SleepEasy sells an orthopedic pillow as their hero product, with several other related products offered as complementary purchases.
1. What issues was the client struggling with when you stepped in?
SleepEasy reached out to Will as their conversion rates weren’t as good as they needed them to be, particularly on Facebook where they were trying to scale their acquisition spend.
As SleepEasy had 1 main hero product forming 90% of their revenue at the time, and repeat purchase on orthopedic pillows is quite low, they needed to make sure the website converted as efficiently as possible to ensure each first purchase was as profitable as possible.
2. What else have they tried to solve the same issues in the past?
SleepEasy had run a few basic A/B tests themselves but admitted that they lacked structure, process, and experience. They also made use of several Shopify apps to improve conversion and average order value with some success, but these apps do not tend to focus on the fundamentals of conversion, which require more focus on copy, imagery, answering customer questions, and motivating them to make their purchase.
3. Why did the client reach out to you?
Luke, the Founder, had been following me for a while on LinkedIn and enjoyed the content I was sharing. He decided to reach out for an initial chat, and after a quick proposal and some advice on their current strategy, made the decision to work with me.
4. What exactly did you pitch to the client?
Luke liked my approach, my honesty and a bit of bluntness really about what would be required, how the process would work and how we would move things forwards. I explained that my focus is on avoiding discounting where possible, and focusing on 3 key areas of improvement:
Usability - Does the website work properly? Does it make it easy for visitors to find what they are looking for?
Anxiety - Does the website answer all their questions & concerns about both the product itself, and the business they are buying from?
Motivation - Does the website excite the customer? Does it make them believe their life will be better off with your products in their hands?
In the case of SleepEasy, which has a health related focus, Anxiety and Motivation were 2 areas which we knew could really make an impact for them. Customers want athat better life, they want to reduce their pain so that they can focus better during the day and have more energy, but they also want to be sure that the solution isn’t going to make their problems worse.
5. What tangible metrics can you point out that actually made a meaningful difference to the client's business?
Over the course of about 6 months we improved conversion rate over 50% from 3.8% up to 5.8%.
2 key contributing tests for this were the introduction of benefit led icons just under the Add to Cart button. These stated that the products were ideal for neck pain, shoulder tension, and headaches. The original icons were feature led such as stating that the product was vegan. The new icons confirmed to potential customers that the pillow was designed to help with their pain.
The second test involved highlighting the 30 day free returns policy the company offered. This was a no questions asked policy, so by highlighting this on the product page we were letting customers know that if they didn’t like the pillow, they could simply return it and get their money back.
In addition we managed to improve Average Order Value up from £35 to £43 (+22.9%). This was done through bundling. Previously SleepEasy were really struggling to sell any of their supporting products, so a bundle was introduced first as a post add-to-cart popup, then later introduced on the product page itself. Customers could buy a pillow with 2 cases, or other larger bundles as well.
6. What stood out the most to the client during your collaboration?
My approach to problem solving, and thoroughness with the research that went into identifying opportunities to improve both conversion rdidnates and average order value for SleepEasy.
Luke also really appreciated how easy I was to work with, how much I communicated with them throughout the project, and how pro-active I was with preparing emails or other communications that were required for sending to customers to get them to provide feedback.
7. How did you help them overcome the client's challenges?
I introduced the process around CRO to the company to ensure they took a structured, strategic approach to improving conversion rates, rather than firing up random one-off tests. This included setting up several forms of quantitative and qualitative feedback capture to ensure a constant flow of customer insight into the business.
Quantitative feedback was acquired through 2 approaches. Firstly, a survey that went out to the database to discover why they were interested in the products, which products they were aware of, and how much they believed the products would benefit them.
Then, ongoing feedback was gathered through email automation, asking customers for feedback at various stages of the journey including post-purchase and non-purchase after 30 days.
Qualitative feedback was gathered through on-site surveys asking questions like ‘what is the number 1 reason you have not made a purchase today?’ and ‘what is one piece of information that would improve this page?’.
In addition, we ran over 20 interviews with customers to find out why they were looking for orthopedic products, what their pain points were, how they had discovered SleepEasy and other information about their buying behaviours,
8. Why should one work with you?
Having run CRO in-house for 9 years, alongside involvement with customer acquisition, I made the decision in 2019 to offer my services as a consultant.
While in-house, I had kept encountering the same problem which was that the websites themselves weren’t doing their job and contributing enough to the conversion, and the product & development teams didn't have the experience to optimise and improve, only add-to.
Working more closely with product teams and developers, I was able to ensure that optimisations were made to improve websites based on what customers wanted, not what the developers pipeline said.
Over the last 11 years, businesses I've worked with have seen millions of pounds worth of increased revenue through the customer centric optimisations I help them implement.
I’ve now been consulting for over 2 years, working closely with 6 eCommerce clients over that period, with small projects for several others. On average clients stick with me for over 12 months, and I only work with a select few at any one time.
While I do have a team supporting me on design & development for testing, you work directly with me. There are no account managers, no junior execs doing the real work. You work directly with the person with experience.
Next Steps
If you’re interested in improving your Conversion Rates and Average Order Values, you have the following options:
1. Connect with me on LinkedIn where I share advice daily.
2. Book a free consultation where we’ll talk through your current challenges.