A "Gardyn" within Every Home -- an eCommerce Success Story

The most innovative indoor gardening kit Gardyn uses for their goal to place an Gardyn in every home. The Gardyn brand is featured in Forbes, Good Housekeeping, Time, Real Simple, Goop, and more, Gardyn selected it because of its scaleability as well as its customizability. And they've used tools like Trustpilot, Affirm, Klaviyo, and Amazon Pay to improve their sales and marketing for eCommerce.

Meet Gardyn

As the founder as well as CEO FX Rouxel began Gardyn in the year 2019, it was an easy, yet enthralling objective: to build a world in which everyone could access affordable and convenient food that was all natural, grown sustainably and that had minimal impact on the environment.

Through the Gardyn indoor gardening system it is possible to grow plants, fruits, vegetables and other greens with just two square feet of area, and similar yields that require more than a thousand square feet of space in an outdoor space!

An app gives customers control over the device, which allows them to set their water and lighting schedule, put it on vacation mode, or order more cubes of Y, which represent the seeds of the plant.

The history of Gardyn

Gardyn launched in 2019 , and they shipped their first prototype in February in the same month they unveiled their brand new website with .

When he moved from France to U.S., Rouxel was disappointed that he was unable to discover fruits or vegetables which tasted as fresh, organic produce from the land of his birth in Provence, France. This quest for tastes from his youth that drove him to develop the Gardyn process. Instead of focusing on solutions at the beginning of the process -- helping the wider agricultural industry -- FX focused on the consumer at the end. Today, nearly anyone is able to grow their own produce with minimal hassle and space.

This technology was developed by collaborating in collaboration with McGill University in Canada, and is the first product of its kind specifically designed for indoor usage to allow more than 30 plants.

Launched at a time when COVID-19 renewed interest around the world for family-run, sustainable food supplies and home-based initiatives, Gardyn grew rapidly. It is headquartered within Bethesda, Maryland, Gardyn has a staff of remote workers of more than 50 people.

The engines behind Gardyn's success

We spoke with Ava who is responsible for their marketing as well as their website. She first encountered Gardyn when she was working for an agency that they employed for their marketing. She was captivated by Gardyn's mission and the enthusiasm of Gardyn's management team.

"I am in love with the company." She said "They wanted to bring marketing in-house and I couldn't bear to quit. Therefore, I asked to remain and I was hired full-time."

Her enthusiasm is evident -her personality resembles the founder rather than Head of website.

Choosing

Ava has been instrumental in choosing WordPress as the preferred platform. She doesn't call herself as a web developer, but she has some experience using WordPress.

"The main reason why we picked Shopify is that it works well with WordPress and gave us the most flexibility. We couldn't afford to create an additional cookie cutter Shopify store. Shopify is more of a pain to customize. It would certainly require a developer...and there wasn't one.

In the end, as I have experience with WordPress however, not too very much  my experience, I was able google my way through the process of creating our new website."

The first iteration of their website was designed entirely in-house, using Elementor without developers. The site had everything they required to start their venture with a Product Detail Page (PDP) as well as a membership feature, and an intuitive shopping cart as well as a checkout process for their customers.

"There were, of course there were some issues with growth," says Ava. "Just trying to prepare in terms of the possibility of scaling. It was a matter of coding something in the way we wanted, and then 2 months later it would be necessary to go back since I hadn't thought further ahead."

Luckily, gave Gardyn the flexibility to adapt rapidly as the business grew in popularity -- even from one month to the next.

As the head of website, Ava keeps a close check on the performance of metrics. "I would like to know, if they land at the homepage, will they go to the PDP? After that, I like to see the PDP for the "add to cart" rate, and then naturally, they add it to cart. I just want everything to flow smoothly throughout the funnel. Especially those key metrics -- PDP to conversion and cart conversion check out for conversion."

One of the ways she's discovered how to boost these metrics is by analyzing customer reviews.

Reviews from Trustpilot

One of the most difficult tasks her job as a marketer is to educate customers on exactly what Gardyn is and the way it differs from other systems for food production at home.

"It's the idea of telling people we've got Tesla and if they've never driven or driven, what do they think is a Tesla is? It's been a challengeto explain it in a way so they know how it will fit in their daily lives. This isn't just another job or a hobby that's going to go away. It's so simple and always available."

