Solved: 60 Add to Carts, 0 Sales on Facebook Ads – What's Wrong?

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

Happy to give you some initial thoughts on your campaign. Looking at the numbers you've shared, I can see why you're frustrated. Getting so many people to add to cart without a single sale is a classic problem, but maybe not for the reason you think. The good news is your ads are almost certainly NOT the issue. The bad news is the problem likely lies with your website, which is often a harder pill to swallow.

Let's walk through what's likely happening and what you can do about it.

Your ads are probably working fine...

Right, let's get this out of the way first because it's the most common mistake people make. When sales are zero, the immediate reaction is to blame the ads. Tweak the audience, change the creative, panic about the platform. In your case, I'd say that's the wrong move entirely.

Let's look at your numbers:

• CTR (Click-Through Rate): 4.22% -> This is really solid. Anything over 1-2% on Facebook is decent, so 4.22% means the ad creative and copy is resonating with the audience you're targeting. People see it, and they're interested enough to click.
• CPC (Cost Per Click): £0.14 -> This is exceptionally cheap. It tells me Facebook's algorithm finds it easy and inexpensive to show your ad to people who will click on it. You're getting a ton of traffic for your budget.
• Cost per Add to Cart: £1.03 -> Again, this is a very reasonable cost. You're paying just over a quid to get someone interested enough in a product to take the step of adding it to their basket.

If these numbers were bad, we'd have a different conversation. If your CTR was 0.5% and your CPC was £2.00, I'd tell you your ads were the problem. But they're not. Your ads are doing their job perfectly: they are sending a steady stream of cheap, qualified, interested traffic to your website. You've built a great bridge, but there's a cliff on the other side.

Pouring more money into ads right now, or even changing them, would be like turning up the tap to fill a bucket with a massive hole in it. You'll just spend more money to lose more customers at the exact same spot. We need to fix the bucket first.

So, where are your customers dissapearing?

The journey from seeing an ad to making a purchase is a funnel. At each step, you'll naturally lose some people. But a 100% drop-off at the final stage isn't natural; it's a sign that something is fundamentally broken. You've got 60 people who have mentally committed to buying your product. They've picked something out, put it in their virtual shopping basket, and walked towards the till. Then, all 60 of them, without exception, have abandoned it.

This isn't a coincidence. It's a pattern. Something in your cart or checkout process is actively stopping them from giving you money. Here’s a visual representation of what your funnel looks like based on the numbers you provided. We have to make an assumption on clicks, but with a £70 weekly spend and £0.14 CPC, that's about 500 clicks.

I'd say you need to fix your 'leaky bucket'...

That 100% drop-off is your leaky bucket. It's a catastrophic failure at the most critical point of the sale. Let's break down the most likely reasons why this is happening. In my experience, it almost always comes down to one of three things: unexpected costs, friction, or a lack of trust.

1. The Number One Sales Killer: Unexpected Costs

This is the big one. A customer sees a product for £20, adds it to their cart, proceeds to checkout, and is suddenly hit with a £5.99 shipping fee and £1.20 in tax. The product they thought was £20 is now nearly £28. That's a 40% price increase they weren't expecting. It feels deceptive, and it's the fastest way to lose a sale. People don't just dislike hidden fees; they feel cheated by them.

You need to be completely transparent with your pricing. If you have shipping costs, state them clearly on the product page. Even better, offer free shipping, even if it means slightly increasing your product price to absorb the cost. The psychological impact of "Free Shipping" is far more powerful than a slightly lower item price.

Use this calculator to see how much of an impact a 'surprise' shipping cost can have on a customer's perception of the final price.

2. Friction Kills Conversions

How easy is it to buy from you? Every single click, every form field, every page load is an opportunity for a customer to give up. The ideal checkout process is as short and seamless as possible.

• Forced Account Creation: Do not, under any circumstances, force users to create an account before they can buy. Always offer a 'Guest Checkout' option. You can ask them to create an account on the confirmation page *after* they've paid. Forcing it beforehand is a massive barrier.
• Too Many Form Fields: Are you asking for their inside leg measurement and their mother's maiden name just to buy a t-shirt? Only ask for the absolute essentials: name, address, email, payment info. Remove any optional fields.
• Poor Mobile Experience: Most of your ad traffic is probably from mobile devices. Have you tried to complete a purchase on your own site using a phone? Is it easy? Are the buttons big enough to tap? Or is it a frustrating mess of zooming and pinching?

3. Your Store Doesn't Look Trustworthy

People are inherently skeptical of buying from a new, unknown website. You are asking them to hand over their credit card details. They need to feel 100% confident that you are a legitimate business, that their data is secure, and that they will actually receive the product they paid for. Many small e-commerce sites fail miserably at this.

Think about your own online shopping habits. What makes you trust a site? I'd bet it's things like:

• Customer Reviews: Social proof is massive. If other people have bought from you and had a good experience, it reduces the perceived risk for new customers. If you don't have any reviews, you're just a faceless website.
• Professional Design and Photography: A cluttered, slow, or ugly website with blurry phone pictures screams 'amateur'. This erodes trust instantly. Investing in clean design and high-quality product photos is not a luxury; it's a basic requirement. As I've told other ecom clients, your site needs to look trustworthy or I probably wouldn't feel comfortable ordering from you.
• Clear Contact Information: Do you have a physical address (even a virtual one), a phone number, and a professional email address clearly visible? If a customer can't figure out how to contact you if something goes wrong, they won't risk something going wrong.
• Trust Badges: Logos for secure payment options (Visa, Mastercard, PayPal) and SSL certificates (the little padlock in the address bar) provide visual cues that the checkout process is secure.

You probably should retarget those lost customers...

The one silver lining here is that you now have a highly valuable audience: 60 people who were interested enough to add your product to their cart. They are warm leads. It would be a huge waste not to try and win them back. This is where retargeting comes in.

You need to set up a seperate, specific campaign on Facebook targeting only these people. In Meta Ads Manager, you can create a Custom Audience of people who have triggered the 'AddToCart' event but not the 'Purchase' event in the last, say, 14 days. This is your BoFu (Bottom-of-Funnel) audience, and it's gold.

Then, you run a specific ad to them. Don't just show them the same ad again. Acknowledge that they left and give them a reason to come back. Your ad copy could be something like:

Headline: Still thinking about it?

Body: "It looks like you left something behind in your cart. We know life gets busy! Did you know we offer free shipping on all orders over £30? Complete your purchase today and get your [Product Name] delivered by Friday."

This does two things: it reminds them of their interest and it overcomes a potential objection (shipping costs). An abandoned cart retargeting campaign is one of the highest ROI activities you can do in e-commerce, but it only works if the checkout process they're sent back to is actually usable.

You'll need a clear action plan...

Okay, that was a lot of information. The key thing is not to get overwhelmed. You need to work through this methodically. Stop your current ads immediately – you're just wasting money until the site is fixed. Then, follow these steps.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

Working through a checklist like this is how you turn a failing campaign into a profitable one. It requires stepping back from the ad platform and looking at the entire customer experience. It’s not about finding one magic bullet, but about systematically removing all the barriers that stand between a customer and a sale.

This process of auditing, diagnosing, and optimising the full funnel is exactly what we do for our clients every day. I remember one eCommerce client selling women's apparel where we achieved a 691% return on their ad spend. It's a great example of how looking at the entire customer journey, not just the ads, can lead to significant results.

It can be tough to see the flaws in your own website when you're so close to it. Getting an expert, external perspective can make all the difference. If you'd like, we can offer you a free, no-obligation consultation where we can take a proper look at your website and ad account together and give you a more detailed, personalised plan of action.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh