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

Revolutionary indoor garden kit Gardyn utilizes to power their mission to put the name of Gardyn at the door of every home. Featured in Forbes, Good Housekeeping, Time, Real Simple, Goop, and more, Gardyn chose for its scalability and customization. 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 and chief executive 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 that was grown sustainably without a negative impact on the environment.

With the Gardyn indoor gardening system it is possible to grow the fruits, vegetables, herbs and even greens within only two square feet of space. This is the same amount of produce that would require more than a thousand square feet of space in the traditional garden!

A mobile app lets users have complete control over the device, so they can set their light and water schedule and put it in vacation mode, or order more Y cubes, which are the plant's seedlings.

The story of Gardyn

Gardyn launched in the year 2019 and released its initial prototype in February of 2020, at the same time the company launched its new website with .

After moving to the U.S., Rouxel was frustrated that he could not find fruits and vegetables that were as delicious as the fresh, organic produce from his homeland of Provence, France. It was this search for the tastes of the childhood he grew up with that led him to develop the Gardyn process. Instead of focusing on ways to solve the problem at the beginning of the process -- helping agriculture in generalFX focused its efforts on the end consumer. Nowadays, anyone can cultivate their own food without any hassle or space.

The technology was built through a partnership together with McGill University in Canada, it is the only one that is specifically developed for indoor usage to allow as much as 30 plants.

Launched at a time when COVID-19 brought renewed attention around the world for family-run, eco-friendly food products and home-based projects, the company flourished. The company is located at Bethesda, Maryland, Gardyn now employs a remote staff with more than 50 employees.

The engine that has led Gardyn to success

We sat down with Ava the person responsible for their marketing and their website. She met Gardyn as a part of 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 business." The woman said "They decided to bring marketing in-house and I couldn't bear to go. Therefore, I asked to stay and they offered me full-time employment."

Her enthusiasm is evident -her personality resembles a founder than a Head of Website.

The Choice

Ava was instrumental in selecting as the preferred platform. Ava isn't a developer, but has some experience using WordPress.

"The reasons we went with Shopify was that it was compatible with WordPress and offered us the greatest flexibility. We didn't want to have an additional cookie cutter Shopify store. Shopify could be an issue to modify. You'd definitely require an developer...and we didn't have one.

But, because I did have some experience using WordPress, though not as much with it  my experience, I was able search for the best way to create the new site."

The first iteration of their website was designed entirely in-house, using Elementor as the platform, with no developers. The site had everything they required to start their venture: 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, obviously, some growing pains," says Ava. "Just trying to prepare for scaleability. The code would be written the way we wanted, and then 2 months later then we'd need to go back because I didn't think further in the future."

The good news is that it allowed Gardyn the ability to change rapidly as the business grew in popularity -- even between one month and the next.

As the head of website, Ava keeps a close watch on the statistics. "I am interested in seeing whether, when they arrive on the home page, do they go to the PDP? Then from there, I like to see what is the PDP in the form of an "add to basket" price, then, obviously, add to check out. All I want is for everything to go smoothly through the funnel. In particular, those metrics that are crucial to me -- PDP to conversion, cart to conversion, checkout and conversion."

The most effective way for her ways to increase those numbers is via customer feedback.

Featuring reviews with Trustpilot

One of the biggest challenges she has as a marketer is educating customers about exactly what Gardyn is, and how it compares to other home-grown food systems.

"It's saying to people that we've got the Tesla, but even if they've never been on a motorbike and aren't aware of what it is that a Tesla is? So that's been hard -to explain how to explain it so they know how it will fit in their daily lives. It's not just another chore or a hobby that's going be gone. It's just so easy and is always around."

One of the best ways to solve this issue, they discovered, is by utilizing user generated content (UGC) that comes which is in the form of reviews. The Gardyn team saw the potential of reviews however, they needed a platform that can consolidate reviews into the same place. The platform had to be authentic.

The company started out with a different platform however, they quickly switched to Trustpilot that has dramatically improved the effectiveness of their reviews.

