Hi there,
Thanks for reaching out about your ads. It sounds like a frustrating spot to be in, spending money and seeing traffic but not the sales you need. It’s a really common problem, especially for higher-end products. I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts based on what you've described and my experience with eCommerce brands.
Honestly, from what you've said, the issue probably isn't just about tweaking your ad creative again. You've got a classic disconnect between who your ads are attracting and what they experience when they get to your store. Your cost per click is decent and getting 51 adds to cart means something is working, but the final step is breaking down completely. We need to figure out why.
We'll need to look at your offer... your discounts are probably the problem
This is going to sound backwards, but the first thing I'd point to is your "big discounts". This is almost certainly the root of your main problem. You sell "higher end" landscape wall art. The kind of person who buys premium, high-end art is not primarily motivated by a discount. They are motivated by quality, exclusivity, the story behind the peice, how it will make their space feel, and the status it confers. When you lead with a heavy discount, you are broadcasting a message of "cheap" and "low value".
What happens is you end up attracting an audience of bargain hunters. These people love a good deal. They'll click, they'll browse, they might even add to cart because the discounted price seems tempting. But when it comes time to actually checkout, the "higher-end" price point – even discounted – is still too high for them. Their initial interest was based on the discount, not the intrinsic value of your art. So you get a ton of traffic and cart adds from the wrong people, and they abandon ship when the final price doesn't feel like a true bargain bin find.
You're essentially putting a "50% Off" sticker on a piece of jewellery in a high-end Mayfair boutique. It just confuses the real buyers and attracts window shoppers who were never going to buy anyway. The offer itself needs to be about the value of the art, not the reduction in price. We've seen eCommerce clients, like a women's apparel brand we worked with, achieve a 691% return not by slashing prices, but by reinforcing the value and desire for the product in the right audience's mind. For high-end goods, desire trumps discount, every single time.
Your first and most important change is to stop the heavy discounting. It's devaluing your art and poisoning your audience pool.
I'd say you need to redefine who you're actually selling to
Because you've been leading with discounts, you've been fishing in the wrong pond. You need to forget generic audiences and get really specific about your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). And your ICP isn't a demographic; it's a person with a specific, urgent problem or desire.
Who really buys high-end landscape art?
-> The New Homeowner: Someone who just bought or renovated a premium home or apartment. Their "pain" is a big, blank, sterile wall in their new living room that needs a statement piece to bring it to life.
-> The Interior Designer: They are constantly sourcing unique pieces for their clients. Their "pain" is finding reliable artists with high-quality work that can be the centrepiece of a room design.
-> The High-Income Gifter: Someone looking for a significant, memorable gift for a major anniversary, wedding, or milestone. Their "pain" is finding something more meaningful and lasting than another gadget or bottle of wine.
-> The Corporate Buyer: Businesses looking to furnish their offices, boardrooms, or client-facing areas with impressive art. Their "pain" is creating a professional, sophisticated environment.
These people aren't scrolling Facebook looking for a bargain. They're looking for a solution to their "empty wall" or "perfect gift" problem. Your job isn't to sell them a canvas; it's to sell them the feeling of a completed room, the perfect gift, or a sophisticated office.
Once you know who you're talking to, your ad targeting changes completely. Instead of broad interests like "Art" or "Home Decor," you get more specific. On Meta, you can layer interests to build a much more qualified audience. For example:
Example Audience Targeting on Meta:
Audience 1: Affluent Homeowners
- Interests: Interior Design, Architectural Digest, Luxury Real Estate (e.g. Zillow Premier Agent, Savills)
- AND Behaviours: High-end device users, Frequent international travellers
Audience 2: People in a "Buying" Mindset
- Interests: High-end furniture brands (e.g. Restoration Hardware, Herman Miller), Art galleries (e.g. Saatchi Art, Gagosian)
- AND Life Events: Recently moved
This kind of targeting brings you much more qualified traffic. It might be more expensive per click, and your CTR might even go down, but the people who do click are far more likely to have the intent and the budget to actually make a purchase. You're trading cheap, low-quality traffic for expensive, high-quality traffic, which is exactly what you need for a premium product. It's better to have 10 clicks from people who can afford your art than 100 clicks from people who can't.
You probably should overhaul how your store presents the art
Getting 51 adds to cart and only 2 sales is a massive red flag for your website experience. The ad and the product are getting people to the point of "I want this," but something on your site is screaming "Don't buy this!" when they get close to paying. This is usually down to a lack of trust and a failure to communicate the premium value you're asking for.
Ask yourself honestly, does your website feel like a high-end art gallery, or does it feel like a generic drop-shipping store? Premium products demand a premium experience.
