A "Gardyn" at Every Home is an eCommerce Success Story

The most innovative indoor gardening kit Gardyn makes use of to power their mission to put the name of Gardyn inside every house. It's featured on Forbes, Good Housekeeping, Time, Real Simple, Goop as well as other publications, Gardyn picked it for its capacity as well as its customizability. They've also used software like Trustpilot, Affirm, Klaviyo, and Amazon Pay to improve their online marketing, and convert rates.

Meet Gardyn

The founder as well as CEO FX Rouxel began Gardyn in 2019 an easy, yet enthralling purpose: to make a better world for all who could access affordable, convenient, all-natural food which was produced sustainably and that had minimal environmental impact.

With this Gardyn indoor gardening system it is possible to grow the fruits, vegetables, herbs, and greens in just two square feet of space, with similar yields that require more than a thousand square feet of space in the traditional garden!

An app gives customers access to the device and allows them to control their water and lighting schedule and put it in vacation mode, or order additional Y cubes. These are the plant's seedlings.

The background of Gardyn

Gardyn launched in 2019 and shipped its first prototype in February 2020, at the same time they unveiled their brand new website with .

Following his move to the U.S., Rouxel was disappointed that he was unable to find fruits and vegetables that were as delicious as the fresh and organic fruits and vegetables from his homeland of Provence, France. This quest for tastes from the childhood he grew up with that led him to design the Gardyn method. Instead of focusing on ways to solve the problem at the beginning of the process, and helping farmers in generalFX focused its efforts on the consumer at the end. Today, nearly anyone is able to grow their own produce without any hassle or space.

The technology was built in partnership with McGill University in Canada, and is the first product of its kind specifically designed for indoor use to grow as much as 30 plants.

Launched at a time when COVID-19 brought renewed attention around the world for family-run, environmentally sustainable food and household projects, the business grew. It is headquartered at Bethesda, Maryland, Gardyn currently has a remote workforce that includes more than 50 individuals.

Gardyn's engines are the reason for its success.

We spoke with Ava, who's responsible for their marketing and website. She met Gardyn when she was working for an agency that they employed for their marketing. She became absorbed by the mission and passion of Gardyn's team leadership.

"I am in love with this company." The woman said "They were looking to make marketing internal and I didn't want to go. Therefore, I asked to stay , and they hired me full time."

Her passion is palpable -she appears more like an entrepreneur than a head of Website.

The Choice

Ava was instrumental in selecting as the preferred platform. She doesn't call herself a developer, but does have some experience with WordPress.

"The reason we chose is that it worked nicely with WordPress and provided us with the maximum flexibility. We did not want another cookie-cutter Shopify store. Shopify would be more of an effort to personalize. I would definitely need the help of a developer...and we didn't have one.

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

Their first website was developed entirely in-house, using Elementor, and with no developers. The site had everything they required to get off the ground including a product details page (PDP) as well as a membership feature as well as a user-friendly shopping cart and checkout experience for their customers.

"There were, obviously certain growing pains" Ava says. Ava. "Just trying to plan for scalability. It was a matter of coding something in one way and 2 months later, we'd have to go back because I didn't think further ahead."

Luckily, gave Gardyn the flexibility to adapt rapidly as the business grew in its popularity, even between one month and the next.

As the Webmaster's Head, Ava keeps a close check on the performance of data. "I want to see whether, when they arrive at the homepage, will they proceed to the PDP? From there, I like to see the PDP in the form of an "add to basket" cost, and after that clearly, to add it to cart. It is my goal to have everything flow smoothly throughout the process. In particular, those metrics that are crucial to me -"PDP to conversion, cart to convert, checkout to conversion," PDP to conversion and cart conversion the checkout process and conversion."

A major way she's found how to boost these metrics is via customer feedback.

Featuring reviews with Trustpilot

One of the greatest challenges her job as a marketer is educating customers about exactly what Gardyn is, and what it is in comparison to other home-grown food systems.

"It's the idea of telling people we've got Tesla and If they've never even driven, do they know what it is that a Tesla is? So that's been hard -to explain the concept in a manner that they know how it will fit in their daily lives. It's not just another chore or an activity that's likely be gone. It's just so easy and it's always there."

