobile version or customers who never come back. Where people stop shows which one is yours. In CloudCart you see it in Analytics, with no extra tool. Twenty checks in the order to run them are in the guide why your online store is not selling.

What you see	Likely cause	Where to check in CloudCart	Steps
Under 30 visits a day	No traffic: the store does not show in Google and runs no ads	Analytics → Total Visits; Google Search Console	22 to 25
Visits, but few add to cart	The product page, price, photos or search	Analytics → Products by traffic against Products by sales	9 to 11
They add to cart but do not start checkout	The shipping price appears late or is high	Analytics → Conversion Funnel: Cart → Initiated Checkout	4, 13
They start checkout but do not finish	Mandatory registration, too many fields, no convenient payment	Conversion Funnel: Initiated Checkout → Orders	5 to 8
The funnel is much worse on phones	The mobile version: speed, buttons, the form	Conversion Funnel with the Mobile / Desktop switch	12
They buy once and never return	No emails after the purchase and no reason for a second order	Analytics → Total Customers: New / Returning	18 to 21

Important: in the customer boxes CloudCart counts only customers with an account as "New" and "Returning". Guest orders are not included, so a store with many guest orders shows fewer customers there than orders in the Total Orders box.

What an ecommerce sales funnel is

A sales funnel is the customer's path from the first visit to the order, split into stages where some people drop off at each one. For an online store there are five stages: visit, product page, cart, checkout and repeat purchase. The funnel shows where you lose the most people, and that is where the cheapest growth sits.

In CloudCart the Conversion Funnel box in Analytics shows the three lower stages on one chart: Cart, Initiated Checkout and Orders, with unique visitors and the percentage of the previous stage. The Desktop / Mobile / Total switch splits the funnel by device. The numbers depend on the order statuses you picked in the dashboard settings (the gear icon at the top right).

Benchmarks help you judge where the problem is. On average 70.22% of online carts are abandoned (Baymard Institute, the average of 50 studies). The median ecommerce conversion rate is 1.3% across 438 Shopify stores, and above 2.7% a store is in the top 20% (Littledata, data to October 2026).

How to increase online sales: 25 steps ranked by impact

The 25 steps are ordered by funnel stage and by the expected effect for a typical store selling in Bulgaria: measurement first, then conversion, the mobile version, the average order, carts, emails and finally traffic. Save the table; below it each group is explained briefly.

#	Step	Stage	Where in CloudCart
1	Check the funnel by device every week	Measurement	Analytics → Conversion Funnel
2	Track the purchase in GA4 and in the ad platforms	Measurement	Apps → Google Analytics, XML Feed → Facebook, TikTok Dynamic Ads
3	Get a weekly report from an AI agent	Measurement	Settings → PAT Tokens (Read Only)
4	Show the shipping price as soon as the courier is chosen	Cart	The couriers on Shipping
5	Allow guest checkout	Checkout	Settings → Cart and checkout
6	Offer card, Apple Pay and Google Pay next to cash on delivery	Checkout	CloudCart Pay
7	Remove the fields you do not need	Checkout	Settings → Cart and checkout
8	Offer delivery to a courier office and parcel locker	Checkout	Econt, Speedy, BOX NOW
9	Add search that understands typos and Latin spelling	Product	Apps → Aura Search
10	Answer pre-purchase questions in chat	Product	Apps → Aura Chat
11	Collect reviews from buyers	Product	Apps → Product Reviews
12	Test the store on a phone: speed and a test order	Mobile	Analytics → Online store sessions by device type
13	Set a free shipping threshold above the average order	Average order	Marketing → Discounts
14	Suggest a matching product in the cart	Average order	Marketing → Cross-Sell & UpSell (CC Pro and CC Master), Apps → Bump Cart
15	Create bundles and quantity discounts	Average order	Products → Bundles (CC Pro and CC Master)
16	Turn on the abandoned cart reminder after 60 minutes	Carts	Settings → Cart and checkout
17	Add a second and third reminder	Carts	Marketing → Campaigns (the abandoned cart template)
18	Add a newsletter sign-up form	Repeat purchase	Marketing → Subscribers → Subscribe Forms
19	Start the automated emails: welcome, post-purchase, win-back	Repeat purchase	Marketing → Campaigns → Automated
20	Send the newsletter to segments, at a frequency set by opens	Repeat purchase	Marketing → Segments, Marketing Suite
21	Keep Viber and SMS for the messages that matter	Repeat purchase	Marketing → Channels (with separately purchased credits)
22	Connect Google Search Console and fix the SEO titles	Traffic	Apps → Google Search Console, Marketing → SEO
23	Run Google Ads: Search, Shopping, then Performance Max	Traffic	Apps → Google Shopping, Google Analytics
24	Run Meta ads with a pixel and a catalog	Traffic	Apps → XML Feed → Facebook
25	Test TikTok, Pazaruvaj and eMAG	Traffic	Apps → TikTok Dynamic Ads, Sales channels

