The Secret to E-Commerce Profit (Hint: It's Returning Customers)

Studies show that acquiring a new customer can cost five to seven times more than retaining an existing one, which is why it’s worth prioritizing loyalty when building your e-commerce brand. However, it's not always as simple as selling great products at reasonable prices.

Even minor UX issues on your website could be quietly killing your repeat customer rate, increasing churn, and raising your marketing costs in the process. This article highlights key factors that discourage visitors from returning to your site, with actionable tips to overcome them.

Returning Customers Are Your Real Profit Center

The data about the value of returning customers is clear. Research shows they’re 9x more likely to convert than first-time visitors and spend 67% more on average. Ultimately, the more repeat visitors you have, the higher your profits should be.

That’s why many e-commerce teams focus on optimizing the metric of customer lifetime value (CLV). This measures the average amount a customer spends throughout the lifespan of their relationship with you.  When your CLV increases, it typically signifies climbing customer loyalty metrics. It’s a metric worth tracking as you work through the problems highlighted throughout the rest of this article.

What’s Driving Website Visitors Away?

According to our 2025 Clutch survey on trustworthy websites, there's not just one problem that companies need to worry about. Many minor issues often stack up and chip away at trust over time to hurt a brand's conversion rate.

For example:

• First impressions matter: 14% of visitors bounce from outdated design elements
• Credibility is everything: 14% bounce from typos and placeholders, which make your brand seem less professional
• If users can't find it quickly, they won't stay: 13% bounce from confusing navigation
• Frustration leads people away: 12% bounce from broken functionality
• Patience is in short supply online: 12% bounce from a slow website with long loading times; your site needs to be fast to be competitive.

These numbers can feel minor in isolation. But together, they silently erode trust, push visitors away, and hurt key loyalty metrics like CLV.

Fix #1: Design With Repeat Visitors in Mind

First, consider refreshing or redesigning your website with repeat visitors in mind. That often means prioritizing a modern, mobile-friendly design to build instant credibility with visitors. You can also:

• Learn from heatmaps and user recordings: Tools like Hotjar and Microsoft Clarity analyze real user behavior, helping you make design changes that reflect actual usage trends.
• Adopt a continuous refresh mindset: The best websites are constant works in progress. So, don’t wait years to overhaul your site. Implement over time with small, iterative changes based on user data.
• Benchmark against industry leaders: Comparing your site to the competition can help you understand where you need to improve to increase loyalty.

The main question you need to answer here is whether to redesign your website entirely or simply refresh it. Muzammil K, Marketing Manager at Aalpha Information Systems, says, “A website refresh is ideal when the core functionality and structure remain strong but the design, performance, or UX need enhancement.”

He continues, “A complete redesign is necessary when the website no longer supports business goals or provides a poor user experience. If navigation is confusing, the backend technology is outdated, the site isn’t mobile-friendly, or major branding changes have occurred, a complete overhaul is usually the best move.”

Fix #2: Eliminate Typos and Placeholder Text for Good

Leaving typos and placeholder text on your site isn’t just careless — it can actively erode consumer confidence in your brand. First-time visitors who see them are less likely to return, according to Clutch survey data.

Everybody makes mistakes once in a while. But you can stop these from impacting your site’s performance by:

• Building a copy review workflow into your content process
• Assigning a team member to own the final QA step before publishing
• Using automated tools like Grammarly to check for typos

You don’t necessarily need to be buttoned up and professional if that’s not your brand’s identity. Rather, it’s important to avoid the kind of sloppy copy that can make users think twice before giving you their money.

Fix #3: Make Broken Functionality a Thing of the Past

Few things drive visitors away faster than a website that doesn’t work properly. When you have dead 404 pages, broken links, or a malfunctioning “add to cart” button, users can feel like they’re using an out-of-date site. This can make them less likely to purchase something, as they worry you won’t provide timely service or that they’ll experience other issues during the shipping process.

You can fix this problem by:

• Using Google Search Console to find crawl errors
• Leveraging a tool like Screaming Frog to identify broken links
• Scheduling a UX audit for your site every few months
• Assigning accountability to an employee who can own site functionality

Broken site features create friction in the shopping journey, which erodes consumer confidence. Implementing proactive processes to identify these issues is the most effective way to stop losing business to them.

Fix #4: Simplify Navigation To Increase Website Visitors and Keep Them Coming Back

Next, look for opportunities to simplify your website's navigation. Josh Locke, Marketing Manager at Harrison Carloss, says, “Too many websites create unnecessary friction. The key to perfect navigation is to make the user experience from session start to conversion as frictionless as possible…clean up your menu, install a hierarchy of pages, and reduce friction at every stage.” 

So, how do you do it? Here are some tips:

• Use clear, intuitive labels that visitors will understand instinctively.
• Keep your main menu relatively small; five to seven high-priority items tend to work best.
• Add an internal search feature with smart suggestions.
• Test your navigation flow with new users and make changes based on their feedback.

Even minor changes in navigation can lead to big lifts in engagement over time. The key will be watching user data and refreshing your site as it evolves.

Fix #5: Speed Up Your Site To Keep Customers Engaged

Finally, look for opportunities to speed up your site. Heral, Managing Director at a WooCommerce Agency, says, “The biggest culprits are oversized media, bloated themes, page builders, and poor hosting environments.” These elements create friction and delays in the user’s shopping journey. They can also be a signal for unreliability, especially for first-time users who don’t know whether to trust your site yet.

Here’s an optimization checklist you can follow to find and fix your speed-related issues:

• Compress your images and use next-gen formats
• Audit your site speed using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, or Core Web Vitals in GA4
• Choose a high-performance hosting provider
• Enable caching
• Use fewer plugins and third-party tools

Some of these issues require technical expertise to solve. You may have what you need internally. But if you don’t, it could make sense to partner with a web design agency who can help you find and fix the main issues slowing down your website.

Pro Tip: Launch a Loyalty Program To Reward Repeat Purchases

If your main goal is to increase customer loyalty or your average CLV, launching a loyalty program could be one of the best ways to do it. That process typically means:

1. Identifying key customer behaviors to reward
2. Choosing your program model from paid, referral, and mission-based options
3. Piloting the program, gathering feedback, and iterating

Dan Cassidy, Founder of Brandhopper Digital, emphasizes the importance of designing a program that aligns with your customers’ desires. He says, “If your loyalty perks don’t reflect what your best customers care about, don’t be surprised if they ignore them.”

Ultimately, loyalty programs align what’s best for your company with what’s best for its customers. When you reward people for every purchase they make, it increases their odds of returning and buying more. That's why launching a rewards program is one of the best options if you're deciding how to increase website visitors and sell more products.

Final Thoughts: Turn Your Visitors Into Returning Customers (and Keep Them Engaged)

Your e-commerce site’s quality can directly impact its profitability. That’s why brands with frequent typos, broken elements, and slow load times often struggle to build loyalty and grow profitability over time. Users simply don’t trust these sites or prefer to shop on alternative platforms that work properly.

The sooner you address these issues, the sooner you can get back to focusing on growth. So, when you’re ready to get started, you can work through the problems covered in this article independently or partner with a web designer who can do the job for you.

About the Author

Jeanette Godreau Senior Content Marketing Specialist at Clutch

Jeanette Godreau crafts in-depth content on web design, graphic design, and branding to help B2B buyers make confident decisions on Clutch.  

See full profile