Partner Spotlight: Ethercycle Boosts Conversions for Everest Bands

Everest Bands offers high-quality, customizable bands for Rolex watch owners. They offer a multitude of strap and Rolex accessories for practically every modern Rolex available. But when Everest Bands' website wasn't driving the conversions they wanted, the owners reached out to ecommerce consultancy Ethercycle for help. We caught up with Ethercycle co-founder Kurt Elster to find out how he boosted Everest Brands conversion rates.

Everest Bands offers high-quality, customizable bands for Rolex watch owners. They created a multitude of strap and Rolex accessories for practically every modern Rolex available. But when Everest Bands' website wasn't driving the conversions they wanted, the owners reached out to ecommerce consultancy Ethercycle for help. 

We caught up with Ethercycle co-founder Kurt Elster to find out how he boosted Everest Brands conversion rates. 

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Tell us about Ethercycle.

Ethercycle is an ecommerce consultancy helping Shopify stores grow their revenue. We're solely concerned with delivering the highest possible ROI. We were generalist web developers for four years, working with big brands like Verizon and the NFL, and then last year we decided to focus exclusively on what made us happiest: Shopify stores. Since going all in on Shopify, not only has our business skyrocketed, but as a team we’re happier than we’ve ever been.

How did you first get involved with Everest Bands?

Everest Bands reached out to us through our Shopify Experts listing. Probably 60% of our leads come from there. As watch-enthusiasts and owners of the original Everest Band, we were thrilled to see their name pop up in our inbox.

What changes did you make to their website?

What didn’t we change? To achieve the revenue-boosting conversion lift they needed (while delivering the highest possible return on investment), we decided to modify an existing Shopify premium theme as opposed to building a new theme. We went with the proven power of Parallax because it is a phenomenal theme for showcasing the stunning product photography we'd created for the brand.

What did you do to improve their conversion rate?

It was a two-part process. The first step to conversion rate optimization is simple: I walk through a store and try to buy something. I write down every single thing that creates any friction at all for me buying the product. Every pain point, point of confusion, barrier to entry, objection, and eyebrow-raising or frustrating thing. Solving just those problems can be enough to double a site's conversion rates.

The second part was to take a deeper dive into why customers were buying. We surveyed Everest’s existing customer base with a single question: “How would you feel if you could never wear your Everest Band again? Why?” That question revealed the psychology behind why people were buying and even misconceptions about the product. We realized we had an education problem. Using the answers from the survey, we rewrote headlines and product descriptions, and then hugely expanded the product descriptions to include a custom layout that educated the consumer about the benefits of owning an Everest Band.

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Walk us through some of the other services you offered to them.

Everest is a luxury brand, and I think luxury prices demand high-touch customer service. But that’s time consuming. So we came up with a clever solution. We set them up with email marketing automation that put a high-touch customer services strategy on auto pilot. A new customer buys, they get what appears to be a personal email from the owner. Repeat buyer, a thank you email. Buyer hasn’t shopped in awhile? We email them with product suggestions based on past purchases. All automatically. Email automation is practically magic for customer service.

What impact did these changes have?

 Lots of compliments… and seemingly unending revenue growth month after month. Check it out:

What were some of the unique features you implemented?

The home page and landing pages feature a slider that asks people to select their watch. By doing this upfront, we only ever show people items that fit the product they're interested in. It also lets us “hold up the mirror” and show shoppers very quickly what the brand is about. If someone owns one of the featured Rolex watches, they’ll recognize it immediately, and be driven by curiosity to see what offerings fit their watch.

What tools did you find most useful when creating the website?

The best tool for any existing businesses is a survey! Ask your customers why they’re buying and use that to drive decisions about your store. We and the Everest team both gained tremendous insight about people’s motivations. We thought people were buying straps as a cheaper alternative to a genuine Rolex replacement — the truth is they were buying them as fashion accessories to personalize their watch.

What integrations did you use with the site?

For marketing automation, we used Klaviyo Email Marketing which I highly recommend. To drive traffic, we’re using YotPo to post social links, Google Shopping for search traffic, and Perfect Audience for retargeting on Facebook. We’ve diversified Everest’s ad spend for maximum ROI.

What’s your favourite feature on the site?

We built educational landing pages to drive paid traffic that converts like crazy. Having a blank canvas to work with and really showcase the phenomenal product photography we did was very gratifying. Here’s a good example.

What was the most difficult part about creating this store?

Developing a customer workflow where they can most easily select their product, but also understand the options between various products. As Everest adds new product lines to their store, this will become a problem again — but this time we’ve got an even better workflow hidden up our sleeves. :)

What did you learn along the way?

This was the first site we did where we based our decisions on customer surveys, and echoed the language that customers were using to describe the products. Letting go of egos and embracing your customer’s language was absolutely the best thing we did.

Ultimately we created a theme that served both the Everest brand and the consumer by communicating the overwhelming quality of the product. That combination resulted in an immediate surge in sales, which paid for the project within 72 hours of going live. With ROI like that, the Everest team is already looking at launching a third product line and we can't wait to see it.

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