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

The most innovative indoor gardening kit Gardyn makes use of for their goal to place a Gardyn inside every house. It's featured by Forbes, Good Housekeeping, Time, Real Simple, Goop, and more, Gardyn picked it for its capacity as well as its customizability. And they've used tools like Trustpilot, Affirm, Klaviyo as well as Amazon Pay to improve their eCommerce marketing and conversion rates.

Meet Gardyn

The the founder and CEO FX Rouxel began Gardyn in 2019 with a simple yet visionary purpose: to create a world where everyone was able to access cheap and convenient food that was all natural that was grown sustainably with minimal impact on the environment.

With the Gardyn indoor gardening system, you can grow fruits, vegetables, herbs and even greens within only two square feet of space. This is the same yield that would need more than one thousand square feet for the traditional garden!

An app gives customers control over the device, so they can set their water and lighting schedule, put it on vacation mode, or even order more Y cubes, which are the plant's seedlings.

The background of Gardyn

Gardyn began in the year of 2019 , and they shipped their first prototype in February and at the same time they unveiled their brand new website  .

Following his move from France to U.S., Rouxel was disappointed that he was unable to find fruits and vegetables that tasted like the fresh, natural produce of his homeland of Provence, France. The desire to recreate the flavors of his childhood that inspired him to develop the Gardyn process. Instead of looking for solutions at the beginning of the process, and helping the wider agricultural industry -FX focused its efforts on the final consumer. Nowadays, anyone can grow their own produce with minimal hassle and space.

The technology was built through a partnership together with McGill University in Canada, and is the only product that is specifically developed to be used indoors to cultivate up to 30 plants.

The company was launched at a time of COVID-19 renewed interest around the world for family-run, environmentally sustainable food and household initiatives, Gardyn grew rapidly. The company is located at 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's the person in charge of marketing and their website. She met Gardyn when she was working for an agency for marketing they had hired. She fell in love with the mission and passion of Gardyn's leadership team.

"I am in love with this company." The woman said "They were looking to integrate marketing into the company and I couldn't bear to quit. So I asked to stay and they hired me full time."

Her passion for her work is apparenther personality resembles a founder than a Head of Website.

Choosing

Ava has been instrumental in choosing WordPress the platform they would like to use. Ava isn't an expert in development, however she has some experience using WordPress.

"The reason we chose is that it works well with WordPress and it offered us the greatest flexibility. We didn't want to have another cookie-cutter Shopify store. Shopify is more of an effort to personalize. It would certainly require the help of a developer...and we don't have one.

However, since I do have experience with WordPress, though not very much  my experience, I was able google my way through the process of creating the new site."

The initial version of their website was developed entirely in-house, using Elementor without developers. The website had everything they needed to start their venture: a product detail page (PDP), membership functionality and a simple check-out and shopping cart experience for their customers.

"There were, obviously certain growing pains" says Ava. "Just trying to plan in terms of scalability. We'd code something another way, then, after two months it would be necessary return as I did not think in the future."

It was a blessing, as it gave Gardyn the ability to change quickly as the company soared in its popularity, even in the span of a month or next.

As the head of website, Ava keeps a close eye on data. "I want to see, if they land on the homepage, do they go to the PDP? Then from there I would like to know the PDP in the form of an "add to shopping cart" price, then, obviously, add to cart. It is my goal to have everything be smooth and seamless through the funnel. Particularly those important metrics- PDP to conversion from cart to conversion the checkout process to conversion."

A major way she's found how to boost these metrics is through customer reviews.

Featuring reviews with Trustpilot

One of the greatest challenges that she faces as a marketing professional is educating customers about exactly what Gardyn is, and what it is in comparison to other systems for food production at home.

"It's telling people that we have the Tesla however, If they've never even driven or driven, what do they think a Tesla is? That's why it's difficultcommunicating the concept in a manner that they can understand the way it fits to their lifestyles. 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 value in reviews however, they needed a platform that would consolidate reviews in one place. The platform had to be genuine.

