Your Cannabis Website Is Losing Money: Seven Lessons Every Dispensary Can Learn From Retail’s Biggest Operators

Cannabis has something most retail industries would envy. At the IgniteIt Cannabis Capital Conference, Dutchie CRO Spencer Scott and retail strategist Stephen Howard-Sarin broke down the mistakes they continue to see—and how operators can fix them.

According to Spencer Scott, Chief Revenue Officer at Dutchie, roughly 30% of dispensary transactions now begin online. Customers browse menus, compare products, build carts, and ultimately visit stores to complete their purchases.

“It’s a really unique ecosystem,” Scott said.

Unlike traditional e-commerce businesses that spend enormous resources trying to solve last-mile delivery, cannabis operators benefit from a buy-online, pick-up-in-store model that naturally drives consumers back into physical retail.

“What you’ve been forced into,” Stephen Howard-Sarin, a global retail media expert, told the audience, “is actually something that most of the rest of e-commerce is struggling to get into.”

Yet despite that advantage, both speakers argued that many dispensaries still design websites as informational brochures rather than revenue-generating stores.

Drawing on Dutchie’s review of more than 100 dispensary websites and Howard-Sarin’s experience leading digital commerce initiatives at companies including Walmart, eBay and Instacart, the pair outlined what operators should prioritize today.

1. Your Website Is A Store—Not A Brochure

Scott believes the industry has matured beyond needing websites that primarily explain cannabis.

“In the early days,” he explained, “dispensaries had to educate consumers.”

Today, most visitors arrive with a different objective.

They want to shop.

However, Dutchie’s review of 100 cannabis retail websites found that 57% required customers to click more than five times before they even reached a product they could purchase.

That, Scott argued, is equivalent to asking customers entering a grocery store to walk through multiple hallways before reaching the shelves.

Every additional click introduces another opportunity for someone to leave.

“If your website is your store,” Howard-Sarin said, “make it easy for people to buy.”

Both speakers emphasized that products—not company history—should dominate the shopping experience.

2. Friction Is The Enemy—Except When It Isn’t

One of the panel’s recurring themes was friction.

Every unnecessary action required before completing a purchase reduces the likelihood that a customer finishes the transaction.

Menus hidden behind multiple pages. Search bars that are difficult to find, and product pages requiring repeated navigation.

All of these quietly reduce conversion. Howard-Sarin described the shopping journey as a ticking clock.

“The faster people accomplish what they came to do,” he said, “the more likely they are to convert.”

But he also introduced an important exception. Some friction creates long-term value. The best example is asking visitors to identify themselves.

“If you can get an anonymous visitor to declare who they are—and in return receive some benefit—that’s probably the best friction in the world.”

Collecting an email address or mobile number allows retailers to reconnect with customers long after they leave the website.

Without that information, every future visit begins from scratch.

3. Stop Designing Websites Based On Opinions

Howard-Sarin challenged operators to rethink how they redesign their websites.

Too often, changes are driven by personal preference, but none of those opinions matter if they are not measured against customer behavior.

Scott shared a simple example.

Dutchie introduced the ability for retailers to customize the color of their websites.

Operators loved the flexibility.

But when Scott asked whether those changes increased sales, very few could answer.

Large retailers constantly test small adjustments because seemingly insignificant changes can produce meaningful improvements in conversion.

The lesson was that every design decision should answer one question: Did it help customers buy?

4. Mobile Isn’t A Smaller Website—It’s The Primary Storefront

The speakers repeatedly returned to mobile shopping. And while cannabis consumers overwhelmingly browse menus on their phones, retailers have only a few inches of screen space to work with.

Every banner, graphic, and promotional image competes with actual products.

Howard-Sarin encouraged operators to study what customers see before scrolling.

Is the search immediately visible?

Can shoppers reach products quickly?

Are the primary shopping functions positioned where users naturally expect them?

He noted that many successful retailers look remarkably similar for a reason. Consumers already understand how e-commerce works. Thus, introducing novelty into those patterns often creates confusion rather than differentiation.

Search appears in familiar places.

Shopping carts are easy to find.

Navigation follows conventions people have learned over years of online shopping.

As Howard-Sarin put it, “Novelty introduces friction.”

5. The Goal Isn’t More Orders—It’s More Completed Sales

Scott shared one of the panel’s most revealing examples.

A dispensary in Michigan was generating approximately $10,000 in online orders every day.

On paper, that looked impressive.

In reality, nearly half of those orders were never picked up.

Employees were preparing products, reserving inventory, and spending labor on purchases that ultimately disappeared.

The retailer experimented with requiring customers to pay by bank before pickup.

The results surprised everyone: Orders declined by roughly 25%. But actual completed sales increased dramatically.

Pickup rates reached virtually 100%, and the value of products leaving the store increased by approximately 50%.

The takeaway was simple. Retailers should optimize for revenue actually collected.

6. Repeat Customers Shouldn’t Have To Start Over

Howard-Sarin argued that cannabis retailers should think less about acquiring new customers and more about serving existing ones.

Consumers often purchase the same categories repeatedly.

Flower.

Edibles.

Vape cartridges.

Wellness products.

If someone has already demonstrated what they like, why force them to rebuild that shopping experience every time?

He pointed to subscription and replenishment models developed by companies like Chewy as examples of reducing customer effort.

While cannabis regulations may limit fully automated purchasing, the underlying philosophy still applies.

Make it easy for customers to buy again.

“If they’ve already told you what they want,” Howard-Sarin said, “please give it to them.”

The easier retailers make repeat purchasing, the less they spend constantly reacquiring customers.

7. AI Is About To Change Product Discovery

Perhaps the panel’s most forward-looking discussion centered on artificial intelligence.

Howard-Sarin argued that AI assistants are rapidly becoming another shopping interface.

Instead of typing product names into search engines, consumers increasingly ask conversational questions.

“What’s a good edible for a beginner?”

“Which dispensary has this vape near me?”

That changes what retailers need from their websites.

Product pages can no longer assume visitors first arrive on the homepage. Increasingly, AI may send consumers directly to an individual product. That makes product detail pages far more important.

Howard-Sarin emphasized that retailers should make product information as clear and structured as possible.

He also warned against relying exclusively on promotional graphics.

Images may look attractive to shoppers, but AI systems often struggle to interpret information embedded inside them.

If promotions exist only as graphics, important information may effectively become invisible to future shopping tools.

For Scott, the industry’s challenge is preparing websites not only for human visitors but also for the AI systems increasingly helping customers discover products.

Cannabis Retail Is Finally Becoming Retail

Throughout the discussion, neither speaker argued that cannabis should invent a new model of e-commerce.

Actually, quite the opposite. Howard-Sarin repeatedly returned to the idea that the industry’s greatest opportunity may come from adopting practices that mainstream retailers have already spent decades refining.

Consumers already know how online shopping should feel.

The less they have to think about navigation, search, checkout, and reordering, the more likely they are to complete a purchase.

Scott offered perhaps the simplest summary of the afternoon.

Dispensary websites are no longer informational websites with menus attached.

They are stores.

And like any store, their job is to make buying as effortless as possible.

For cannabis operators facing tighter margins and growing competition, that distinction could become one of the industry’s most important competitive advantages.