Hi there,
Saw your post and the situation sounds frustrating, it's a rollercoaster for sure and something lots of people go through when they're starting out. Happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance based on my experience with this stuff, hopefully it'll give you a bit of clarity.
We'll need to look at the whole funnel...
First off, let's tackle the big question you're asking: is it a bad product or just the ads? Tbh, from what you've described, the ads are actually doing part of their job. Getting a $1 CPC is pretty decent in today's market, and the fact you're getting people to add to cart for $10 shows there is some level of interest there. People are clicking, they're looking at your product, and they're even taking that next step of adding it to the basket. That's a positive signal you shouldn't ignore.
The real breakdown seems to be happening after that point. The journey is getting stuck. When you see a high number of 'Add to Carts' but zero 'Purchases', it's a massive red flag that something in the final stages of your sales process is scaring people away. It's the online equivalent of a customer getting to the till with a full basket, looking at the cashier, and then just walking out of the shop. Our job is to figure out what they saw that made them leave.
I've seen this exact scenario play out countless times. I remember working with an eCommerce client selling cleaning products, where their ads were bringing in traffic and plenty of ATCs, but sales were not materialising. After auditing their website, we found that their product descriptions were not detailed enough, and the product images were not high quality. After improving these elements, they saw a 633% return on ad spend.
I'd say you need to fix your store before spending more...
Honestly, before you spend another dollar on ads, you absolutly have to do a deep dive on your store. Pouring more money into ads right now is like trying to fill a leaky bucket with water. You have to plug the holes first, otherwise you're just wasting your budget and getting more frustrated.
The two main culprits are almost always the product page itself and the checkout process.
Your Product Page: Is it actually convincing someone to buy? A massive mistake I see with dropshipping stores is that they just use the standard, often poorly translated, descriptions and low-quality photos from their supplier like AliExpress. That's not good enough. You're competing with thousands of other stores, you have to stand out. Your page needs to build desire and trust. This means:
-> Persuasive Copy: Don't just list features. Sell the benefits. How does this product make your customer's life better, easier, or more enjoyable? Tell a story around it.
-> Good Visuals: If you can, order the product yourself and take your own photos and videos. Even a simple phone video showing the product in use is a million times better than a generic supplier image. People want to see what they're actually getting.
-> Trust Signals: Why should someone trust you're store? You're an unknown entity to them. You need to build credibility with things like customer reviews (even if you have to get a few from friends and family to start), a clear returns policy, an 'About Us' page that looks genuine, and trust badges for secure payments (like Shopify Payments, PayPal, etc.). Without these, your store might just look a bit dodgy, and no one's going to risk their card details.
Your Checkout Flow: This is where most online sales are won or lost. The number one conversion killer, by a country mile, is unexpected costs. So many shoppers add an item to their cart just to find out what the final price with shipping is. If you suddenly slap on an extra $10 for delivery at the final step, they will abandon the cart. It feels dishonest. You should be upfront about shipping costs on the product page, or even better, work the shipping cost into your product price and offer "Free Shipping". It's a powerful psychological trigger.
Then there's the process itself. It needs to be dead simple. Can people check out as a guest without creating an account? Is it fully optimised for mobile (where most of you're traffic will come from)? Does it take forever to load? Every single extra click or field they have to fill in is another opportunity for them to get distracted or change their mind. You need to make it as frictionless as humanly possible.
You probably should rethink your campaign setup...
Once the store side of things is sorted, we can look at improving the ad strategy. While Advantage+ has its place, it can be a bit of a black box that just burns through cash if your pixel is new and you don't have much data. It doesn't give you much insight into what audiences or creatives are actually working.
Your Campaign Objective: This is the most critical mistake you're making. You're optimising for 'Add to Carts'. You have literally told Meta's algorithm to "go and find me people who like to add stuff to their basket but don't necessarily buy", and it has done its job perfectly. You need to change your campaign objective to 'Purchases'.
I know it feels counter-intuitive when you have no purchases yet. The costs will be higher initially, and it will feel like it's not working for the first few days. But you have to train the algorithm on your actual goal. It needs to learn the characteristics of a real buyer, not a window shopper. Sticking with ATC optimisation is a false economy that will never lead to a profitable campaign.
Testing Creatives: You noted that Meta is only pushing one of your ads. That's what it's designed to do. The algorithm finds what it thinks is the best-performing creative very quickly and puts all the budget behind it. To properly test your other videos and images, you can't have them all competing in the same ad set. I'd reccomend setting up seperate ad sets for different creative types (e.g., one for videos, one for images) or for different angles. This forces Meta to give each one a fair shot and will give you much clearer data on what message actually makes people want to buy.
You'll need a more structured approach...
For long-term success, you need to move away from just throwing things at Advantage+ and build a more deliberate funnel structure. It gives you control and helps you understand your customer journey. For a new store, the focus is all on the Top of Funnel (ToFu), which is finding cold audiences of new customers.
Instead of going broad, I'd build several ad sets around different, specific interest categories. Think really hard about your ideal customer. What magazines do they read? What blogs do they follow? What other brands do they buy from? If you're selling a unique pet toy, for example, targeting a broad interest like 'Dogs' is useless. You'd be better off targeting followers of specific dog-breed pages, customers of boutique pet stores, or readers of specific dog training blogs. The key is to find audiences where a high percentage of the people within it are your potential buyers. Test these different interest 'stacks' against each other to find your winners.
You're right that 5 ATCs is nowhere near enough to start retargeting (the Middle and Bottom of the Funnel). You generally need at least 100 people in an audience for it to be effective. But you should set it up now so it's ready for when the traffic grows. Go into your Audiences and create custom audiences for 'All Website Visitors (30 Days)', 'Viewed Content (14 Days)', and 'Added to Cart (7 Days)'. You can build a seperate retargeting campaign and just leave it paused. Once those audiences are big enough, you can switch it on with a small daily budget to bring back those warm leads and close the sale. Retargeting is often where the best, most profitable conversions happen.
I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:
| Area | Current Problem | Recommended Action |
|---|---|---|
| Store Conversion | High drop-off after 'Add to Cart'. Likely due to lack of trust, poor copy, or checkout friction (e.g., hidden shipping costs). | PAUSE ADS. Overhaul product page with better copy/visuals. Add trust signals. Simplify the checkout process and be transparent with all costs upfront. |
| Campaign Objective | Optimising for 'Add to Cart' is teaching the algorithm to find window shoppers, not buyers. | When you relaunch, change the campaign objective to 'Purchases'. Accept higher initial costs to train the pixel on the correct goal. |
| Audience Targeting | Advantage+ is a 'black box' and offers little control or learnings for a new store. | Use manual campaigns with ad sets targeting specific, layered interests relevant to your ideal customer. Test different audience stacks against each other. |
| Creative Testing | The algorithm is putting all budget behind one creative, meaning others aren't being tested. | Structure campaigns with different ad sets for different creative types (e.g., videos vs images) to ensure all assets get a fair test. |
This is a tough game and that rollercoaster of emotions is completely normal, but a systematic approach is the only way to get through it without burning all your cash. It's about testing, learning, and optimising at every single stage of the funnel.
It can be a lot to take in and implement correctly. Getting these foundations right from the start is what separates the stores that succeed from those that fail. If you'd like to go through this in more detail and have an expert eye look over your setup, feel free to book in a free consultation. We can walk through your store and ad account together and build a more concrete plan of action.
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
