Tips for your store

How to increase Shopify sales: 10 levers you can pull today

More revenue sounds like more advertising. But revenue has three dials: how many visitors come, how many of them buy, and how much they spend per order. Because the three numbers are multiplied, 10% more on each compounds to 33% more revenue, not 30%.

5 min read · September 28, 2026

Formula: 5,000 visitors times 2 percent conversion times 45 dollar order value makes 4,500 dollars in revenue; with 10 percent more on each it becomes 5,989.50 dollars

1 Sell where your customers already search

Marketplaces carry a large share of online retail. In Germany, for example, they accounted for 56.7% of online sales in 2025, according to the retail association HDE.

A marketplace as a second channel brings buyers who would never have found your store. Shopify's Marketplace Connect app connects Amazon, eBay, Walmart and Target Plus, and the first 50 synced orders a month carry no app fee. Before you try to bring those buyers to your own store with a package insert or email, check the marketplace's rules: Amazon, for example, prohibits steering its buyers to another website, including through package inserts.

2 Claim the free Google listings

Through the free Google & YouTube channel your products reach Google Merchant Center and can then appear in Search and the Shopping tab without an ad budget. The setup is covered in the post on your first 100 orders.

3 Show the full cost early

According to Baymard, the most common reason to abandon at checkout is extra costs such as shipping and fees: 40% of those who abandon name it. Showing shipping only at the last step loses buyers who were ready to pay.

Put shipping costs or the free-shipping threshold right by the buy button. A banner alone gets missed. More in Reduce cart abandonment.

4 Offer the payment methods your customers use

Payment methods differ a lot by market. In Germany, a Bitkom survey found payment options to be the top criterion when choosing a store (54% rate them as very important). According to EHI, PayPal and pay by invoice (common in Germany) together made up more than half of online revenue there in 2024.

Check which methods your buyers expect and which are active under Settings > Payments. A missing favorite can cost you buyers at the last step.

5 Turn on express checkouts

Shop Pay, PayPal Express and similar buttons save shoppers from typing an address and card number. Shopify states up to 50% higher conversion for Shop Pay compared with guest checkout. That is Shopify's own figure, from a commissioned study with no published method. Even so, turning it on takes one click under Settings > Payments.

6 Test changes instead of guessing

Industry conversion rates range from 1.4% to 2.7% depending on the source, with different methods. So compare against your own past numbers, not industry figures. Shopify has Rollouts for that: on the Grow plan and higher, you can run theme changes as an experiment, split 50/50 by default.

A note for comparisons: Shopify changed how sessions are counted at the end of September 2026. Conversion rates before and after that change are not directly comparable.

7 Give every cart a next goal

Tiers by cart value or a free gift over a set order amount can raise the average when the threshold comes from your order data and is visible. How to find it is in Increase average order value.

8 Sell the right second item

Accessories, refills, the set instead of the single piece: a customer who is buying right now is the best customer for a second product. How that works in Shopify, and which offers are allowed in checkout only on Shopify Plus, is in Upselling and cross-selling.

9 Win back abandoned checkouts

Someone who entered their email and then left is half a customer. Shopify Messaging sends an automatic reminder for that. According to Shopify, this automation is always free and doesn't count toward the 10,000 free emails a month.

By default the email only goes to customers who agreed to marketing emails. Check under Apps > Shopify Messaging whether the automation is on and who it reaches.

10 Earn the second purchase without training customers to wait for discounts

A deep discount wins new customers, but not necessarily the right ones. A study with customer data found that customers acquired with a 35% discount were worth only about half as much in the long run as customers acquired without a promotion.

For repeat purchases there are also ways without a deep discount: an email at the right time, a subscription for consumables with the free Shopify Subscriptions app, or a gift over a set order amount that doesn't lower any price. More in Win back existing customers.

Sources

Common questions

How does Shopify calculate conversion rate?

As the share of online store sessions that ended in a purchase. It counts visits, not people. Someone who comes twice and buys once counts as two sessions with one purchase.

What is a good average order value?

There is no general benchmark. The figures floating around come from vendors with no disclosed method and change from month to month. Compare your order value with your own previous months.

Which lever brings more sales fastest?

Usually the cheapest one: show shipping costs early, add missing payment methods, turn on the abandoned checkout email. Those are settings, not campaigns.