Beyond Messaging: Finding Product-Market Fit in Ecommerce

Messaging is just one part of the bigger picture. Entrepreneurs in the early stages of building a Shopify business often confuse a conversion problem with a product-market fit problem. A great product without a strong product-market fit will always struggle to scale, no matter how polished the ads, landing page, or social media content might be.

Finding product-market fit means showing that there’s real market demand from your target audience—and that your value proposition resonates with the right customer segments. Startups that achieve strong product-market fit can measure it through metrics like:

Conversion rates: How many visitors buy versus bounce.
Customer lifetime value (CLV): Are customers making repeat purchases and referrals?
Churn rate: Do customers stick around or leave after the first purchase?
Net Promoter Score (NPS): Are existing customers so satisfied they spread word-of-mouth?

These metrics help validate whether you’re serving the right product to the right target market, or whether you need to pivot your positioning, pricing, or even the product itself.

Prefer to watch? Check out our YouTube video “Why your Shopify store isn’t making sales (and how to fix it).”

How customers make decisions

Psychologists say we operate in two primary attention modes:

Top-down (goal-directed) attention: When someone has a specific need or outcome in mind and they’re scanning for the best match. Think: someone searching “best natural deodorant for sensitive skin” on Google. They know what they want—they’re just trying to find the product that feels right.
Bottom-up (stimulus-driven) attention: When someone isn’t necessarily looking for anything but is open to being intrigued. Think: scrolling TikTok, seeing something that hits a nerve, and pausing. That moment of resonance is what stops the scroll.

These two modes show up in how we explore products, too. And your messaging needs to hit both:

Match a clearly defined problem and help them see your product as the solution (top-down)
Interrupt with an emotional or aspirational hook that makes them feel seen (bottom-up)

Your job isn’t just to entertain—it’s to resonate, to guide attention, and to connect the dots between your product and a customer’s goals.

Learn to ask and answer "why"

There’s a reason young children ask “Why?” “Why?” “Why?” all of the time. They’re like sponges—soaking up everything they learn to grow and adapt their personalities and beliefs to their environment.

Before you scale, you need clarity on three critical questions:

Why This: What meaningful outcome does this product enable?
Why Now: Why is this urgent or relevant today?
Why You: Why should the customer choose you over anyone else?

This is the time for you to embrace your inner child and become a sponge, too. And not just learn the answers to your “why’s”, but actually adapt based on what your target audience tells you.

These questions aren’t just for founders. They shape every landing page, ad campaign, and product description you write. They reveal whether you have a positioning problem—or a conversion one.

If your “Why This” is unclear, your pipeline will suffer.

If your “Why You” is weak, you’ll lose sales to competitors.

If your “Why Now” is missing, your pipeline will stall out or slip.

So much of messaging comes down to clearly articulating these three answers in a way that feels authentic and emotionally resonant to your buyer.

5 tips for crafting your messaging

If your Shopify store feels like a black hole where traffic goes in and sales never come out—this is for you.

Whether you’re a new store owner or an experienced seller hitting a plateau, these fixes will help you improve your messaging and make the most of the traffic you’re already getting.

1. Understand what customers actually care about

You can’t figure this out in a vacuum.

Start with conversations. Who in your life fits your target customer profile? It could be your coworker’s partner, your cousin’s friend, or someone you’ve already sold to. Ask them what stands out, what feels unclear, and how they describe your product after seeing or using it.

Better yet, run a survey or a quiz. Frame it around a problem: “What’s your biggest challenge with [X]?” or “What are you hoping to fix/improve?”

This will only work if you get enough traffic to your store to justify running a survey (you need a decent amount of answers to get a result).

You might think customers care most about your unique material or technology. But often, what they actually care about is something more personal and practical—comfort, convenience, trust, or empowerment.

These words need to make up how you approach copy across all of your channels and mediums. Why? Take it from Matt Lerner, who wrote a great piece about language-market-fit:

“I’ve seen companies with language-market fit normally get conversion rates from 8% - 40%, which results in much stronger unit economics. Why the sudden jump? Visitors to your site or app store listing bring different levels of intent. It’s easy to convert high-intent users. But if you’re an unfamiliar startup, most of your visitors will have low intent, more curious than desperate. As you tighten up your language, you’ll be able to cut through to that massive pool of low-intent traffic.”