Which metrics to track, and how to get them with one sentence to an AI agent

The seven metrics that show whether sales are growing are revenue, number of orders, average order value, conversion rate, abandoned carts, the share of returning customers and sales by source. All of them are in CloudCart Analytics. You do not even have to open the screen: an AI agent such as Claude Code, ChatGPT Codex or Gemini CLI reads the same reports directly through the API and answers in the chat. Analytics has 35 boxes, and their data refreshes within the hour.

Metric	Formula	Sentence for the AI agent
Revenue and orders	Sum and count of orders in the period	"Show sales and orders for the last 30 days against the previous 30."
Average order value (AOV)	Revenue ÷ number of orders	"What is the average order value by week since September?"
Conversion rate and funnel	Orders ÷ visits × 100	"Show the October funnel by device and the stage with the biggest drop."
Abandoned carts	Carts without an order ÷ all carts	"What is the abandoned cart rate this month and last month?"
Returning customers	Returning ÷ all customers with an account	"How many new and returning customers did we have by month this year?"
Sales by source	Revenue by source / medium	"Sales by source and channel for the last 30 days."
Visits by device	Phone sessions ÷ all sessions	"What share of visits comes from mobile and how has it changed over 3 months?"

The agent's strength is combining data. In one answer it takes the best-selling products and their stock and tells you "your three best sellers run out within 10 days", which in the admin takes three screens and a manual spreadsheet. The agent calculates CAC and ROAS once you give it your ad spend, and margin once you give it your cost prices.

Important: for reports create a separate key in Settings → PAT Tokens with the Read Only level. An agent with that key sees the numbers but cannot change anything in the store. The key starts with cc_pat_ and is shown only once.

Steps 1 to 3: measure before you change anything

The first three steps bring no orders on their own, but without them you cannot tell which of the other 22 work. A change without a number before and after is a guess.

1. The funnel by device. Every Monday open Analytics → Conversion Funnel, compare Mobile and Desktop and write down the percentage at each stage. The biggest drop is your next task.
2. The purchase in GA4 and in your ads. In Apps → Google Analytics paste your Measurement ID (G-…). CloudCart sends the view_item, add_to_cart, begin_checkout, add_payment_info and purchase events. The Meta Pixel goes in Apps → XML Feed → Facebook → Settings, and the TikTok Pixel in Apps → TikTok Dynamic Ads → Settings.
3. A weekly report. Give an AI agent a Read Only key and one sentence from the table above. You compare week with week without building a report.

Steps 4 to 11: conversion in the cart, checkout and product page

You lose the most orders in checkout: according to Baymard Institute, the average large online store can raise its conversion rate by 35.26% through better checkout design alone. Among shoppers who were ready to buy, the top reasons to abandon are extra costs that appear at the end (40%), slow delivery (20%) and not trusting the site with card details (19%).

4. The shipping price right away. In CloudCart, Econt and Speedy (DPD Bulgaria), the Bulgarian couriers, return the price by weight and address inside checkout once the calculator is on, as the customer chooses an office, a locker or an address. Extra costs that show up only at the end are the most common reason to abandon a cart.

5. Guest checkout. In Settings → Cart and checkout choose guests, registered customers or both. Choose both: a guest orders without an account, and a registered customer finds saved addresses next time.

6. Card next to cash on delivery. In Bulgaria cash on delivery (COD), paying the courier when the parcel arrives, is still a common choice, and removing it loses customers. Card payment inside the checkout page wins back those who want to pay straight away.

7. Fewer fields. Every field that does not go on the shipping label, the invoice or the delivery notification is a field too many. In Settings → Cart and checkout each field can be required, optional or hidden. If you sell mainly to consumers, make the company fields optional.

8. Office and locker. Econt, Speedy and BOX NOW (a parcel locker network) connect to the store, and the shipping label is created from the admin. More about couriers is on the Shipping page.

9. Search that finds the product. A customer who searches already knows what they want. If they type "hladilnik" (fridge in Latin letters) or a word with a typo and get an empty page, they buy elsewhere. Aura Search searches by meaning, understands typos and Latin spelling of Bulgarian words, and shows what customers look for but cannot find in your store. Plans and examples are on the Aura Search page.

10. An answer before the purchase. A customer with an unanswered question puts the purchase off. Aura Chat (Apps → Aura Chat) answers in the chat from your catalog and store terms, and if you prefer a person to answer, live chat is added from Apps with one field.

11. Reviews. A review from someone who has already bought answers doubt better than any description. Turn them on in Apps → Product Reviews, and ask for the review in the post-purchase email (step 19).

How much the mobile version matters for sales

The mobile version decides your sales, because most visits come from a phone and conversion is lower there. In Bulgaria 63.37% of web visits in October 2026 came from a phone (StatCounter). In retail, mobile converts at around 2% against 3.7% on desktop (Contentsquare, 2026). Google indexes every site by its mobile version (Google Search Central), so it decides your SEO too.

12. A phone test. In Analytics the "Online store sessions by device type" box shows your store's phone share, and the Conversion Funnel with the Mobile switch shows where phones lose more people. After every change in the store, place a test order on a phone all the way to the end. Measure speed with PageSpeed Insights and look at the Mobile score.

The mobile version also decides what your ads cost: traffic from Instagram, Facebook and TikTok comes mostly from phones, so a slow mobile page makes every purchase from an ad more expensive. Twelve checks in 15 minutes are in the guide to mobile ecommerce and your store on a phone.

Steps 13 to 15: how to raise the average order value

The average order goes up with a free shipping threshold, a matching product in the cart and bundles. With the same traffic and the same conversion rate, +15% on the average order means +15% revenue without a single new customer.

• 13. A free shipping threshold. Set it 10% to 30% above your current average order and show in the cart how much is left to reach it.
• 14. Cross-sell and Bump Cart. The matching product (a case for the phone, a filter for the jug) is offered in Marketing → Cross-Sell & UpSell, and Bump Cart adds it to the cart with one tap. Cross-Sell is on CC Pro (up to 10 offers) and CC Master (unlimited), according to pricing.
• 15. Bundles and quantity. Products → Bundles (on CC Pro and CC Master) combines 2 or 3 products at one price, and a quantity discount (Marketing → Discounts) gives a reason to buy a second unit.

Steps 16 and 17: how to recover abandoned carts

An abandoned cart comes back with an email that links to the same cart about an hour after the customer leaves. 16. In CloudCart the reminder is turned on in Settings → Cart and checkout, with an interval of 30, 45, 60, 90 or 180 minutes after the last change to the cart. CloudCart recommends 60 minutes.

17. A chain of three messages. The second and third reminders are built in Marketing → Campaigns from the ready-made abandoned cart automation. Put a discount code only in the last step, so not every customer gets it in the first email. Every cart, its value and when the link was sent are in Orders → Abandoned. The yearly number of reminders per plan is 100 on Baby Pack, 500 on Starter Pack, 5,000 on CC Pro and 10,000 on CC Master.

Steps 18 to 21: email marketing with CloudCart and Marketing Suite

Email marketing brings repeat purchases, because it writes to people who already know the store and have given consent. In CloudCart campaigns are part of the store: customers, orders and products are already there, and you do not export lists to another tool. The channels are email, SMS, Viber (a messaging app widely used in Bulgaria) and Web Push, and the results of all of them sit on one dashboard, Marketing → Marketing suite.

1. Connect the email channel to your domain. In Marketing → Channels open the Email card and go through four steps: account, domain, DNS record check (SPF, DKIM, Tracking CNAME and DMARC) and sender address. Emails go out from your domain and the reputation is yours.
2. Add a sign-up form (step 18). In Marketing → Subscribers → Subscribe Forms choose the type (pop-up, bar, corner panel) and the moment it appears. You get 3 forms on Starter Pack, 10 on CC Pro and 25 on CC Master.
3. Start the ready-made flows (step 19). In Marketing → Campaigns → Create campaign → Automated there are ready-made automations: abandoned cart, welcome, post-purchase, win-back of inactive customers, birthday and seasonal. Each has up to 5 steps and is saved as a draft for review.
4. Send to segments (step 20). Marketing → Segments has more than 60 conditions: orders, products, categories, tags. A segment can have up to 4 conditions, for example "bought at least twice, no order in 90 days", and an email like that usually sells more than one sent to everyone.
5. Watch the numbers in Marketing Suite. The dashboard shows opens, clicks, conversion, sales from marketing and customer value, compared with the previous period. Marketing metrics refresh within the hour, and the campaigns table every 6 hours.

