Total overhaul of Customer Portal for increased LTV
About
eHouse Studio is a customer-first design and development agency that combines the best of UI/UX design and technology to help merchants create user-friendly sites with an emphasis on retention strategies. As a Shopify Plus agency partner, they work with large ecommerce brands like Dr. Axe to elevate the ecommerce experience, reduce churn, and simplify the online purchasing process for customers.
One of eHouse’s many strengths is its problem-solving mentality that allows them to solve difficult issues with a focus on maximum customer satisfaction and sales. In their experience working with brands with a 6 figure subscriber count, they’ve come to understand the complexities associated with rolling out new features to large existing customer bases and how to navigate those challenges at scale.
“We’ve worked with Dr. Axe for years now. We’ve been able to thrive in environments where there isn’t an existing solution for the task at hand. We’re problem-solvers and as a result, we’ve become part of Dr. Axe’s extended team.”
Aaron Quinn
Founder & CEO, eHouse Studio
Challenge
In 2017, ecommerce industry leader Dr. Axe, a brand selling natural health products, realized a need to improve its customer portal and post-purchase experience for subscribers. This included enhancing their existing customer reward point redemption process utilizing LoyaltyLion to maximize efficiency and minimize costs.
Because of Dr. Axe’s massive subscriber base, they couldn’t work with just any agency. They needed a partner that could help them strategically test and roll out these improvements with confidence.
Solution
A two-step approach was implemented to solve Dr. Axe’s challenge. First, they implemented the Recharge Theme Engine which allowed them to gain full access to the Customer Portal, consolidating Shopify Plus, Recharge, and LoyaltyLion without sacrificing functionality.
This was significant because each of those three platforms, in addition to Dr. Axe itself, had their own UI which could be confusing for subscribers to navigate. Creating a unified Customer Portal experience reduced friction and satisfied their customers’ post-purchase needs.
Integrating LoyaltyLion directly into the Customer Portal put an emphasis on retention by reminding customers to redeem their rewards before their upcoming subscription. This added value by nudging customers to redeem their hard-earned points while also minimizing shipping costs for Dr. Axe.
Step two was ensuring these new changes would work at scale. The plan was to roll the program out to small groups of customers before releasing it to the brand’s entire customer base. This strategy also leveraged A/B testing and conversion rate optimization best practices before the mass-release of the new portal, thus ensuring they pushed out the best, most effective version.
Results
Initially, the new portal was rolled out to just 5% of customers while feedback was gathered via customer service tickets. Next, 10% of subscribers were shown, growing to 30% shortly thereafter. When it got to a point where conversion was optimized and working smoothly, the portal was turned on for everybody.
Customer retention is critical to the success of any ecommerce business. Keeping a larger percentage of customers for a longer life cycle increases LTV and helps to support a revenue model that’s both more profitable and more predictable.
“Today, we hear people say, ‘Can you make my site like Dr. Axe’s?’ This is wildly flattering and really demonstrates how we’ve been able to help build a site that addresses customer needs and goes above and beyond.”
Aaron Quinn
Founder & CEO, eHouse Studio