One of the best ways to tackle this problem they found, is using user-generated content (UGC) which comes as in customer reviews. The Gardyn team noticed the value in reviews however, they needed a platform that can consolidate reviews into one location. It also needed to be authentic.

They started with another platform and then quickly switched to Trustpilot and has significantly enhanced the value of their reviews.

"It creates a sense of trust when customers can visit the Trustpilot website and verify that reviews and reviewers are genuine. They also write reviews with five stars. We're not offering them any incentives, it's just them wanting to tell us what they think of Gardyn."

When it comes to getting feedback, Gardyn communicates via emails to customers that are engagedsuch as loyal users. The company also has the Facebook group in which people collaborate and are succeeding to to get maximum benefit from the program.

Trustpilot is a great way to make more of the reviews they receive.

"The backend experience of Trustpilot makes it much simpler for us to control as well as view, and be able to download specific reviews and stuff like that. It allows us to reach out to reviewers, try to get photographs, or even get additional content for our blogs to add that human feel and connection.

We especially found it useful to create ads or review cards within Trustpilot. I'm able download all the SVG documents very easily. Everything's already set up with best practices in mind which is very helpful."

Reviewing the website and in marketing has proven to be vital.

"I recorded user experience feedback in which users walked through the website and spoke out loud about their experience as well as their thoughts. Eight of 10 said something like, 'Oh reviews! It's great.' We also use testimonials in every email. Every footer we provide Trustpilot reviews -- every single footer."

The outcomes speak for themselves.

If Gardyn incorporates reviews into their Facebook ads, their click-through rate increases by a factor of two. Also, when they introduced reviews to their website, engagement went up and bounce rates dropped.

Using additional tools and integrations for greater success

Ava has already stated that the choice to use for their store was partly, due to the flexible nature of the platform. However, how exactly is that manifested?

Extensions.

"I'm self-taught, so I've learnt to Google. I've learned how to study. There's no way to tell the extension's effectiveness until you test it. So the 30-day return policy can be extremely helpful.

The best part is that WordPress is an open source software and on top of that you have a myriad of ways you can go. There's so much out there, that you'll be able to find exactly what you need. There's always an extension to anything I'd like to accomplish.

She states she believes that Trustpilot and Affirm certainly have had the greatest impact on the success of their websites.

"It was extremely simple to use . It's hard to understand why we didn't use it earlier. Klaviyo quickly understands exactly what the funnel is. The number of contacts we capture has actually increased by two. of people we can capture from abandoned carts since Klaviyo can connect abandoned carts using an ad. I think we have close to 50,000 subscribers now."

Implementing express pay

The MyGardyn website launched express-pay options in November 2021 . The site quickly saw customers adopting them. There was a lot of acceptance. Today, 40% of all desktop transactions and 60% of mobile transactions use express payments. As a tally of the transactions in all, 30% pay with credit cards, while 20% use Affirm.

However, the most significant thing to note is that they witnessed an increase of 50% in mobile transactions compared with desktop during the same time period. This highlights the need for payments that are express like Apple Pay, Google Pay and Amazon Pay.

"It's nice," Ava says. Ava, "The express pay options have greatly improved our conversion rates as well as mobile sales. It's 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 up to the application. It's only just two seconds. I think the abandonment rate is 17% in that case. It'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 obviously, but that is the ultimate aim.

The company is currently developing an G3 Initiative, called Gardyn Grows for Good, working together with non-profit organizations and schools for the purpose of bringing food to food deserts and affected communities. This initiative ultimately assists in providing healthful and affordable meals to communities with low incomes.

When asked about advice she'd provide to other people, she does not begrudge it.

"Don't be afraid to make big modifications," says Ava. "A website never ends. It's always growing. It's constantly changing. Be aware of your instincts, and follow the data which I strongly recommend Trustpilot and I highly.

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

In the end, Ava also shared her favorite things to grow in her Gardyn: "My favorite thing is called Red Mustard. It's actually a hot lettuce and is similar to horseradish. It's great in sandwiches! It also grows cherries and strawberries that were so delicious. I've never had anything quite similar to that."