Jessie Healy

eCommerce Growth & Facebook Ads Marketing Consultant

Building DTC brands to 7 & 8 figures. Co-Founder of Webtopia. Founder of Ecomm Rockets. Podcast host - Ecommerce Impact. $50M spent on Meta & Google Ads. Ex-Etsy. 1X Exit.

My mission is to help you build a profitable, successful DTC brand through better advertising strategies.  Different stages of DTC growth need different types of support: Hitting your first 100k month is the first milestone. Putting in place the systems to get to $10M is a different kind of hard. For each stage in your eCommerce path, I have a solution for you. 

*Not Quite At 7 Figures - But Ambitious to Grow? Ecomm Rockets is my accelerator for early-stage eComm brands that provides growth marketing to get you to your first $100k months, for the next generation of iconic brands. A combination of mentorship, consultancy and teaching, this programme is perfect if you are ready to learn how to get the most out of your Meta and Google Ads. We can also include done-for-you ads management. 

*Established brand - keen to scale up? I have a range of consulting options and a network of partners, as well as very limited slots for full ads management - let me help you find the right fit for your brand's growth and Advertising challenges. 

Agency and Consulting: www.ecommgrowthcollective.com
Personal Website: www.jessiehealy.com

Accelerator: www.ecommrockets.com

Book a free strategy call: https://calendly.com/d/4dk-87x-f84T
The agency I founded and sold in 2023: www.webtopia.co

About Me: The $50 million I have spent on digital advertising for brands like Etsy, RealPlayer, Farfetch, Totter &amp; Tumble, ilabb, Baukjen and Candy Kittens has helped me crack the code to creating profitable ads and growth marketing strategies that convert.After a career spent working for consumer brands like Etsy - I struck out on my own as a freelancer in 2017, and then launched an agency which I grew over 5 years to 7 figures then sold it in 2023. I now work hands-on with brands again.

Not ready to chat just yet - why not sign up to my newsletter? https://ecommercecoach.beehiiv.com/

eCommerce Agency Founder & CEO | eComm Coach | Paid Social & Google Ads & Klaviyo Specialist

My Agency, Webtopia specialises in providing eCommerce businesses with highly optimised digital advertising on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok & Google, as well as Email Marketing with Klaviyo. Our team of 20 eCommerce experts focus on real results driving betweeen 3X and 15X return on investment for  our clients.
We make magic happen like: 

🌟15X ROAS for TWO YEARS (and counting) for an interior brand consistently
🌟Scaling a new brand to £150k a month spend and driving £600k in monthly revenue
🌟3 of our clients turning their side hustle into a million-pound-a-year business.

Jessie Healy 🎨

How to tell if your media buyer is still in 2020... 

1. Open Meta
2. Check if campaigns are set up with BOF/MOF/TOF

If yes... 

I am sorry but they are old school. 😖 

Convince me I am wrong!

Growing DTC brands to 7 & 8 figures. $50M spent on Meta & Google Ads. Ecommerce Marketing Coach & Consultant. Webtopia Founder (now acquired). 1X Exit. Podcast host - Ecommerce Impact Podcast. Ex-Etsy.

Just had devastating meeting with an eComm founder paying through the nose for a terrible rip off agency. 

This time $4K a month in agency fees. On a traffic campaign and a brand awareness campaign. 

Zero strategic advice. 

No creative strategy. 

No landing page help. 

No forecast. 

And campaigns optimised for traffic - which we all know doesn't work. 

All in the $5k bought her maybe 2 hours work for a junior agency employee to upload some ads that look like they were done in Canva. 

Agencies that take on these startup brands and then rinse them like this should be shot. 

There is a better way for new brands, and I am building it. 

My DMs are open if you are sick of this and looking for a solution.

🚨Meta just changed something that will affect how every performance marketer reads their ad results. 🚨

Click-through attribution now only counts actual link clicks.

Every other interaction has moved into a new bucket called Engage-Through Attribution. This replaces the old engaged-view metric and now applies across all formats, not just video.

The engaged-view threshold for video has dropped from 10 seconds to 5 seconds.

Meta’s internal data shows 46% of Reels purchase conversions happen within the first 2 seconds of attention 🤯

That stat alone explains why the change was overdue.

Here is what this means in practice.

Previously, a chunk of conversions that came from clicks on ads (not just outbound link clicks) were sitting inside click-through reporting. Now they are being separated. The click signal becomes cleaner. Engagement signals get their own lane.

In theory the total number of reported conversions should not change much. What will change is where those conversions appear inside the attribution breakdown.

If you want to understand the shift inside your own account, check two places inside Ads Manager:

- Compare Attribution Settings
- Breakdown by Attribution Setting

Both will show you where conversions are moving between click-through and engage-through.