They started with another platform however, they quickly switched to Trustpilot and has significantly improved the effectiveness of reviews.

"It builds a sense confidence when people go to the Trustpilot website and verify reviews and reviewers are real. Customers write in-depth reviews with 5 stars. We're not giving them any incentives, it's just the desire of our customers to share with us what they think of Gardyn."

In order to get feedback, Gardyn reaches out via an email to each customer who are active -as long-time users. They also reach out in the Facebook group in which people collaborate and are succeeding to to get the maximum value from the platform.

Trustpilot allows you to do more with their reviews.

"The backend experience of Trustpilot is much more easy to handle, and see, and have the ability to download certain reviews, and other such. We can reach out to the reviewers and try to collect photos, or get more content for our blogs to give it that personal touch and connection.

We especially found it useful to design ads and review cards from within Trustpilot. I'm able download all the SVG files very quickly. The system is already designed to follow the highest standards of practice This is really beneficial."

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

"I did video user experience feedback, where users went through the website and spoke openly about their experiences and opinions. It's possible that eight out of ten said something like, 'Oh reviews! This is good. Additionally, we use testimonials on every email. Every footer we provide Trustpilot reviews -- every footer."

In the real world, the outcomes speak for themselves.

If Gardyn includes reviews in the Facebook ads they post Their click through rate doubles. Also, when they introduced reviews to their website, engagement went up and bounce rates dropped.

Utilizing additional integrations and tools to ensure success

Ava already mentioned that the decision to choose the platform for their store was, in part, due to the flexible design of the store. But how, specifically, does that manifest itself?

Extensions.

"I'm self-taught, so I've learned to Google. I've learned how to study. It's impossible to determine how to extend your time until you test it. This is why the 30-day policy for return is super helpful.

The best part is it's because WordPress is open source which is on top of that you have a myriad of possibilities to explore. There are so many things out there, that you'll find what you want. There's always an extension for anything I'd like to accomplish.

She claims she believes that Trustpilot and Affirm have definitely made the biggest impact on the success of their websites.

"It was incredibly simple to incorporate into . I don't know why we didn't use it earlier. Klaviyo instantly understands how to use the funnel. We actually doubled the number of customers we have gathered from abandoned carts due to the fact that Klaviyo is able to integrate abandoned carts and display the help of a pop-up. We have up to 50,000 subscribers now."

Implementing express pay

The MyGardyn website launched express pay options in November 2021 . The site immediately saw adoption by customers. There was a lot of acceptance. In the present, 40% of transactions on desktops along with 60% mobile orders make use of express payment. In total, of all transactions 30 percent pay using a credit card, and 20% make payments through Affirm.

The most important thing is that they saw a 50% increase in mobile transactions compared with desktop over the same period. This underscores the importance of express payment options like Apple Pay, Google Pay and Amazon Pay.

"It's lovely," Ava says. Ava, "The express pay options have significantly improved our conversion rates as well as mobile sales. It's really minimal, too."

"If you look at it, everyone has Amazon. It's like, 'Oh yeah, I have it. I'm already signed in to the app.' It takes just two minutes. I think the abandonment rate is about 17. This is really low."

The future is in sight

Gardyn strives to give everyone an easy access to healthy food. A Gardyn inside every household, of course, is the ultimate goal.

The company is currently engaged in a G3 Initiative, called Gardyn Grows for Good which is working together with non-profit organizations and schools to bring food to food shortages and affected communities. This initiative ultimately assists in providing healthful and affordable meals to low income areas.

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

"Don't be afraid to make large changes," says Ava. "A website can never be finished. It's always growing. It's always changing. Be aware of your instincts and keep track of the information, and I highly suggest and trustpilot.

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 satisfied when you see people purchase it."

Finally, Ava also shared her most loved things that she grows in the garden of her Gardyn: "My favorite thing is known as Red Mustard. It's really a spicy lettuce and is like horseradish. It's delicious in sandwiches! It also grows strawberry and cherry tomatoes that tasted so sweet. I've never experienced anything similar to that."