Set the newsletter frequency by opens. If opens fall from one email to the next, send less often and to a narrower segment. The channel also has hard limits: after the first 500 emails, sending pauses automatically at an open rate under 5%, more than 5% bounces or more than 0.5% spam complaints, and support turns it back on. 21. Keep Viber and SMS for messages that must not be missed: the last day of a promotion, an order ready for pickup. They are not part of the plans on pricing and are paid with separately purchased credits.

Important: marketing emails go only to subscribers who have given consent. An unsubscribed subscriber gets no more marketing emails, and the unsubscribe link goes in every email.

Steps 22 to 25: traffic from Google, Meta and TikTok

Traffic comes last because every paid visit costs money, and a store with a fixed funnel turns the same budget into more orders. The channels complement each other: Google catches people who are already searching for the product, while Meta and TikTok create demand among people who are not searching yet.

Channel	When it is the first choice	What must be ready	In detail
Google Search Console and SEO	Always; the traffic has no cost per click	A verified domain, a submitted sitemap.xml	Search Console for an online store
Google Ads	A product people search for by name	Purchases tracked through GA4 or Tag Manager	Google Ads for an online store
Meta (Facebook and Instagram)	A product that sells with a photo	Meta Pixel and a catalog	Meta ads for an online store
TikTok	A product that shows well on video	TikTok Pixel, a fast mobile page, video	TikTok Shop and TikTok ads

22. Google Search Console and SEO

Google Search Console shows which searches your store appears for, how many clicks each page gets and which products are not indexed. In CloudCart you connect it from Apps → Google Search Console with a meta tag, and you submit sitemap.xml from Search Console. Pages with many impressions and few clicks need a better SEO title.

23. How to increase sales with Google Ads

Google Ads raises sales once purchases are tracked in the ad account and the campaign starts with Search for specific products. Without a tracked purchase Google has nothing to optimize for and spends the budget on clicks. In our DataForSEO check, a click on product searches in Bulgaria usually costs between $0.23 and $1.10. Shopping ads need the product feed in Google Merchant Center (Apps → Google Shopping). Good practice is to start Performance Max after ads have brought around 15 orders in 30 days, because the campaign learns from them.

24. Meta: Facebook and Instagram

Facebook and Instagram ads sell when you have the Meta Pixel, a catalog for dynamic ads and a budget worked out backwards from the order. With a €45 average order and a 40% margin, the most you can pay for a purchase is €18; above that the ad loses money. The store itself sends Meta 7 standard events, from product view to purchase.

25. TikTok and price comparison sites

TikTok ads reach shoppers who are not searching yet, and the TikTok Pixel goes in Apps → TikTok Dynamic Ads → Settings so the campaign can learn from purchases. Pazaruvaj, a Bulgarian price comparison site, and the eMAG marketplace bring customers who are already comparing prices; every channel is on Sales channels.

Why running your store through an AI agent brings more sales

Running the store through an AI agent brings more sales in two ways: it saves hours of manual work and it makes the change on the day you decide on it. In a sample store with 400 products an AI agent saves about 19 hours of work a month. The bigger gain is speed: the promotion starts today, the new supplier price list goes live before your competitors' does, and a sold-out best seller is spotted before it takes an order you cannot fulfill.

Task for the month	Manually in the admin	With an AI agent	What sales gain
New prices from a price list, 2 × 400 products	4.4 h	0.5 h	Prices are right on the day of the price list
Weekly report: sales, average order, channels (4 times)	4.0 h	0.7 h	You see the drop in the week it starts
Descriptions and SEO titles for 40 new products	6.7 h	1.3 h	New products appear in Google sooner
Two promotions: discount, code, segment, email draft	3.0 h	0.7 h	The promotion starts on the day you decide
Total, with supplier orders and catalog sorting	23.1 h	3.8 h	19.3 h (about 2.4 working days), about €193 at €10 an hour

The calculation is for a sample cosmetics store with 400 products. Connecting to CloudCart costs nothing, and you pay the AI assistant's subscription to its provider.

