When an online store isn't selling, most people look at the website first. The design, the photos, the product pages. Those all matter. But at ECA Online, one of the biggest problems turned out to be simpler than that: once delivery was added, the store was dearer than a key competitor.
Fixing it, with price-matching and free delivery, turned sales round. One summer quarter outsold the nine months before it.
Here is what happened, what else changed, and how to check the same thing in your own business.
About ECA Online
ECA Online is an online store selling electric boilers and bathroom products, built on Shopify. I've run ECA Online for the past year, from the store design and product pages to the marketing.
The wider project is on the ECA Online project page.
The problem: the total price, not the product price
A boiler is a big purchase. Buyers don't look at one site and stop. They open a few tabs and compare. And they don't just compare the product price. They compare what they'll actually pay.
That's where ECA Online was losing. Look at the product price on its own and you might not spot a problem. Add delivery, and the store came out dearer than a key competitor.
It's an easy one to miss from the inside. Product prices tend to get careful thought. Delivery charges often get set once and left alone. Buyers don't see two separate numbers, though. They see one total, and that's the number they compare.
If you're the buyer comparing the two, that's an easy decision. No amount of design work changes it. A buyer who can get a better deal elsewhere usually takes it.
The fix: price-matching and free delivery
The fix had two parts.
- Price-matching. The store matched the competitor on price, so the comparison stopped working against it.
- Free delivery. Delivery was what tipped the total, so free delivery closed the gap right where it opened up.
Sales turned round. One summer quarter outsold the nine months before it.
Matching a competitor isn't the same as racing to the bottom. It simply takes away an easy reason for a buyer to go elsewhere.
What else changed
I won't pretend price was the only change. Over the year, the store also got:
- A new store design. A fresh look for a business asking people to trust it with a big purchase.
- Rewritten product pages. Boilers are technical, and a vague product page leaves buyers with questions.
- Google Shopping. The products are listed there, so buyers can find them straight from a Google search.
- A 24/7 AI web assistant. It answers questions at any hour. I read the chats every month. They show me what buyers are unsure about, things like flue kits, filling valves and cable sizes, and that tells me what its knowledge base needs to cover.
- A buying-guide blog. Sizing guides and other buying guides that help people choose the right product before they buy.
Google impressions are up more than 3x, to 40k+ a month. All that work helps people find the store and trust it. But it was price-matching and free delivery that turned sales round. Marketing brings people to your store. Price often decides whether they buy.
How to check your own pricing
This doesn't take long, and you don't need any special tools. Here's how I'd do it.
- Pick your top products. The handful that bring in most of your sales.
- Find out who buyers compare you with. Search for those products the way a customer would, on Google and Google Shopping. Note the sites that come up.
- Go all the way to checkout. On your site and theirs, add the product to the basket and go as far as you can before paying. Note the full price: product, delivery and anything else added at the end.
- Compare totals, not headline prices. If you're dearer once delivery is in, that's a problem, however good your site looks. A simple table helps: product, your total, their total and the gap.
- Decide what to do about it. Match on price, make delivery free, or make it obvious why you're worth paying more for. Just don't leave the gap unexplained.
- Check again regularly. Prices and delivery charges change. A check you did last year doesn't count.
If you'd rather someone else took a look, pricing and how buyers see your store are part of what I cover in a free Digital Growth Audit.
What you can take from this
- Your buyers see the total price. Make sure you do too.
- Delivery charges are an easy place for a gap to hide. Check them as carefully as your product prices.
- Fix the offer before you spend more on traffic. More visitors won't help if the deal is better elsewhere.
- Judge on real orders. Dashboards don't always tell the full story, so check what they say against your real order list.
- Then fix the basics. Clear product pages, good answers to buyers' questions and a store people trust all help the right price do its job.
Before you spend more on getting people to your site, check what they'll pay when they get there. If you're dearer once delivery is added, fix that first.
Not sure whether your prices, your website or your Google listings are holding you back? Book your free 30-minute Digital Growth Audit. It's a quick Google Meet where I look at your business online and give you clear pointers on what to fix first.
