The Perspective #12

Author

Oddit Team
August 24, 2022

Welcome to the 12th edition of The Perspective by Oddit!

Twice a month we send out actionable tips for creating brand-first and conversion-optimized customer experiences from the best in DTC.

In this edition 🗞:

  • Brand-first breakdown with Mavrans

  • 5 questions with Chad Ross - Founder & CEO at Dorsal Bracelets

  • The power of full-width CTA's

  • New brands we discovered this month

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If you missed our last editions, you can read them here! 

Brand-First Breakdown: Mavrans

Mavrans creates sustainable clothing that's made to party. Their clothes are worn by celebrities like Ed Sheeran, Joe Jonas, Dwayne Wade, and many more.

We're breaking down their website and offering a couple of tweaks to make it an even better user experience and conversion machine. Let's jump in!

Mega Menu

Suggestions to test: 

Suggestion 1: Add a bit of brand positioning here. Keep this copy succinct while simultaneously driving home the value prop.

Suggestion 2: Add in a CTA to drive customers to the ‘Shop All’ collection.

Suggestion 3: Shipping costs are one of the top reasons for cart abandonment. Remind the customers frequently about this offer by placing it right under the CTA. 

Suggestion 4: The current subcategories are redundant between men and women. Refine this to reduce confusion.

Suggestion 5: Rather than just calling out men and women, use this featured section to highlight new drops, featured products collections, sales, best sellers, etc. Be intentional about what you put here.

Suggestion 6: Show off the brand personality by pulling in lifestyle imagery. 

Cart

Suggestions to test:

Suggestion 1: Indicate total # of items in cart by calling it out in the header.

Suggestion 2: Make Cart full width to accommodate the product title length and to make your cart more accessible overall.

Suggestion 3: Turn the free shipping offer into a progress bar to further entice your customers. Once the free shipping is met, tempt your customers further with an order discount and watch the AOV rise.

Suggestion 4: Bring in an add-ons section to drive up the AOV.

Suggestion 5: There’s a lot of emphasis put on the protection add-on which may make customers feel a bit worried their order will be lost. Remove this as an in cart item by converting to a simple checkbox. Test this defaulted to checked or unchecked and see which is best for conversion.

Suggestion 6: Installment payment options are growing in popularity. Partner with one and show off this option at the cart level. This will build trust and let your customers know they have options.

Product Grid

Suggestions to test:

Suggestion 1: Grab the customer's attention with a headline and subheader.

Suggestion 2: Add quick filters to communicate the top categories and so customers can quickly sort their options.

Suggestion 3: Clothing drops come in a limited run. Introduce a scarcity tactic to drive customers to act.

Suggestion 4: Build trust by implementing reviews and call-out the total number.

Suggestion 5: Separate the pattern variant from the product title and link it to a collection page so customers can shop the entire pattern collection.

Celebrity Section

Suggestions to test:

The celebrity sighting content is amazing social proof. Don’t make customers dig to find it – feature it right on the homepage!

Suggestion 1: Add in a carousel section so customers can easily swipe through.

Suggestion 2: Link the corresponding product so it’s easy for customers to find.

PDP Header

Suggestions to test:

Suggestion 1: Reduce image size so 100% of customers are able to see pertinent product info.

Suggestion 2: Separate product title and color so customers are able to identify details easier.

Suggestion 3: Align product details to the left so they’re easier to scan.

Suggestion 4: Bring size chart to the top right of your size selector to improve the information hierarchy and make it super simple to check while deciding on which size to select.

Suggestion 5: Call-out the price in the CTA.

If you enjoyed these tips, reply to this email and let us know. We love feedback :)

Founders Five 🖐

Founder: Chad Ross is the founder & CEO of Dorsal Bracelets - a company that removes one pound of ocean plastic with every bracelet purchase. Together with Empower Eco, they've removed 138,084 pounds of plastic.

Chad also founded a cold brew company called Woah and a Shopify app called Circle Menu.

Oddit: Dorsal Bracelets is a heavily mission-driven business – How do you balance building a sustainable business while continuing to make impactful change with your mission?

Chad: Our goal has always been to spread awareness and make an impact. We spread awareness by using our bracelets as a reminder to cut back on single-use plastic and we make an impact by removing one pound of ocean plastic with every purchase.

Being a sustainable business is extremely difficult at scale. We use 100% recycled mailers that can be resealed and reused by customers, we work with our manufacturers to use very little excessive packaging, and we don’t include packing slips to avoid paper waste.

These are just a few examples of how we strive to be as sustainable as possible and are always researching ways to improve.

Oddit: What one piece of advice would you give to the younger you, when starting your first brand?

Chad: Just start. So many people spend so much time on the idea, name, and color scheme but never actually launch their products. One of my favorite quotes is “If you aren’t embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late” - Reid Hoffman, cofounder of LinkedIn.

Put your product out into the world as fast as possible, get feedback, and always be making improvements.

Oddit: As someone who owns multiple businesses, how do you prioritize time and mindshare between your brands?

Chad: I wish I could say I have my calendar dialed in down to the minute but I don’t.

I do use Notion religiously to stay organized and have a running to-do list that is categorized by brand and priority level. All high-priority items get taken care of first, then the rest of my time is spent putting out fires or working through medium/low priority items on the list.

Oddit: Aside from your own Shopify App, Circle Menu, what’s one Shopify App DTC brands are underutilizing?

Chad: Slide Cart is one of my favorite apps of all time. You can easily create a slide out cart that shows customers how far they are from free shipping, add announcements, and add-in-cart upsells - all for just $19.99 a month.

We used this app for years before building a custom version to add a little more functionality for our loyalty program. I can’t recommend it enough.

Oddit: What’s the most unique piece of customer feedback you can recall getting about any of your brands?

Chad: This might not necessarily be 'customer' feedback, but one thing I’ve learned with Dorsal is companies that give back to a mission receive more hate than those that don’t have a giveback. If you ever see a Dorsal ad check out the comments. It’s wild how many people call us a fake, a scam, want to throw our product in the ocean, etc.

We try to remain playful and bite back just a bit but I never expected to receive so much hate for trying to do our part in cleaning the ocean. After a while, you learn to brush it off but in the beginning, it was rough!

Full-Width CTA's 😍

Classifieds 🔎

📣 Quick Tip: When your mobile menu is open, add an overlay to the site in the background so it's not a distraction. Check out this example.

🔵 New brands we discovered this month: Bobbie, Modu, Tulip, and Raro 

🚀 Our Co-founder, Shaun Brandt, talks about the difference between successful brands and new brands

👀 What's the ONE keyboard shortcut you couldn't live without? Reply to this email and let us know!

Want your own brand-first breakdown? 🚨

Check out the essential and premium reports!

If you don’t find any value you’ll get all your $$ back. No questions asked.

The Perspective is written by Shaun Brandt, Taylor Davies, and Thomas Schreiber

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