Solved: Low Facebook Ads Conversions, High CPR

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! I had a look at the numbers you shared from your first couple of days running ads. It's completely normal to feel a bit lost when you're just starting out, so don't worry. I'm happy to give you some of my initial thoughts and a bit of guidance on what's likely going on and how you can start to turn things around. The short answer is that you're focusing on completely the wrong thing, but it's a really common mistake to make.

You're Paying Facebook to Find Window Shoppers

Okay, let's get straight to the point. You're asking if you should stop the ads with the higher CPR (which in your case is Cost Per Click, or CPC). My honest advice? It doesn't matter. All three of your ads are set up to fail, and the CPC is completely irrelevant right now.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth about how these platforms work. When you create a campaign and tell Facebook your objective is "Traffic" or "Link Clicks," you give its algorithm a very specific, literal command: "Find me the largest number of people, for the lowest possible price, who will click my ad." And the algorithm is brilliant at doing exactly what you ask it to do.

It goes out and finds all the people inside your targeting (USA, UK, Canada) who are known for clicking on things but never actually buying anything. Why? Because their attention is cheap. No other advertiser wants them, so Facebook can sell you their clicks for pennies. You are actively paying the world's most powerful advertising machine to find you the worst possible audience for an eCommerce store. It's like setting up a stall in a market and paying someone to bring you crowds of people who have proudly left their wallets at home.

You need to change your campaign objective to "Conversions" (it might be called "Sales" now in Ads Manager). This completely changes the instruction you give the algorithm. Now you're telling it: "I don't care about clicks. I care about sales. Go and find people who are likely to actually pull out their credit card and buy something on my website." Yes, your CPC will go up. Your cost per anything will look higher initially. But you'll be fishing in a pond full of actual buyers, not just curious clickers.

Finding the Leak in Your Funnel

So, you're getting clicks but no Add to Carts and no orders. This is a classic symptom of a problem further down the funnel. Paid ads are like a tap that pours water (traffic) into a bucket (your website). If the bucket has holes, it doesn't matter how much water you pour in; it'll never fill up. Your job is to find and plug the holes.

Let's look at the typical journey a customer takes:

1. Impression: They see your ad.
2. Click: They're interested enough to click through to your site. (You are here)
3. Product Page View: They land on your product page.
4. Add to Cart: They like what they see and decide to take the next step. (This is where your leak is)
5. Initiate Checkout: They start the payment process.
6. Purchase: They complete the order.

Since people are clicking the ad but not adding anything to their cart, the problem almost certainly lies on your product page. The ad did its job—it got someone interested. But when they arrived at your store, something put them off.

I'd say you need to fix your shop before your ads

Spending more money on ads right now would be like trying to shout louder to sell a product that people can't see properly. You need to fix the fundamentals of your online shop first. Without seeing your site, I can only guess, but these are the usual suspects for new stores:

• Poor Product Photography: Are your images blurry, dark, or unappealing? For eCommerce, your photos are everything. People can't touch or feel the product, so the images have to do all the work. They need to be professional, well-lit, and show the product from multiple angles, ideally in use.
• Missing or Weak Product Descriptions: Do you have descriptions? Are they just a list of features? You need to write persuasive copy that sells the benefit, not just the feature. It should answer questions, overcome objections, and create desire for the product.
• Pricing Issues: Is your price clear? Is it competitive? If it's high, have you justified why it's worth the price (e.g., premium materials, handcrafted quality)? Shipping costs are another big one – unexpected high shipping fees at checkout is the number one reason for abandoned carts.
• Lack of Trust: This is probably the biggest one. You're a new, unknown store asking people in another country to give you their credit card details. Why should they trust you? Your site needs to scream professionalism and legitimacy. This means having:
  • -> An "About Us" page that tells your story.
  • -> Clear contact information and a physical address if possible.
  • -> A professional design, not a messy, cluttered template.
  • -> Social proof like customer reviews or testimonials (even if you have to get them from friends and family to start).
  • -> Trust badges for secure payments (e.g., Visa, Mastercard, PayPal).
  • -> Clear policies for shipping and returns.

My brutal but honest advice is to turn off your ads completely. Take the £12 a day you're spending and invest that time into fixing your website. You can't get strong results from ads if your website doesn't convert visitors into customers. I remember one campaign for a women's apparel brand where we achieved a 691% return on ad spend—a result that highlights what's possible when your store is ready for traffic.

You'll need a proper targeting strategy

Once your website is in better shape, you can turn your attention back to the ads. Just targeting three huge countries like the USA, UK, and Canada is far too broad, especially on a tiny budget. It's like trying to find a needle in three different haystacks at once.

You need to stop thinking about demographics and start thinking about your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Your customer isn't just "a person in the USA." Your customer is a person with a specific problem, a passion, or a need that your product solves. Who is that person?

• -> What are their hobbies and interests?
• -> What brands do they already love and buy from?
• -> What magazines, blogs, or influencers do they follow?
• -> What specific problem is your product solving for them?

Once you know this, you can use Facebook's detailed targeting to find them. Instead of targeting "United Kingdom," you might target "People in the United Kingdom who are interested in [Specific Hobby], also follow [Specific Brand], and have shown purchase behaviour for [Product Category]." This is how you find your real customers.

I usually structure campaigns in stages (Top of Funnel, Middle of Funnel, Bottom of Funnel). For a new account, you'll be starting at the top (ToFu), which means testing these different interest-based audiences to see which one responds best. Once you have some data (at least 100 website visitors or so), you can start retargeting people who visited your site but didn't buy (MoFu/BoFu). But you have to walk before you can run. Start with one country and a few very specific interest audiences in a conversion campaign.

You probably should re-evaluate your budget and expectations

Finally, we need to talk about budget. £12 per day is a very small amount to get meaningful data, especially when you're trying to get sales. The Facebook algorithm has a "learning phase" where it needs about 50 conversions (in your case, sales) per week for each ad set to properly learn who your customers are. On your budget, that's simply impossible.

Think about the maths. For eCommerce in developed countries, a typical conversion rate is around 2-5%. The cost per click can be anywhere from £0.50 to £1.50. This means your cost per purchase could easily be anywhere from £10 to £75. At £12 a day, you might not even have enough budget to get a single sale. You need to be prepared to spend enough to give the algorithm a chance to work. I usually recomend a starting ad spend of at least £1k-£2k per month to get meaningful traction.

But the real question isn't "how much does a customer cost?" It's "how much is a customer worth?" This is where understanding your Lifetime Value (LTV) becomes so important. If a customer buys from you once for £50, that's one thing. But what if they come back and buy three more times over the next year? Suddenly, that customer is worth £200, and paying £50 to acquire them looks like a brilliant investment. Focusing on LTV instead of a one-off sale frees you from the tyranny of trying to get cheap leads and allows you to build a sustainable business.

This is the main advice I have for you:

To wrap this up, you've taken the first step which is great, but now it's time to pause and correct your course. Forget about the ads for a week and focus entirely on improving your foundations.

Navigating all of this can be tricky, and it's easy to waste money when you're learning. The difference between a campaign that fails and one that succeeds often comes down to experience—knowing which levers to pull, how to interpret the data correctly, and how to structure everything for success from the start.

This is where getting professional help can make a massive difference. We spend all day, every day inside ad accounts, diagnosing problems like yours and implementing strategies that turn performance around. If you'd like an expert pair of eyes on your setup to get a more tailored plan, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can review your store and ad account together.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh