A "Gardyn" in Every Home -- an eCommerce Story of Success

The most innovative indoor gardening kit Gardyn uses in order to place the name of Gardyn inside every house. It's featured in Forbes, Good Housekeeping, Time, Real Simple, Goop and many more. Gardyn selected it because of its scaleability and customization. Additionally, they've employed tools such as Trustpilot, Affirm, Klaviyo as well as Amazon Pay to improve their online marketing, and convert rates.

Meet Gardyn

When Gardyn's founder and chief executive FX Rouxel began Gardyn in 2019 founded with a clear and attainable goal -- to help create a world where everyone could access affordable, convenient, all-natural food, grown sustainably and that had minimal environmental impact.

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

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

The story of Gardyn

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

After moving into the U.S., Rouxel was frustrated that he could not find fruits and vegetables which tasted as fresh, organic produce from his home of Provence, France. It was this search for the tastes of the childhood he grew up with that led Rouxel to create the Gardyn process. Instead of working on solutions at the beginning of the process -- helping agriculture in general- FX focused on the end consumer. Today, nearly anyone is able to grow their own produce with minimal hassle and space.

The technology was built by collaborating with McGill University in Canada, and is the first product made specifically for indoor use to grow more than 30 plants.

The company was launched at a time of COVID-19 increased interest across the globe for family-owned, sustainable food supplies and home-based initiatives, Gardyn grew rapidly. The company is located within Bethesda, Maryland, Gardyn has a staff of remote workers with more than 50 employees.

The engines behind Gardyn's success

We had a chat with Ava the person in charge of their marketing and website. Ava first met Gardyn when she was working for an agency that they employed for their marketing. She was captivated by the passion and mission of Gardyn's team leadership.

"I am in love with the business." she said "They wanted to integrate marketing into the company and I was not ready to go. That's why I requested to stay , and they hired me full time."

Her passion is palpable -- coming across more like an entrepreneur than a head of website.

The Choice

Ava has been instrumental in choosing WordPress as their platform of choice. Ava isn't an expert in development, however she has some knowledge of WordPress.

"The main reason why we picked Shopify is that it worked nicely with WordPress and provided us with the maximum flexibility. We didn't want to have another 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, though not as much with it , I was able to Google my way through creating our new website."

The initial version of their website was designed entirely by themselves, with Elementor as the platform, with no developers. It had everything they needed for the launch with a Product Detail Page (PDP) as well as a membership feature as well as a user-friendly shopping cart and checkout experience for customers.

"There were, of course certain growing pains" says Ava. "Just trying to prepare in terms of the possibility of scaling. The code would be written one way and two months later then we'd need to go back since I hadn't thought further in the future."

It was a blessing, as it gave Gardyn the flexibility to adapt rapidly as the business grew in its popularity, even from one month to the next.

As the head of website, Ava keeps a close watch on the metrics. "I want to see whether, when they arrive on the homepage, do they then go to PDP? Then from there I would like to know how much it costs for the PDP in the form of an "add to shopping cart" price, then clearly, to add it to check out. I just want everything to flow smoothly throughout the process. Especially those key metrics -- PDP to conversion, cart to conversion, checkout and conversion."

One of the ways she's discovered how to boost these metrics is via customer feedback.

Reviewing reviews on Trustpilot

One of the greatest challenges she has 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 telling people that we have the Tesla, but if they've never driven or driven, what do they think a Tesla is? It's been a challenge- explaining the concept in a manner that they can understand the way it fits into their lives. It's not just another chore or a hobby that's going disappear. It's so simple and it's always there."

One way to solve this issue, they have discovered, is using user-generated content (UGC) which comes as in customer reviews. The Gardyn team saw the potential in reviews, but needed a platform that would consolidate reviews in one location. And it needed to be authentic.

They began with a different system however, they quickly switched to Trustpilot, which has substantially increased the impact of the reviews.

"It creates a sense of confidence when people visit the Trustpilot site and see reviews and reviewers are genuine. Customers write in-depth reviews with five stars. We're not giving them any rewards, it's simply their desire to let us know what they think of Gardyn."

When it comes to getting reviews, Gardyn sends out an emails to customers that are engaged- like longtime customers or members for a long time. It also promotes a Facebook group, where members are working together and doing their best to make the maximum value from the system.

Trustpilot allows you to do more with their reviews.

"The Trustpilot experience on the backend of Trustpilot makes it much simpler to handle, and see, and have the ability to download certain reviews, and other such. It allows us to reach out to the reviewers and try to collect photos, or get more content for our blogs to add that human feel and emotional bond.

We especially found it useful to design ads and review cards from within Trustpilot. I'm able to download all the SVG files very quickly. It's all set up to work using the best practices, so that's really helpful."

The inclusion of reviews on the site and in marketing has proven to be important.

"I recorded user experience feedback where people went through the site and then spoke openly about their experiences as well as their thoughts. Eight out of ten of them said"Oh reviews! This is good.' We also use testimonials within every email. Every footer we include Trustpilot reviews -- every single footer."

In the real world, the results speak for themselves.

When Gardyn incorporates reviews into its Facebook advertisements, their click-through rate increases by a factor of two. When they also included reviews on their site, engagement went up and bounce rates dropped.

Integrating additional tools and features for success

Ava already mentioned that the selection of the store platform they chose to store was in part, 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. You're not going to know what extension works until you try it out. Therefore, the 30-day refund policy is extremely beneficial.

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

She claims she believes that Trustpilot as well as Affirm certainly have had the biggest impact on their site's success.

"It was extremely easy to integrate with . I'm not sure why we didn't use it before. Klaviyo quickly understands exactly what the funnel is. The number of contacts we capture has actually increased by two. of customers we have gathered from abandoned carts due to the fact that Klaviyo is able to sync abandoned carts with a pop up. I believe we've got close to 50,000 users currently."

Implementing express pay

The MyGardyn website introduced express pay options in the month of November, 2021. It immediately saw adoption by customers. A lot of adoption. Now, 40% of transactions on desktops and 60% of mobile orders make use of express payment. For every transaction 30 percent pay using the credit card and 20% use Affirm.

The most important thing is the fact that they observed an increase of 50% in mobile transactions compared with desktop over the same period, making clear the importance of payments that are express such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Amazon Pay.

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

"If you consider it, everybody has Amazon. So I just feel everyone's thinking, 'Oh I've got it. I'm already signed up to the app. It's only two minutes. It seems like the rate of abandonment is about 17. That's really low."

The future is in sight

Gardyn strives to give everyone the opportunity to eat fresh food. An Gardyn inside every household, of course, is the ultimate goal.

The company is currently engaged in a G3 Initiative, called Gardyn Grows to Good and is working in partnership in partnership with nonprofits and schools in order to provide food to deserts and affected communities. This initiative ultimately assists in providing healthy and affordable food to communities with low incomes.

When asked about advice she'd offer to others, she won't begrudge it.

"Don't be scared to implement large changes," says Ava. "A website is never done. It's constantly growing. It's always changing. Take your time and be sure to follow the facts, and I highly recommend and Trustpilot.

If you're selling something or doing hardcore marketing, do it for something that improves the quality of life, and makes you feel good when people buy it."

In the end, Ava also shared her most loved things that she grows in her Gardyn: "My favorite thing is known as Red Mustard. It's actually a hot lettuce that is similar to horseradish. It's really good on sandwiches! I've also grown cherry tomatoes and strawberries that tasted so sweet. I've never experienced anything like that."