While Matt is using this in reference to software and service-based companies, the same methodology still applies to Shopify brands: your product descriptions and advertisements should clearly explain why someone needs your product, not just what it is.

Focus on the problem it solves.

2. Tap Into organic channels and watch engagement

Before you pour money into performance marketing, test your positioning in low-stakes environments like organic TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube.

For example, my friend owns a women’s shoe brand. She ran paid ads in the past, but nothing was converting. After months of dollars going into the ads system with nothing coming out, she decided to pause, focus only on organic content, and revisit her positioning.

On her Instagram page, she posts a lot of videos from her perspective as the founder, but one that did particularly well was when she announced she quit her job full-time to focus on her shoe business.

She received a lot of support, but a particular comment that stood out to me was someone else sharing how inspired they are by her and how they’re hoping to quit their job to focus on their business too.

Women empowerment has always been an important angle for her brand, but this comment told me that it might need to be explored further as it seemed to resonate naturally with her audience.

She’s now exploring more women-centered topics to share on her social media and in her blog, and they’re crushing.

Only after she learned more about her messaging did she double down on paid ads. Not only are her sales now skyrocketing (I wish I could show you the numbers, but you’ll have to take my word for it), but she’s also grown followers on Instagram much faster.

This is what happens when you listen to what content resonates emotionally, not just visually.

3. Test Early Pricing, Prototypes, and Product Development

When launching a new product, startups often get caught in the trap of endless product development without validating early. Instead, focus on building a minimum viable product (MVP) or prototype that gets you real user feedback quickly.

Early customer feedback—whether through focus groups, onboarding surveys, or post-purchase customer support conversations—can help you optimize both the product and your messaging before you scale.

Pricing strategy also plays a huge role here. If your pricing doesn’t align with your target customers’ perceived value, your conversion rates will stall even if you have a great product. Market research, persona-building, and testing different tiers can reveal where your customers see the most value.

This is the stage where you need to measure product-market fit actively and iterate fast. Entrepreneurs who validate assumptions early save themselves from wasted ad spend and months of misaligned marketing strategies.

4. Focus on problems and benefits, not features

Most brands make the mistake of leading with product specs. The best ones lead with problems—and the outcomes they help customers achieve.

Let’s look at a few examples:

Dyson: Doesn’t lead with filtration systems. They say: "The air inside your home is dirtier than you think."Message: “Captures 99.97% of particles as small as 0.3 microns.”

Casper: Doesn’t start with foam density. They highlight how exhausted you feel.Message: “The best bed for better sleep.”

Ring: Doesn’t market itself as a doorbell. It sells peace of mind.Message: “Always home.”

The difference between "Here’s what we built" and "Here’s what it unlocks for you" is what makes messaging work.

5. Draft new ideas for language-market fit

Once you understand what your customer is struggling with, reframe your copy around the idea of hiring your product to do a job.

This is the core of Jobs-To-Be-Done theory: people don’t buy products. They hire them to make progress.

Your job as a founder or marketer is to understand the context of that progress:

What event triggered them to look for something new?
What were they trying to fix, feel, or achieve?
What emotional or functional outcome were they hoping for?

Then, draft headlines or ad copy using phrases like:

“Now you can finally ______.”
“I was tired of ______, so I tried _____.”
“No more ______. Just ______.”

Again, use their words. Not yours.

Let’s take a concrete example to bring this idea to life

Imagine you’re selling ergonomic office chairs. If you were to describe the product purely by its features, you might say: “Adjustable lumbar support, breathable mesh, and high-density foam.” But that’s not why people buy it. That’s the kind of information they look for when they’re basically ready to buy and just confirming you have the right features.

But what about the more top of funnel shoppers?

To apply Jobs-To-Be-Done thinking, you have to step back and ask: What job is the customer hiring this product to do?

