Solved: Low Jewelry Conversions Despite High Add-to-Carts

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! I've had a look over the numbers you sent through from your campaign. It’s a classic and frustrating situation to be in – you've clearly got a product people are interested in, which is the hardest part, but that interest isn't turning into cash in the bank. It's a leaky bucket problem.

Honestly, from what you've described, my initial thought is that you're focusing too much on the ad itself when the real issues are likely happening after the click. Getting 48 'add to carts' from just 187 clicks is actually a really strong signal. It tells us the ad targeting and creative are doing their job; they're bringing the right kind of people to your store who like what they see enough to take that first step. The breakdown is happening somewhere between the cart and the checkout confirmation page. We just need to find the holes and plug them.

I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and a bit of guidance on where I'd start looking. We see this kind of pattern quite a lot with new eCommerce stores, and it's almost always solvable by taking a hard, honest look at the user experience on your site, particularly around trust, hidden costs, and the overall clarity of your offer.

We'll need to look at the numbers beyond the ad...

Right, let's get into the weeds a bit. It's easy to look at a 0.99 ROAS and think the whole thing is a failure, but the story is more nuanced than that. The data you've provided gives us a very clear map of where your potential customers are getting lost. We need to stop thinking about this as a single "performance" number and start seeing it as a journey with several steps. Some steps are working brilliantly, others are a complete disaster.

Let's visualise your customer's journey based on the stats you sent over. Out of every ~26 people who saw your ad, one person clicked. That's your impression-to-click stage. Then, out of every 4 people who clicked, one person added an item to their cart. That's your click-to-cart stage. Finally, out of every 7 people who added an item to their cart, only one actually bought it. That's your cart-to-conversion stage. This last step is where your business is bleeding out.

A 25.6% click-to-cart rate is, frankly, excellent. It tells me your product photos, pricing, and initial value proposition on the product page are compelling enough to make people take action. They want what you're selling. The catastrophic failure happens next. A 14.6% cart-to-purchase conversion rate is very, very low. For a well-optimised store, you'd want to see this number closer to 40-50%. Yours is less than a third of that. You're losing 6 out of every 7 people who were moments away from giving you money.

This isn't a targeting problem. If it were, you wouldn't get so many people adding to cart. This isn't a creative problem. If it were, you wouldn't get a decent CTR and so many clicks. This is a website problem. Specifically, it's a checkout and trust problem. Your potential customers arrive at your store, find something they love, decide they want to buy it, and then something in the final process scares them away. Your job now is to become a detective and find out what that is.

I'd say your biggest issue is the checkout and trust...

When we see a funnel that leaks this badly at the final stage, the culprit is almost always a sudden shock or a sudden loss of confidence. People are excited to buy, they proceed to checkout, and then they hit a wall. Based on my experience running campaigns for dozens of eCommerce brands, including several in the apparel and accessories space, these are the most common "walls" people hit.

1. Unexpected Costs: The #1 Conversion Killer
This is the big one. By a huge margin. A customer sees a necklace for $40, they add it to their cart, they go to checkout, and suddenly the price is $55 because of $10 shipping and $5 tax. It feels like a bait-and-switch. It breaks the psychological contract you've just made with them. Even if the final price is reasonable, the *surprise* of it is what causes abandonment. You're targeting the U.S., where customers are heavily conditioned by Amazon Prime to expect fast, free shipping. If you're not offering it, you're at a massive disadvantage. You need to be completely transparent about shipping costs on the product page itself, not just at the final step of checkout. A better strategy is often to calculate your average shipping cost, add it to the product price, and then offer "FREE Shipping" sitewide. The final price to the customer is the same, but the psychological framing is completely different. One feels like a bonus, the other feels like a penalty.

2. Lack of Trust Signals
You're a new, unknown brand asking for credit card details. That requires an enormous amount of trust. Your website needs to be screaming credibility from every pixel. This means:

• Professional Design: Does your site look like it was built in an afternoon, or does it look like a serious business? Small details like high-quality images, consistent fonts, and a clean layout matter immensely.
• Visible Customer Reviews: You need social proof everywhere, especially on the product pages and during checkout. Star ratings, written testimonials, and ideally customer photos are non-negotiable. No reviews often translates to "no one has ever bought this" in a customer's mind.
• Security Badges: While your site is probably secure (using Shopify or another major platform), you need to visually reassure people. Displaying logos for accepted payments (Visa, Mastercard, PayPal) and potentially a security seal (like Norton or McAfee) can make a huge difference to a nervous buyer.
• Clear Policies: Is your returns policy easy to find and easy to understand? What about your shipping policy? A buyer needs to know that if something goes wrong, you'll take care of them. Hiding these policies in the footer is a red flag.

