Happy Sunday!

If you’re reading this, I hope you have a beverage in hand, you’re feeling rested, and you’re ready to compare your funnel to a supplement brand whose website I've thoroughly reviewed. But before we get into that...

Vendor of the Week

Universal Ads — The paid-social-friendly TV advertising solution, built by Comcast.

Let me talk about the elephant in the room... because Comcast owns Universal Ads, it is the most efficient place to buy premium, brand-safe TV ads.

In addition to the platform connecting you directly with the top publishers (for no fees), the platform is AS EASY AS buying ads on YouTube and Meta ads manager. You can now reach new, qualified audiences with premium video, at scale, within 10 minutes.

With the Universal Ads platform, you instantly connect to all the major TV publisher exchanges: Roku, DirectTV, FOX, NBC Universal, Vizio, Paramount, and many more. Why? Because Comcast is the 800-lb gorilla in this space, and they get the best access.

If you’re advertising at scale on social and search, but looking to expand into TV, start with Universal Ads. Use code UASHARMA and get $500 in ad credits, if you’re one of the first 25 brands to sign up.

Limited Supply

This past week on Limited Supply, I had the opportunity to interview Michael, the founder and CEO of FabFitFun. What they’re doing with internal brands they’re launching, companies they’re buying, expansions in logistics, and innovating on the subscription side is very eye-opening and inspiring.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify while you’re on your next run, post-school drop-off, or get a lift in at the gym.

Website Teardown: Gut Personal

On Friday, I had an Intro call with the founder of a supplement brand who wanted me to audit her website over the call. We spent majority of the time talking about so many other aspects of the biz (hiring, advertising, product, etc.) that we didn’t get to cover the website audit, but I promised I would make it into a newsletter.


While I am putting the finishing touches on something much lengthier around AI (where to catch up, what to know, how to organize/setup your biz for AI, etc.), you should sign up for a free ticket to the ECOM AI Summit, happening in New York City on June 25th at Webster Hall. We have executives from Shopify, Adobe, Jones Road Beauty, True Classic, Left Lane Capital, Rachel Zoe, and more talking about HOW they use AI, and, more importantly, how you can get started with AI quickly. There are only 100ish tickets left, so claim your ticket on this special link!

Disclaimer

Now, before we get into this website, I want to make a couple of things clear:

  • Not everything here is a one-size-fits-all solution for every brand, product, use case, audience demo, etc.
  • Many of these changes/recommendations are things that have proven time and time again that they work, but test and launch new designs at your own risk.
  • If the exact recommendation doesn’t make sense for your website, try to extract and apply the framework of the recommendation or the “Why” behind it.
  • If you disagree with something, reply back and say what it is and why.

The way I want to break down this website is by going through each of the main pages, and calling out what I would change, and then explain the framework/thinking behind it, in order to give you the most context. Given their (and likely your) traffic is about 90% mobile, I’m going to audit this from the mobile POV.

Homepage

  • Notification bars and notices — There are multiple sections that offer no utility to the customer other than notifying of what the running discount is. There’s a free shipping countdown, then an announcement bar, and then another module for the logo and navigation. This can be consolidated into 1 or 2 sections. You don’t want to stack too much content above the hero, as you are moving important elements below the fold in order to squeeze these modules up top.
  • Hero banner image — This doesn’t currently do much to demonstrate the product, its benefits, who it’s targeting, the problem its solving, etc. I recommend video or animated hero to grab attention and demonstrate the product. For supplements, having an animated illustration is always helpful. 
  • Hero banner hierarchy — Right now, there is too much competition for where the eyeballs should first go. There are too many large text boxes. I would recommend a headline for the copy to capture attention, the CTA, and then social proof below the CTA — either a customer review, a stars + review count badge, or a combination of both.
  • Press logos — I would make these animated and showcase what [benefits-driven] quote you can pull for it. I really enjoy how Caraway Home does social proof on their homepage.
  • Shop Best Sellers Photos — The product images displayed in this section, right after the social proof, has product images with white backgrounds, which I consider wasted real estate. You can put badges with notations like “Customer Favorite” or “Best Seller” or “Over 30,000 sold!” They all drive the message that you have made tons of customers happy before.
  • Problem/Solution Section — This section is too much to scroll with not enough juice for someone to receive. I would recommend making this half the length and organizing the information better. I am a fan of the bullet points over paragraphs, and even showing any animations or illustrations of how the product differs from traditional methods would go a long way.
  • Comparison Chart — The intention with the comparison chart is correct, but it’s not specific enough to make helpful claims against competitors. See how the comparison chart on the homepage of IM8 Health is much more specific in its breakdown.
  • Founder Story — I would turn this into something more digestible. Any time you have a section about storytelling, turn it into bullets, bolded text, add underlines, and pull out quotes. You want to make it feel very editorial and non-salesy.
  • Overall # of CTAs — I think there are too many conflicting CTAs here. Product pages, founder story, gut quiz, and subscription club. Consolidate this to just focus on getting people to choose a product.