You might uncover insights like these:

What triggered the search? Their back started hurting from working long hours at home.
What were they trying to fix or achieve? They wanted to be more productive, feel comfortable throughout the day, and stop wasting money on cheap chairs that wear out.
What emotional outcome were they hoping for? Relief, focus, and the peace of mind that comes from buying something that actually works.

Now you can start writing copy that speaks directly to those struggles and goals.

Instead of listing specs, you could say:

“Now you can finally focus for eight hours without shifting in your seat.”
“I was tired of back pain ruining my workday, so I tried this chair—and I haven’t looked back.”
“No more cheap chairs that flatten in six months. Just all-day comfort, guaranteed.”

These lines reflect the customer’s lived experience. They acknowledge the struggle, validate the need, and offer a solution. And importantly, they do it using the customer’s own language.

That’s the power of reframing your messaging around the job your product is being hired to do.

6. Test, iterate, repeat

Now that you’ve got some ideas, don’t just throw them into paid ads and hope for the best.

Start by validating comprehension. Show a friend or peer your headline for 5 seconds, then take it away and ask:

What do you think this product is?
Who do you think it’s for?
What do you think it helps you do?

If they can’t articulate the benefit in their own words, refine it.

Then move into lightweight testing: use paid social to compare two or three headlines with the same image or video asset. Measure which one gets the best click-through rate, or which one drives the most conversions.

Tools like Google Optimize, Meta Ads, or even Klaviyo A/B testing can help you iterate fast.

Want a more detailed walkthrough of how to adapt your messaging and drive conversions? Watch our latest video on why your Shopify store isn’t making sales (and how to fix it).

It’s okay to take imperfection action

The truth is, no store is perfect—not even the biggest brands you admire. The difference is, successful store owners take action, learn from their mistakes, and iterate as they go.

Instead of worrying about getting it perfect the first time, view your store as a living experiment.

via GIPHY

Use your first few customers as your secret weapon. Treat them like a focus group—ask for their feedback, monitor their buying habits, and use their insights to make fast, impactful improvements.

Progress, not perfection.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1) What is product-market fit in ecommerce?
Product-market fit means your product solves a real problem for a clearly defined audience—and your messaging communicates that value in a way that resonates. Without it, even good products can struggle to sell.

2) Why isn’t my Shopify store converting?
It’s often not the product, but the messaging. If customers don’t quickly see:

Why This product solves their need
Why Now they should act
Why You are the right brand
…they’ll leave without buying, even if they like what they see.

3) How do customers decide to buy online?
Shoppers switch between two attention modes:

Top-down (goal-driven): actively searching for a solution (e.g., “best running shoes for flat feet”).
Bottom-up (stimulus-driven): passively intrigued by something unexpected (e.g., a TikTok ad that hits an emotional nerve).
Your copy needs to match problems directly and interrupt with emotional hooks.

4) How can I find the right messaging for my brand?
Start by asking your audience questions:

“What’s your biggest challenge with [X]?”
“What were you hoping to fix/improve?”
Then use their words in your copy. Surveys, post-purchase feedback, and organic content engagement are powerful signals of what resonates.

5) What’s the difference between features and benefits in copywriting?

Features = specs (e.g., “adjustable lumbar support”).
Benefits = outcomes (e.g., “focus for 8 hours without back pain”).
Benefits connect emotionally, while features confirm credibility at the decision stage.

6) What is language-market fit?
Language-market fit means your copy matches the way customers naturally talk about their problems and goals. Achieving this can dramatically increase conversion rates—even among low-intent traffic.

7) How do I test if my messaging is working?

5-second test: Show your headline briefly and ask if someone understands what you sell.
A/B testing: Run ads or email subject lines with different messaging and measure clicks/conversions.
Engagement testing: See what organic posts spark comments, shares, or saves.

8) Do I need perfect messaging before I run ads?
No—start with imperfect action. Test messaging organically (TikTok, IG, email) before scaling into paid ads. Iterate fast, treat your store as a living experiment, and let early customer feedback guide you.