3. A Clunky or High-Friction Checkout Flow
How many steps does it take to check out? Are you forcing people to create an account? Forcing account creation is an absolute conversion killer. Always, always, always offer a guest checkout option. The goal is to remove every possible point of friction. Furthermore, you need to offer modern payment solutions. If you only offer manual credit card entry, you're losing sales. Integrating express checkout options like PayPal, Shop Pay, Apple Pay, and Google Pay is crutial. These services not only speed up the process by pre-filling information, but they also act as a massive trust signal. The customer trusts PayPal, so by extension, they are more willing to trust you.

You probably should rethink your product page...

While your click-to-cart rate suggests the product pages are doing a decent job, there's always room for improvment. A great product page doesn't just get someone to add to cart; it gets them so excited and confident that they breeze through the checkout without a second thought. For an emotional and personal product like jewellery, this is doubly important.

Your photography is your storefront. For personalised jewellery, you absolutely cannot get away with subpar photos. You need crystal-clear, high-resolution images from multiple angles. You need at least one lifestyle shot showing the piece being worn by a model – this helps customers visualise the size, scale, and how it will look in real life. A short video clip can be incredibly powerful, showing how the metal catches the light. If the product is personalised, you must show examples of finished, personalised items. This proves you can deliver on your promise and helps inspire the customer.

Your copy needs to sell the feeling, not the features. Nobody buys a personalised necklace because they need "0.8mm gauge 925 sterling silver". They buy it to commemorate a special date, to feel close to a loved one, or to express their identity. Your product description should speak to these emotions. Instead of listing specs, tell a story. This is where you can use a copywriting framework like "Before-After-Bridge".

The 'After' version doesn't just describe the object; it describes the experience and the emotional payoff. This is what justifies the price and builds the desire that will carry a customer through any minor friction in the checkout process.

You'll need a better pricing and offer strategy...

This is the final, and perhaps most brutal, piece of the puzzle. The fundamental economics of your campaign are broken. Let's lay it out clearly:

• Your Average Order Value (AOV) is $32.98 ($230.86 revenue / 7 orders).
• Your Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), or "Cost Per Result", is $33.87.

Right now, for every sale you make, you are paying Facebook $0.89 for the privilege of losing money. This isn't sustainable. Even with a 52% gross margin, you are in the red before you even account for any other business costs. You have two levers to pull to fix this: decrease your CPA or increase your AOV. The good news is that by fixing the trust and checkout issues we've already discussed, your CPA will naturally come down as your website conversion rate goes up. If you can double your cart-to-purchase rate from 14.6% to 29.2% (still not amazing, but better), you'd get 14 conversions instead of 7 from the same ad spend. Your CPA would instantly be halved to about $16.90, making you profitable on each sale.

But you should also be actively working on the other lever: increasing your AOV. It's far easier to sell more to a customer who is already buying than it is to find a new customer. You could try:

• Bundles: "Get the matching personalised bracelet for 30% off when you buy the necklace."
• Order Bumps at Checkout: "Add a premium gift box and personalised note for just $5.99."
• Post-purchase Upsells: Immediately after they buy, offer them a limited-time deal on a complementary item.
• Tiered Free Shipping: Instead of a blanket free shipping offer, try "Free Shipping on all orders over $50." This encourages people to add one more small item to their cart to meet the threshold.

Improving these numbers is what turns a hobby into a business. I remember one campaign for a women's apparel brand where we achieved a 691% return on ad spend. A key part of that success was focusing on what happens after the click—making sure the website effectively converted the traffic we were sending it. The traffic was already there; we just helped them capture its value more effectively.

You can use the calculator below to see how small changes in your conversion rate and AOV can have a massive impact on your overall profitability. Adjust the sliders to see how your profit changes as you improve your store.

This is the main advice I have for you:

To wrap this all up, you're at a critical but very fixable point. You have proof of product-market fit (people want your jewellery!), but you have a broken sales process. Before you spend another dollar on ads, you need to fix your store. I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

Working through these issues methodically is what separates the stores that succeed from the ones that shut down. It's not glamorous work like designing new ads, but it's the foundational stuff that actually makes you money. It requires a deep understanding of user psychology, conversion rate optimisation, and the technical aspects of the eCommerce platform you're using. It can be a lot to handle on your own, especially when you're also trying to manage product design, fulfillment, and customer service.

This is often where bringing in an expert can make a huge difference. An experienced eye can spot these issues quickly and implement proven solutions, saving you months of expensive trial and error. We've been through this exact process with many clients, turning loss-making campaigns into the primary growth engine for their business.

If you'd like to chat in more detail, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can take a live look at your store and your ad account together. We can walk through your specific checkout flow, product pages, and campaign setup to give you an even more tailored and actionable plan. It might be the most valuable 30 minutes you spend on your business this year.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh