Work out what is stopping your store from selling.
Traffic, conversion, platform or product — the fix is very different in each case. askBizly will help you find which one is costing you, and who to bring in if you need help.
Free to use. Ask as much as you like.
Before I suggest anything — what would a good month look like, and what can you pay for a lead?
That’s workable. Here’s how:
- Understand your business, customers and objectivesWhat you sell, who buys, and where you want to get to
- Create your growth strategyWhere the £2.5k goes, and in what order
- Fix what’s holding you backThe changes you can make yourself
- Connect you with a partnerOnly if you need a specialist
AI built on real human expertise
askBizly applies the judgement of people who have grown businesses, led marketing teams and hired agencies — more than twenty years of it. Their criteria shape what it asks and how it answers.
A growth plan built for your business
Not a template. It asks what you sell, where you want to get to and what you have to spend, then sets out what to do, in what order, and what it should cost.
Partners aligned to your objectives
If you want help executing, askBizly briefs partners against the plan you just built — and says why each one fits. It is free to you; partners pay only when an introduction becomes work.
Start here
What’s going wrong with your online store?
Pick the ecommerce problem that sounds like yours.
Why your store is not selling
Every ecommerce problem shows up as the same symptom — not enough orders — and has four quite different causes. Working out which one you have is worth more than any single piece of development work.
If very few people arrive, it is a traffic problem and belongs to marketing, not your store. If plenty arrive and few reach checkout, it is a conversion problem, and it is almost always about clarity, delivery costs or trust rather than design. If they reach checkout and leave, it is the checkout itself: forced account creation, surprise shipping charges, and a payment step that feels unfamiliar account for most of it.
The fourth cause is the uncomfortable one. Sometimes the store is fine and the offer is not — the price is wrong for the market, the range is too thin to be worth a visit, or the product is available more conveniently elsewhere. No amount of development fixes that, and a good adviser should say so.
Buying traffic is the most common response to all four, because it feels like action and it is easy to start. It is also the most expensive, since every underlying problem gets multiplied by the spend. askBizly will help you find the real constraint before you pay to scale it.
How it works
Work out what is stopping your store from selling.
Describe the traffic, conversion and platform. askBizly says whether to fix the funnel, change platform, or spend on the channel that is actually empty.
Understand your business and your ecommerce goals
Your goals for ecommerce, what you’re doing now and what you’ve got to work with — in your own words, one question at a time.
Work out what’s holding your ecommerce back
What you tell it — and any proposal, report or figures you share — is assessed against clear ecommerce criteria, with what’s known kept apart from what’s assumed.
Create your ecommerce strategy
An action plan, a budget, a review or a brief for ecommerce — with its evidence, assumptions and limits shown.
Help you execute
Do it yourself, go back to your supplier with better questions, or look at ecommerce partners — you decide.
Fix the problem
Four ways askBizly can help with ecommerce
Get a plan for the store, a realistic build or marketing budget, a review of a platform proposal, or a brief for the right ecommerce partner.
Diagnosis
Most stores that “don’t sell” have a traffic problem or a page problem — not both.
askBizly works out whether people cannot find you, or they find you and leave. Replatforming fixes neither if the product page and the offer are the bottleneck.
- Traffic versus conversion decided first
- Product page, cart and checkout checked in order
- When a theme tweak beats a rebuild
Budget
Know what an ecommerce build or replatform should cost.
Shopify, WooCommerce and custom stores live in different ranges. askBizly breaks down platform, theme, apps and a rebuild — and what your budget can support.
- Platform fees kept apart from the build
- What a £5,000 store versus a £30,000 store buys
- Questions that make developer quotes comparable
Review
Check an ecommerce proposal or the agency running your store.
Share the scope, platform recommendation or results. askBizly looks at whether the rebuild is necessary, what apps are being sold in, and whether the fee matches the work.
- Replatform recommendations tested for motive
- Apps and retainers judged against the job
- Questions to put before you migrate
Partners
A clear ecommerce brief, then only partners who fit.
If you need a Shopify or WooCommerce specialist, askBizly turns the catalogue, platform and budget into a brief and looks for partners whose records fit. Nobody is contacted until you say so.
- You see the brief before anyone does
- You approve the brief first
- No obligation to hire
Ecommerce questions people ask first
Shopify suits most small and mid-sized retailers: it is hosted, secure and reliable, and you trade some flexibility for not having to maintain anything. Expect £25 to £300 a month plus transaction fees and app subscriptions. WooCommerce makes sense when you need unusual functionality, have complex pricing or product rules, or already run WordPress and have someone to look after it — it is cheaper in licence terms and more expensive in attention. The deciding question is usually whether you have technical help available.
UK ecommerce averages roughly 1.5% to 2.5% of visitors placing an order, with well-optimised stores in favourable categories reaching 3% to 5%. Below about 1% there is almost always a specific, findable problem rather than general underperformance — commonly unexpected delivery costs appearing late, a checkout that demands account creation, missing trust signals, or a mobile experience that is much worse than the desktop one.
A Shopify store on a good theme with your products and branding properly set up is typically £3,000 to £8,000. A custom design with bespoke functionality runs £15,000 to £50,000. Headless or heavily integrated builds go well beyond that. The cost driver is rarely the design — it is product data, integrations with stock or accounting systems, and anything unusual about how you price or ship.
If you have visitors and no orders, look at the product page and checkout before you buy more ads. Common leaks are a delivery price that appears late, a forced account, thin product copy, or photos that do not show the thing properly. If you have almost no visitors, the store is not the first problem — the channel that should bring people is. askBizly will tell you which end you are looking at before you rebuild the theme.
Fix what you have when the catalogue, URL structure and platform still match the business, and the complaints are conversion, speed or apps. Rebuild when you cannot add the products you now sell, the platform is unsupported, or a migration is cheaper than another year of workarounds. Agencies prefer rebuilds because they are bigger invoices. The cheaper test is whether a better product page and a cleaner checkout would change the number this month.
A useful starting split is to make sure the store can convert before you scale paid traffic. Many UK retailers spend 10% to 20% of revenue on acquisition once the funnel works, with Google Shopping and Meta as the usual pair. If conversion is under 1%, every extra pound of ads is more expensive than fixing the page. askBizly will work through your margins and tell you what the store can actually afford to pay for a customer.
Yes. The advice is free for business owners and always will be. askBizly is paid by the partners it introduces, and only when you choose to be introduced. Nothing is sent to anyone and nobody contacts you until you say so.
Stop guessing. Start growing.
Describe the traffic and the conversion. Free, with no ecommerce agency contacting you unless you ask.