Objective
Home and Garden Extras is an online store selling gardening supplies and related products. They came to Castle looking for help increasing their overall revenue and stopping the declining sales they had been experiencing while implementing strategies for long-term success.
Solution
To help improve revenue generation through the site, we first implemented several quick fixes to improve the conversion rate. These fixes enhanced the user experience and made the site easier to navigate and purchase from. We also highlighted several other website improvements which needed to be made, which would take more time and offered more long-term solutions, which we worked on over time once the quick fixes were completed.
After the initial site improvements were made, we implemented several advertisement campaigns across Google and Meta to drive more traffic to the site and increase brand awareness. The campaigns we are running are seasonal, promoting products people are most likely to purchase at that time of the year.
In the first month after the site improvements were made and new targeted ad campaigns were set up, sales increased by 79%, while store sessions increased by 49%. The sales increased significantly more, in part, down to the 16% increase in conversion rate thanks to our web fixes.
Outcome
Since we have implemented continual improvements across the site for conversion rate optimisation purposes, we have seen a 44% increase in conversion rate over the last 90 days. Our targeted ad campaigns across Google and Meta have helped to increase store sessions in the last 90 days by 36%, while sales have increased by a massive 119% and total orders have increased by 126%, which proves the conversion optimisations we’ve made on the site have worked as it is converting more of the traffic already going to the site, as they have a relatively high returning customer rate, which has increased by 13% in the last 90 days.
Website conversion rate optimisations
To improve conversion across the site, we identified several areas we could improve. Firstly, we added a Trustpilot widget onto the site to show off legitimate customer reviews on both the homepage and product page and a mini-widget which showed the Trustpilot rating on collection listings. Home and Garden Extras have an ‘Excellent’ 4.9-star rating on Trustpilot, which is worth showing off as it adds legitimacy and trust for customers considering purchasing. Customers can then easily see and read all the verified 5-star reviews the company have received from happy customers. On the product pages, we added a reviews panel, which boosts the product SEO and allows customers to see product-specific reviews to enhance product credibility.
We also made several UX improvements, including adding the USPs of Home and Garden Extras to the site header, which shows off the benefits of shopping with them and adds another level of trust. We also added the ‘Made in Britain’ logos onto relevant products to show customers they are reliably made right here in the UK, which is another USP for the brand. Our Shopify developers replaced apps with native functionality to improve load speed and reduce overall operating costs and updated the site colours and style to make the site look more on-brand, visually appealing and cohesive.
To create a sense of urgency, we added a countdown timer to the product pages, which counts down how long the customer has left to order for next-day delivery, which changes depending on the different shipping policies for each product. This encourages customers to add to their basket and checkout to receive it ASAP. Metafields were added to each product, too, so product dimensions and shipping information could be set and easily viewed.
Thanks to these fixes, the conversion rate across the site has increased month-on-month every month since they were implemented. After the initial changes in February, the conversion rate increased by 24%, followed by a further 16% in March, an additional 15% in April, and another 3% in May. As a result of the increased conversion rate, sales have also increased month-on-month since February, with a 34% increase overall compared to the previous period.
Meta ad campaigns
To increase brand awareness and drive more sales, we set up several different social ad campaigns. We created shopping carousel ads to drive sales, as these ads allow customers to view a range of products while scrolling through social media, and they can click the product to purchase quickly and easily. In these carousels, we promoted top-selling products for the season and targeted those most likely to purchase. These ads worked to drive more sales and are running at an 11.97:1 ROAS.
We also set up a campaign to promote their new Spring/Summer catalogue with seasonal products, as when they send this out, it gets a good ROI, and many of their customers prefer to get physical catalogues. We came up with the idea of running a lead generation campaign targeting people who would want a free copy of the catalogue. To get one for free, they just had to fill in a form with their details, and they would be sent one out.
This was launched to create a funnel of 50+ year-olds (the client’s largest target audience), where we collect their details to send out the catalogue and then send further promotions and marketing communications down the line via email and post. This helps to create a large database of the client’s target audience, which we can continue to market to.
Our team designed eye-catching ad creatives promoting the catalogue, and A/B tested the ads with one that had a form to fill in directly on Facebook and one which directed the person to a landing page on the website where they could fill in their details so we could determine which worked better. This campaign was very successful, generating thousands of leads. The client’s target was for each lead to cost £1, and we managed to run these ads at a £0.79p CPL.
Over the last 90 days, these ads have led to a 698% increase in sessions through Facebook and a 1000% increase in sessions through Instagram compared to the previous period. Sales through social media have also increased over the last 90 days by 452% compared to the previous period.
Google ads
We also set up pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, which allowed Home and Garden Extras to gain a placement at the top of Google when people searched for relevant keywords and phrases. These included text ads which appear at the top of search results as sponsored links and Google shopping campaigns where we promoted top-selling seasonal products that would display in the Google shopping banner at the top of Google when someone searched for a relevant product.
We have also set up successful display retargeting ads that retarget customers who have shopped with Home and Garden Extras before or who have previously visited the site or interacted with an ad, encouraging them back to make a purchase. This has led to a 31% increase in returning customer rate since we set up the ads.
The Google campaigns we have set up for Home and Garden Extras have run at a 10.96:1 ROAS overall, and sales through Google ads have increased by 158% over the past 90 days.
