For the last few years, this business had been running at a loss.

Natural instinct as a marketer? Spend your way out — more budget, more traffic, more sales.

But more spend into a store that’s quietly leaking sales just loses money faster.

On the surface, everything seemed fine.

Sales grew year-on-year — they just never turned a profit. So for 2025, the business set a modest 15% growth target.

So what’s the catch?

Every marketing channel the business invested in to acquire customers was doing the opposite — funnelling them to abandoned cart, where the losses far outweighed the profit.

The real problem was never the ad budget.

You can’t out-spend a broken customer journey – and you can’t fix it if you don’t know what’s broken.

So before we thought about increasing ad spend, we fixed the data.

1. Get The Measurement Right

There’s no grey area in data — it’s either right or wrong.

Analytics came first — you can’t make confident decisions without it.

Once that was in place, the real story surfaced — and it wasn’t a traffic problem.

2. Find The Friction

The data revealed multiple friction points across the customer journey — but the checkout did the most damage.

Only 3 out of 10 customers who reached checkout actually completed their purchase.

3. Fix The Customer Journey, Not The Budget

Instead of pouring more into a leaking funnel, we fixed the checkout barriers — protecting existing sales and recovering lost revenue.

With accurate data in place, the leak finally had a number — and a clear before‑and‑after.

Before — Jan to Jun 2025

By mid‑2025, only 26% of checkout attempts were completed.

The biggest leak was at step one: 69% left before entering shipping details. 

That’s roughly £188K earned versus £541K lost to abandoned carts — nearly triple the revenue left behind.

After — Jul to Dec 2025

Same store — but one fixed checkout changed everything.

Checkout completions doubled, climbing from 26% to 52%. Revenue jumped to £334K.

And for the first time, checkout earned more than it lost — abandoned-cart revenue dropped to £314K, down £228K (−43%).

The Part That Matters Most

Checkout attempts fell 12% — yet transactions rose 75% and revenue 77%.

No extra traffic. No extra spend. Just the same visitors — finally able to buy.

Across The Full Fear, That Compounded Into:

• Cost per acquisition (CPA) fell 42%, dropping from £9 to £5.

• AdWords revenue grew 71%, from £245K to £420K+ (R540K to R913K+)

• Total sales reached £1.057M+ (R21M+) — a 42% YoY gain against a 15% target.

And in 2025, the business became profitable again.

Most businesses are sitting on revenue they don’t even realise they’re losing.

You can’t scale advertising until you fix the customer journey — more spend only sends more people into the same leak.