A "Gardyn" in Every Home An eCommerce Success Story

Revolutionary indoor garden kit Gardyn makes use of to power their mission to put an Gardyn inside every house. The Gardyn brand is featured on Forbes, Good Housekeeping, Time, Real Simple, Goop and many more. Gardyn picked it for its capacity as well as its customizability. They've also used software like Trustpilot, Affirm, Klaviyo as well as Amazon Pay to improve their online marketing, and convert rates.

Meet Gardyn

The Gardyn's founder and CEO FX Rouxel began Gardyn in 2019 founded with a clear and attainable purpose: to make a better world for all who was able to access cheap, convenient, all-natural food, grown sustainably and without a negative impacts on the natural environment.

Utilizing this Gardyn indoor gardening method allows you to plant fruits, vegetables, herbs, and greens in only two square feet of area, and similar yields that need more than one thousand square feet in the traditional garden!

An app gives customers access to the device which allows them to set the time for water and light, put it on vacation mode, or even order more cubes of Y, which are the plant's seedlings.

The background of Gardyn

Gardyn was launched in the year 2019 and shipped its initial prototype in February of 2020, at the same time that they launched their new website with .

When he moved into the U.S., Rouxel was discouraged that he couldn't locate fruits and veggies that tasted like the fresh, natural produce of the land of his birth in Provence, France. It was this quest for tastes from his youth that drove him to develop the Gardyn process. Instead of working on ideas at the start of the process -- assisting farmers in general- FX focused on the consumer at the end. Today, nearly anyone is able to cultivate their own vegetables in a small space and with little effort.

The technology was built in partnership with McGill University in Canada, and is the first product that is specifically developed to be used indoors to cultivate as much as 30 plants.

Launched at a time when COVID-19 renewed interest around the globe in family-run environmentally sustainable food and household projects, the business grew. The company is located in Bethesda, Maryland, Gardyn now employs a remote staff with more than 50 employees.

Gardyn's engines are the reason for its success.

We sat down with Ava, who's the person in charge of marketing and website. She first encountered Gardyn as a part of a marketing agency they hired. She became absorbed by the passion and mission of Gardyn's leadership team.

"I was in love with the company." she said "They were looking to make marketing internal and I didn't want to quit. Therefore, I asked to remain and they offered me full-time employment."

Her passion is palpable -her personality resembles an entrepreneur than a head of website.

The Choice

Ava has been instrumental in choosing WordPress the platform they would like to use. She is not a developer, but has some knowledge of WordPress.

"The main reason why we picked Shopify is that it works well with WordPress and also offered us the greatest flexibility. We did not want an additional cookie cutter Shopify store. Shopify is more of a pain to customize. You'd definitely require a developer...and we didn't have one.

In the end, as I know a bit about WordPress, though not much with , I was able to google my way through the process of creating our new website."

The initial version of their site was built completely by themselves, with Elementor without developers. The website had everything they needed to start their venture: a product detail page (PDP) and membership capabilities and a simple shopping cart as well as a checkout process for customers.

"There was, naturally certain growing pains" says Ava. "Just trying to think ahead for scalability. It was a matter of coding something in another way, then, two months later it would be necessary to go back as I did not think ahead."

Luckily, gave Gardyn the freedom to grow quickly as the company soared in its popularity, even in the span of a month or next.

As the head of website, Ava keeps a close eye on data. "I want to see, if they land on the home page, do they then go to PDP? From there, I like to see what is the PDP to "add to cart" rate, and then naturally, they add it to the cart to checkout. All I want is for everything to be smooth and seamless through the process. Particularly those important metrics"PDP to conversion, cart to convert, checkout to conversion," PDP to conversion, cart to conversion, the checkout process for conversion."

The most effective way for her ways to increase those numbers is through customer reviews.

Featuring reviews with Trustpilot

One of the greatest challenges that she faces as a marketing professional is to educate customers on exactly what Gardyn is, and how it compares to other systems for food production at home.

"It's the idea of telling people we've got the Tesla, but if they've never driven, do they know what a Tesla is? So that's been hard -- explaining it in a way so they can understand the way it fits in their daily lives. This isn't just another job or an activity that's likely disappear. It's so simple and is always around."

One method to tackle this problem they have discovered, is utilizing user generated content (UGC), in the form of customer reviews. The Gardyn team was aware of the potential in reviews, however, they needed a platform that would consolidate reviews in one place. It also needed to be genuine.

They began with a different system, but quickly moved over to Trustpilot and has significantly enhanced the value of their reviews.

"It creates a sense of confidence when people visit the Trustpilot site and see reviews and reviewers are real. They also write reviews with 5 stars. They don't receive any rewards, it's simply their desire to let us know that they are awed by Gardyn."

For reviews, Gardyn communicates via email to individual customers who are actively engaged -such as loyal members. It also promotes an online group on Facebook, where people are collaborating and succeeding to to get the most use out of the program.

Trustpilot allows you to go further with their reviews.

"The Backend experience with Trustpilot is so much easier to handle, and see, and have the ability to download certain reviews as well as other similar. We can contact reviewers, try to get photographs, or even get additional stories for our blog for a more human experience and emotional bond.

It was particularly useful to create ads or review cards within Trustpilot. I'm able to download all the SVG files really easily. It's all set up to work using the best practices which is very helpful."

The inclusion of reviews on the site and also in the marketing field has been proven to be crucial.

"I recorded user experience feedback, where users went through the site and talked out loud about their experience and opinions. It's possible that eight out of ten of them said something like, 'Oh reviews! It's great. Also, we include testimonials in every email. On every footer, we provide Trustpilot reviews in every footer."

The outcomes speak for themselves.

If Gardyn incorporates reviews into the Facebook ads they post Their click-through rate increases by a factor of two. When they also added reviews to the site, engagement went up as well as bounce rate reduction..

Using additional tools and integrations to ensure success

Ava has already stated that the selection of the store platform they chose to store was, in part due to the swathe of nature of the platform. What exactly does that manifest itself?

Extensions.

"I'm self-taught and have learned to Google. I've been taught to be a better learner. You're not going to know what extension works until you try it out. This is why the 30-day policy for return is super helpful.

It's great that WordPress is open source and on top of that you have a myriad of options to choose from. There's so many options out there, that you'll be able to find exactly what you need. There's always an extension for anything I'd like to accomplish.

She says she believes that Trustpilot as well as Affirm have definitely made an impact in the most positive way in the growth of their sites.

"It was incredibly simple to use . I'm not sure why we haven't used it earlier. Klaviyo instantly understands what the funnel does. It has doubled the amount of customers we have gathered from abandoned carts because Klaviyo can connect abandoned carts using an ad. I believe we've got close to 50,000 customers now."

Implementing express pay

The MyGardyn website launched express pay options in November 2021 and instantly saw acceptance by users. There was a lot of acceptance. Now more than 40% of all desktop transactions and 60% of mobile transactions use express payments. For the transactions in all 30 percent pay using a credit card, and 20% pay through Affirm.

However, the most significant thing to note is that they saw an increase of 50% in mobile conversions compared to desktop in the same period. This underscores the need for express payment options such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Amazon Pay.

"It's very nice" Says Ava, "The express pay options have really raised our conversion rate and mobile sales. The abandonment rate is really minimal, too."

"If you look at it, everybody has Amazon. That's why I feel like everyone's like, 'Oh yeah, I have it. I'm already signed into the app. It's only 2 minutes. It seems like the rate of abandonment is 17% for that. That's really low."

The future is in sight

Gardyn strives to give everyone the opportunity to eat fresh food. The idea of having a Gardyn inside every household will, naturally, be the ultimate goal.

The company is currently working on an G3 Initiative, called Gardyn Grows to Good, working with schools and nonprofit organizations in order to provide food to areas that are in need and communities affected by. The goal of this project is to provide healthful and affordable meals to communities with low incomes.

In the event she is asked to share advice she'd offer to others, she won't hesitate.

"Don't be afraid to make large changes," says Ava. "A website can never be finished. It's always growing. It's constantly changing. Take your time and keep track of the information I would highly recommend Trustpilot and I highly.

If you're selling something, or doing marketing that is hardcore, do it for something that makes the world better, and makes you feel at ease when someone buys it."

Finally, Ava also shared her top things she has grown in her Gardyn: "My favorite thing is called Red Mustard. It's actually a hot lettuce and tastes similar to horseradish. It's great in sandwiches! Also, I've grown strawberry and cherry tomatoes that tasted so sweet. I've never had anything quite like that."