A founder told me last week that in 2019, their CAC was $12. Now, it’s $26.
To put that in context…
That is 35% of their Average Order Value.
You can tweak your ad copy. Change the creative. Test new hooks.
But you’re fighting a system built to get more expensive the longer you stay in it.
Meta and Google thrive on one thing… competition.
Every new brand. Every new product. Every new ad set. More bids. Higher prices. Smaller margins.
You’re swimming against the tide.
And while your CAC’s going up… you’re website stays the same.
You’re ‘Ad-tacking’… and not putting any focus on improving the parts you actually control.
Over the last few years, most brands have poured time, energy, and budget into paid.
Scaling traffic. Scaling spend.
But very few have scaled website performance to match.
And that’s where the cracks start to show.
- If your site doesn’t convert
- If your AOV is flat
- If your retention is weak
Then your paid strategy becomes a very expensive guessing game.
Stop paying for clicks. Start paying for sales.
(And no, I don’t mean the ad setting.)
Let’s kill the biggest myth right now:
CRO isn’t just for Amazon, Walmart, or whoever raised $100 million last quarter.
- It’s not too expensive.
- It’s not too technical.
- And it’s definitely not just changing button colours.
What it is, when done right, is the most cost-effective way to reduce your CAC or even afford a higher CAC.
It’s not flashy.
But ironically, that’s exactly why most brands overlook it.
Here are real examples of tiny tweaks with massive impact:
- 7.17% increase in Conversion Rate because of a tweak to how the product thumbnails were displayed.
- 15.21% increase in Conversion Rate after replacing cluttered PDP text with a simple accordion layout.
- 88% increase in Conversion Rate by exposing the mobile search bar instead of hiding it behind an icon.
No redesigns. No six-figure projects.
Just better decisions. Made with data.
Implemented fast.
This is the part of growth you can control.
This is how you turn CAC from a rising cost into a competitive advantage.
Because when your funnel performs, you don’t fear higher ad costs.
You outbid your competitors and win the customers that actually stick around.
Let me ask you this:
When was the last time your website got the same attention as your Ad accounts?
If the answer is “it hasn’t”… You already know what’s wrong.
Your CAC problem isn’t because your ads are broken. It’s because your site hasn’t been built to convert the traffic you’re paying for.
And every day you ignore it, you’re not just losing margin, you’re making Meta and Google richer than you.
This was a guest article from Peter Gardner, the co-founder of Blend Commerce – the Shopify CRO Agency.