An AI agent is a program such as Claude Code, ChatGPT Codex, Gemini CLI or Cursor that takes a task written as a sentence in plain English and carries it out in the store. In CloudCart it connects with a PAT token from the admin. Six reasons to use it for sales growth:

• One question instead of three screens. The agent combines reports, catalog and inventory in one answer.
• A rule instead of a spreadsheet. "15% off the Winter category" needs no export, formulas or import.
• Copy from real data. Ads, emails and descriptions are written from the products, prices and sales in your store.
• Decisions with numbers. Before and after each of the 25 steps you ask for conversion and average order without building a report.
• Ads next to sales. You give it data from Meta, Google Ads, TikTok and Search Console as an export or through a separate connection of the assistant, and it matches them against the store's sales.
• You stay in control. The key defines what the agent can do. With CloudCart's skills, when a change touches 10 or more products it shows what it will change and waits for your "yes".

8 tasks for an AI agent that bring sales

1. Products with traffic and no sales. "Which products have many visits and few sales? Suggest new descriptions and save them after I say yes."
2. Best sellers running out. "Which of the 20 best-selling products will run out within 14 days at the current rate?"
3. Inactive customers. "Create a segment of customers with at least 2 orders and no order in 90 days, and save a campaign for them as a draft."
4. Search Console. "Here is the Search Console export. Which product pages have many impressions and few clicks? Suggest SEO titles."
5. Google Ads against sales. "Here is the Google Ads export. Compare spend by campaign with sales from google / cpc in the store."
6. An Instagram ad. "Write 3 ad variants for the three best-selling products, with price and benefit."
7. Mobile problems in the catalog. "Find the products with no photo or with a name over 70 characters that look bad on a phone."
8. Campaign results. "How many orders and how much revenue did last week's campaign bring?"

Ask the agent to save campaigns as drafts, so you review and send them yourself.

A landing page for Black Friday and seasonal campaigns

A landing page is a separate page for one campaign, where the ad, the banner or the email sends people. It sells more than the homepage because it shows only the offer, its products and the deadline. For Black Friday and Christmas one page collects all the campaign traffic and shows exactly how much it sold.

1. Create the page. In Marketing → Landing Pages add a new page and choose the type: standard, FAQ, landing or page builder. The number of pages and the types depend on the plan.
2. Give it an address and an SEO title. The page has its own address (/page/address), SEO title, description and sharing image. An address like /page/black-friday stays the same every year and keeps collecting links.
3. One offer and a deadline. State the discount and the last day at the top, and below them the products with the price before and after. The discount code is created in Marketing → Discounts.
4. Send the traffic. Point the Google and Meta ads, the email to the segment and the store banner to the same page.
5. Measure. In Analytics the "Landing pages by sales" box ranks the pages where customers entered and then ordered, by revenue.

Black Friday in 2026 falls on Nov 27, and a price reduction must show the prior price: the lowest price you applied during at least the 30 days before it. The rule comes from Article 6a of the Price Indication Directive, added by Directive (EU) 2019/2161, and applies across the EU since May 28, 2022; in Bulgaria it is part of the Consumer Protection Act. A 30-point store check, with the admin path for each one, is on the Black Friday store preparation page. The email to the segment is built in Marketing → Campaigns.

A 30-day plan: where to start

If you start today, work through the steps week by week and compare the funnel with the previous week each time. By the end of the month you know which changes worked and where to put the ad budget.

Week	Steps	The number you watch
1	1 to 8: measurement, shipping price, guest checkout, card, fewer fields	Initiated Checkout → Orders
2	9 to 12 and 16 to 17: search, reviews, phone, cart reminders	Abandoned carts, Mobile conversion
3	13 to 15 and 18 to 19: shipping threshold, cross-sell, form, automated emails	Average order value, new subscribers
4	20 to 25: segments, Search Console, the first ad campaign	Sales by source, cost per purchase

After the third month the plans are €14 (Baby Pack), €33 (Starter Pack), €83 (CC Pro) and €249 (CC Master) per month, billed annually, excluding VAT (see pricing). The transaction fee on sales is 0% on every plan (0% transaction fee), so the extra orders from the 25 steps do not raise your platform bill. If you are on WooCommerce, Shopify, OpenCart or Magento today, see migration to CloudCart. Questions go to support@cloudcart.com.

7 mistakes that stop sales

• Ads before checkout is fixed. Every paid visit goes through the same leaking funnel.
• Ads without a tracked purchase. Google and Meta have nothing to look for buyers by and spend the budget on clicks.
• Testing only on a computer. Most customers are on a phone and see a different store.
• A discount code in the first reminder. Customers learn that leaving a cart earns a discount.
• One email to everyone. Emails without a segment pull opens down and can pause the email channel.
• Five changes at once. You cannot tell which one helped. Change one thing and watch the funnel for a week.
• Only new customers. Without a post-purchase email and a segment of buyers you lose the cheapest source of orders.

Frequently asked questions