Collections Page

  • Above the fold, paid media — I would add a banner at the top that demonstrates and reiterates the product in action. It’s highly likely the paid media team is testing traffic direct to collections pages, so ensuring they’re optimized and ripe for conversion is key.
  • Above the fold, UX design — Above the fold, you want to also make it clear what collection of products someone has arrived to, add room for text at the top explaining what is being sold, add social proof into the hero to reiterate why someone should trust the products they’re about to see, and filter/sort through all the options.
  • I would also add a button that says “Shop Bundles & Discounts” and link it at the top of each collections page to go to bundles including the searched-for products.
  • Product card imagery — Similar to what I mentioned about the homepage, I would change the images here to include more context of the product. If I am looking through the collections page, how can I scroll through and understand more, without clicking into each product page?
  • Product card copy — I am actually a fan of keeping the text here explaining/selling the product, but make all the text the same size for consistency.

Product Page

  • Product image carousel — The first image has too much wasted white space but should be used more like an infographic. The images don’t demonstrate someone taking/consuming the product (especially important when you want to show the mixability of a product). To make things better, you can also animate some of the product imagery to pack more information in. 
  • Variant selector — Right now, it’s a very basic variant selector, choosing between flavor of powder and capsule count. My favorite inspiration here is David Protein or Hint Water’s website and how we prioritized flavor and branding.
  • Upsell module — Right now, there is a “TIP” to push additional products. I would move that to below the add-to-cart (ATC) CTA as you don’t want that thought to conflict withs someone adding the product to cart already. I love using Parachute Home for inspiration here.
  • Subscribe vs One Time — This section is very confusing on mobile as under the “Subscribe & save” section, you are choose a “delivery schedule” of “One Time Purchase” which makes no sense and is likely causing customers to drop off.
  • ATC Button & Payment Options — If you aren’t driving significant immediate conversion with the “Buy with ShopPay” button, then remove it! That is a standard option by Shopify, but doesn’t always mean it will drive conversions. It may just be taking up real estate.
  • Drawer Sections — The “Why You’ll Love It,” “How To Take,” and “The Science” sections all require you to expand them out to consume the information, but that is likely some of the most requested customer info. It should be clearly laid out and explained within modules vs hidden in drawer/accordion style boxes.
  • Complete the Routine — Move this section lower, you want to first finish selling the product on this PDP.
  • Missing sections — A few sections I would consider adding here: Ingredient sourcing, comparison chart to colosest competitors, benefits of stacking products, listicle, customer success stories, and even a section explaining why different personas like the product, all contribute to higher conversion rate.
  • Floating ATC button — This button doesn’t stand out as something you are excited to click. I would change the button color and add an outline.
  • Reviews — You have the ability to collect more information or ask more detailed questions in the reviews... ask them! In the future, you can use that data for better customer segmentation and zero-party data with AI applications. 

Navigation Menu

  • Given that there aren’t a lot of products on the navigation, I would recommend copying the navigation from David Protein or IM8 Health. If you do have a lot of products, I would recommend the one on Parachute Home’s website.

What else would you change? I hope you can apply some of these learnings to your own brand. If this format is helpful, please let me know and I can do it across the ads library, reviewing organic socials, reviewing ad funnels, etc.

Ok, now onto some fun stuff...

That's all for this week

I hope today’s newsletter was helpful and will help you optimize your site in a way that generates an extra $100,000 in revenue this week. I love getting messages from people who say a newsletter made them an extra $217k (shoutout to Philppe) because they implemented a couple of new strategies.

It’s Sunday night, so I hope you get a full 9 hours of sleep going into the new week. We are fully into June now, celebrating my birthday on the 28th at the end of the month, yet still somehow stuck with rainy days in New York.

Have a great upcoming week. Get a sweat in. Stay hydrated. I’ll see you next Sunday, or I’ll see you at the ECOM AI Summit on June 25th — sign up here!