"It creates a sense of trust when customers can access the Trustpilot site and check that reviews and reviews are authentic. And customers write detailed reviews that have five stars. We're not giving them any rewards, it's simply their desire to let us know how much they love Gardyn."

In order to get review feedback Gardyn sends out an email to individual customers that are engaged- like longtime members. It also promotes an online group on Facebook, where people are collaborating and doing their best to make the most use out of the system.

Trustpilot allows you to do more with the feedback they get.

"The backend experience of Trustpilot makes it much simpler for us to manage as well as view, and be able to download specific reviews and stuff like that. It allows us to connect with the reviewers and try to collect photographs, or even get additional content for our blogs to add that human feel and emotional bond.

We particularly found it helpful for creating ads or review cards within Trustpilot. I'm able download all the SVG documents very easily. It's all set up to work to follow the highest standards of practice This is really beneficial."

Including reviews on the site and also in the marketing field has been proven to be vital.

"I created a video of user feedback, where users went through the website and spoke openly about their experiences and opinions. Eight out of ten of them said"Oh, reviews! It's great. Also, we include testimonials within every email. On every footer, we include Trustpilot reviews in every single footer."

The results speak for themselves.

If Gardyn incorporates reviews into their Facebook ads the click through rate doubles. When they also introduced reviews to their website, engagement went up as well as bounce rate reduction..

Using additional tools and integrations for greater success

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

Extensions.

"I'm self-taught. I've acquired the ability to Google. I've learned to learn. There's no way to tell what extension works until you try it out. This is why the 30-day policy for return is super helpful.

The best part is that WordPress is open source which is the added benefit of being open source it's a lot of ways you can go. There's so much to choose from, it's likely to be the thing you're looking for. There's always an extension for whatever I want to do.

She says that Trustpilot and Affirm have definitely made an impact in the most positive way on their site's success.

"It was extremely easy to integrate with . It's hard to understand why we didn't use the software before. Klaviyo quickly understands exactly what the funnel is. It has doubled the amount of contacts we capture from abandoned carts due to the fact that Klaviyo allows us to connect abandoned carts using the help of a pop-up. I believe we've got close to 50,000 subscribers now."

Implementing express pay

The MyGardyn website launched express-pay options in the month of November, 2021. It immediately saw adoption by customers. A lot of adoption. In the present, 40% of desktop transactions and 60% of mobile purchases utilize express payments. As a tally of the transactions in all 30% of transactions are made using credit cards, while 20% pay through Affirm.

The most important thing is the fact that they observed a 50% increase in mobile payments compared to desktop in the same period, making clear the importance of the express payment option including Apple Pay, Google Pay as well as Amazon Pay.

"It's very nice" Ava says. Ava, "The express pay options have really improved our conversion rates as well as mobile sales. Our abandonment rate is actually low, as well."

"If you think about it, everybody has Amazon. That's why I feel like everyone's saying, 'Oh yes, I have it. I'm already signed into the application. The process takes about 2 minutes. I think the abandonment rate is 17% for that. That's really low."

Looking towards the future

Gardyn aims to bring everyone access to fresh foods. An Gardyn inside every household, of course, is the ultimate aim.

The company is currently working on the G3 Initiative, called Gardyn Grows to Good and is working in partnership together with non-profit organizations and schools in order to provide food to shortages and affected communities. This initiative ultimately assists in providing 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 hesitate.

"Don't be scared to implement big modifications," says Ava. "A website is never done. It's always growing. The landscape is always evolving. Follow your gut and be sure to follow the facts I would highly recommend Trustpilot and I highly.

When you're selling something or doing hardcore marketing make sure you're doing it to do something that helps improve the world, and makes you feel at ease when someone buys it."

Then, Ava also shared her most loved things that she grows within her Gardyn: "My favorite thing is called Red Mustard. It's actually a hot lettuce and it is like horseradish. It's delicious on sandwiches! I've also grown cherries and strawberries that tasted so sweet. I've never had anything quite like that."