-> Professional Photography is Non-Negotiable: Your product images need to be impeccable. This doesn't just mean a high-resolution photo of the art on a white background. You need "in-situ" mockups. Show the art hanging above a stylish sofa, in a modern dining room, in a corporate-looking office. Help the customer visualise it in their own space. A video of you talking about the piece, showing the texture and scale, can also work wonders. People need to see the value.
-> Build Trust, Urgently: Why should a stranger give you hundreds or thousands of pounds? Your website needs to scream "trustworthy." This means:
- An "About the Artist" Page: Who are you? What's your story? Why do you create this art? People connect with stories, and it makes the work feel more valuable.
- Customer Reviews & Testimonials: Social proof is huge. If you have past happy customers, get their testimonials and photos of the art in their homes on your site.
- Clear, Easy-to-Find Policies: What is your shipping policy? How is the art packaged to ensure it arrives safely? What is your return policy? Hiding this information makes you look shady.
- Professional Design: The site needs to look clean, load quickly, and be easy to navigate. Cluttered pages, slow loading times, and a confusing checkout process will kill your conversions. I've seen so many artists just use a basic Shopify template, but for high-end work, it often isn't enough to build the confidence needed for a big purchase.
The 49 people who abandoned their carts were interested, but your website didn't give them the confidence to complete the purchase. Fixing this is your lowest-hanging fruit for increasing revenue without even touching your ads.
You'll need a proper advertising funnel, not just a single sales campaign
Running just one sales campaign and constantly changing the creative is like only ever trying to hit home runs. It's inefficient and exhausting. A structured funnel approach is far more effective and sustainable. For an eCommerce business like yours, especially with a higher-priced item, you need to think in terms of a customer journey.
I usually structure accounts with seperate campaigns for each stage of the funnel. This allows you to speak to people differently based on how familiar they are with your brand and art.
Here is a simplified structure you could use for Meta ads:
| Campaign (Objective) | Ad Set (Audience) | Example Ad Creative |
|---|---|---|
| Prospecting (Sales Objective) |
Broad Interests (ToFu) Targeting your new ICPs, e.g., 'Interior Design' + 'Luxury Goods'. You would test multiple ad sets with different high-value interest groups here. |
Showcase your most stunning pieces. Use high-quality video or carousel ads that tell a story. The goal is to stop the scroll and introduce them to your work. No hard sell yet. |
| Retargeting (Sales Objective) |
Website Visitors (MoFu) People who visited your site in the last 30 days but didn't add to cart. Exclude purchasers. |
Show them different pieces of art. Talk about your process in a short video. Share a testimonial from a happy customer. Re-engage their interest. |
| Retargeting - Cart Recovery (Sales Objective) |
Added to Cart (BoFu) Your golden audience: the 51 people who added to cart in the last 7-14 days. Exclude purchasers. This is your priorty audience. |
This is where you can be direct. Use an ad that shows the exact piece they added to their cart (using Dynamic Product Ads). Maybe add a message about limited availability or show a customer review for that specific piece. Remind them why they wanted it. |
This structure allows you to warm people up. Very few people will buy an expensive peice of art the first time they see an ad. They need to see your brand a few times, visit the site, think about it, and then be reminded. Your current campaign is only talking to cold traffic and trying to force an immediate sale, which is an incredibly difficult way to sell high-ticket items. Those 51 cart-adders are your warmest leads; you absolutly must have a dedicated campaign to bring them back.
I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:
| Area of Focus | Action to Take | Why It's Important |
|---|---|---|
| The Offer | Immediately stop offering "big discounts". Price your art based on its value and stand by it. | To attract genuine high-end buyers instead of bargain hunters, and to stop devaluing your brand. |
| The Audience | Define your Ideal Customer Profile based on their needs (e.g., new affluent homeowner) and build new ad audiences around these profiles. | To improve traffic quality, ensuring clicks come from people with the actual intent and budget to buy premium art. |
| The Store Experience | Overhaul product presentation. Invest in professional "in-situ" photography, write emotional descriptions, and add strong trust signals (artist bio, reviews, clear policies). | To give buyers the confidence to make a high-value purchase online and fix the massive drop-off between 'Add to Cart' and 'Purchase'. |
| The Ad Strategy | Build a multi-stage funnel with separate Prospecting and Retargeting campaigns, with a specific focus on recovering abandoned carts. | To nurture potential buyers over time and convert the high-intent audience (cart abandoners) that your current strategy is ignoring. |
I know this is a lot to take in, and it's a fundamental shift from what your'e currently doing. Getting all these pieces right—the messaging, the audience targeting, the website psychology, and the campaign structure—is complex and takes a lot of experience to get right. It's more than a full-time job, and trying to learn it all while also creating your art is an almost impossible task. This is often the point where artists and founders realise they need an expert partner to handle the advertising machine so they can focus on what they do best.
If you'd like to go through your campaigns and website together in more detail, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can give you some more specific pointers. It might help you see a clearer path forward.
Hope this helps!
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