One way to solve this issue, they found, is utilizing user generated content (UGC) that comes as in customer reviews. The Gardyn team was aware of the potential of reviews but needed a platform that would consolidate reviews in one place. It also needed to be authentic.

They began with a different system and then quickly switched to Trustpilot and has significantly improved the effectiveness of reviews.

"It creates a sense of confidence when people go to the Trustpilot website and verify that reviews and reviewers are genuine. Customers write in-depth reviews with five stars. We're not offering them any incentive, it's them wanting to tell us how much they love Gardyn."

In order to get feedback, Gardyn reaches out via email to individual customers who are actively engaged -- like longtime members. The company also has a Facebook group, where members are working together and doing their best to make maximum benefit from the platform.

Trustpilot makes it easy to go further with the reviews they receive.

"The backend experience of Trustpilot is much more easy for us to control as well as view, and be able to download particular reviews as well as other similar. It allows us to connect with the reviewers and try to collect images, or find more articles for our blog in order for a more human experience and emotional bond.

We especially found it useful to create ads or review cards within Trustpilot. I'm able to download all the SVG files really easily. The system is already designed using the best practices, so that's really helpful."

Including reviews on the site and in marketing has proven to be important.

"I recorded user experience feedback, where users went through the site and then spoke to each other about their experience and opinions. I would say eight out of ten of them said something like, 'Oh reviews! This is good. Also, we include testimonials in every email. In every footer, we also include Trustpilot reviews in every footer."

In real-life, the result speak for themselves.

If Gardyn includes reviews in the Facebook ads they post Their click through rate doubles. And when they added reviews to the site, engagement went up as well as bounce rate reduction..

Integrating additional tools and features for greater success

Ava previously mentioned that their selection of the store platform they chose to store was in part because of the adjustable nature of the platform. But how, specifically, do you manifest that?

Extensions.

"I'm self-taught, so I've learnt to Google. I've learned to learn. It's impossible to determine the extension's effectiveness until you've tried it. Therefore, the 30-day refund policy is super helpful.

It's great that WordPress is open-source, and with the added benefit of being open source it's a lot of options to choose from. There are so many things out there, that you'll find what you want. You can always find an extension of whatever I want to do.

She states 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 easy to integrate with . I don't know why we didn't use it before. Klaviyo just understands immediately what the funnel does. We actually doubled the number of people we can capture from abandoned carts due to the fact that Klaviyo is able to sync abandoned carts with the help of a pop-up. I believe we've got close to 50,000 users now."

Implementing express pay

The MyGardyn website launched express-pay options in November 2021 . The site instantly saw acceptance by users. There was a lot of acceptance. Now the majority of desktop transactions along with 60% mobile purchases utilize express payments. For every transaction 30 percent pay using credit cards, while 20% make payments 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 nice," Says Ava, "The express pay options have really raised our conversion rate and mobile sales. It's really low, as well."

"If you think about it, everybody has Amazon. It's saying, 'Oh yes I've got it. I'm already signed in to the app. It's only two seconds. I think the abandonment rate is 17% in that case. That's really low."

In the direction of the future

Gardyn aims to bring everyone an easy access to healthy food. The idea of having a Gardyn at every house, of course, is the ultimate aim.

The firm is developing the G3 Initiative, called Gardyn Grows to Good which is working in partnership with nonprofits and schools to bring food to food areas that are in need and communities affected by. This project ultimately helps provide healthful and affordable meals to communities with low incomes.

In the event she is asked to share advice she'd give others, she doesn't shy away.

"Don't be scared to implement major modifications," says Ava. "A website can never be finished. It's always growing. The landscape is always evolving. Take your time, and follow the data which I strongly recommend Trustpilot and I highly.

If you're selling something, or engaging in hardcore marketing make sure you're doing it to do something that helps improve the world, and makes you feel satisfied when you see people purchase the product."

In the end, Ava also shared her favorite things to grow in her Gardyn: "My favorite thing is called Red Mustard. It's really a spicy lettuce and is like horseradish. It's really good on sandwiches! Also, I've grown strawberry and cherry tomatoes that were so delicious. I've never experienced anything as delicious."