So your data may look different because of this change which will make optimisation messy for a bit. 

Keep monitoring your overall blended ROAS and CAC and don't make any drastic account changes until it settles down.

I haven't jumped in here to tell you how the new agency is going behind the scenes....

3 months since launching officially we are carefully adding one client per month - and we are loving how things are rolling so far.

Our first client is already 33% up year-on-year.

And yes, that’s real Shopify revenue, not Ads Manager numbers.

So how do we drive the growth?

There’s no single silver bullet, it’s about getting the foundations right and staying relentlessly focused on what moves the needle.

Here’s what’s working:
- Creative testing that actually pushes boundaries
- The right set up in Meta to let the algo do it's thing
- Deep understanding of the customer — not just demographics, but motivations
- A strong partnership with the client that gives us room to move fast and try bold ideas

Excited to see where we can take things with our other new clients.

This feels totally different to my first agency - I am flying a plane I have already built before, rather than flying the plane as I build it.

I have said it before, but I will say it again.

If you are a new eComm brand and you haven't yet generated at least some sales by advertising your products to strangers on Meta, Google or TikTok, then you're not ready to hire someone else to do marketing for your product.

If you hire an agency to run a channel you have no understanding of, your chance of getting ripped off is very high.

Opened X this week and the DTC echo chamber is losing its mind over the Manus to Meta Ads Manager integration.

Hot take: I am not ready to hand Meta (Manus) my ad account.

Let me explain.

AI will absolutely change the media buyer role. It already is. Creative testing, reporting, budget shifts, anomaly detection. A lot of the repetitive work is on borrowed time.

But here is where I struggle.

Why would I blindly trust a Meta owned AI platform to tell me how to run ads on Meta?

Meta’s objective is clear. Increase advertiser spend. Increase revenue per advertiser. 
Improve platform yield.

My objective is different. Maximise profitable growth for the brand I represent.

To do this I have to exploit the algorithm better than my competitors, do things a bit differently, find loopholes and sweet-spots, I am not going to this by drinking the Meta Cool Aid.

It is the same reason I do not use Google Analytics as the single source of truth for Google Ads performance. Platforms grade their own homework.

As media buyers, our job is not just to push buttons and maximise platform ROAS, or even just contribution margin. There are often myriad, nuanced and competing objectives to balance.

Our job is to understand:
- How the algorithm behaves
- Where attribution breaks
- How cash flow impacts scale
- What inventory constraints look like
- What margin actually allows

No AI sitting inside the ad platform has full visibility of that context.

Will I test Manus? Of course!

If it can automate reporting, surface patterns faster, or suggest creative angles, that is a win.

But fully autonomous campaign optimisation?

I am sceptical.

The platform does not own that context. I do.

So convince me I am wrong.

Would you hand full control of your ad budget to an AI built by the same company that profits from your spend?

This year marks 10 years since I first hired someone to teach me Meta ads (and 20 years since I started on Google ads!)

It's wild to me that I am still opening up accounts and seeing stuff like this:

Brand spending $20k/month across 14 campaigns, 40+ ad sets. Most campaigns are stuck in learning. Half the ads have under 500 impressions. No signal, no scale, just noise.

Another account stuck with the same 5 ads since summer. Frequency is over 9. CPAs are rising fast. They're still running the same static image with the same hook, wondering why performance is falling off a cliff.

One DTC brand has 40% of their spend hitting past customers... inside their “prospecting” campaign. No exclusions. Creative with no information or benefit messaging.

They're paying Meta to re-sell to people who already bought and scratching their heads at high CAC.

The tactical fixes aren’t complicated. An experienced media buying can restructure an account like this in a few hours.

Yes - it's true - the creative strategy, landing pages and messaging have got harder with increased competition and ad-cost.

But what is wild to me is the fact that the basics aren't even there in so many accounts, still.

I'll say it again though - in case you have still missed it:

Meta rewards simplicity, signal density, and creative testing.

Stop over complicating media buying set up. Start launching more creative tests.

"Meta completely ignores audience exclusions.” True or false? 
Meta have finally confirmed the answer in their latest developer update...

Meta does NOT ignore exclusions, but they are now only a signal, albeit a stronger one than 'interests'. 

This is how it actually works now: 

Meta have said they essentially have hierarchy of 'signals' that they take into account. CRM and pixel data are at the top.

Interest targeting sits way down the bottom of their signal hierarchy, and is now really just loose guidance for when other signal is weak.

Interests, demographics, even gender targeting are no longer hard rules. 

My experience plays this out in reality - when you exclude past customers, website purchasers, or CRM lists, you absolutely reduce delivery to those people. 

I have seen the data. The overlap drops meaningfully, but not completely. It's a signal Meta is taking seriously. 

Meta’s targeting system is built around your objective, with your signals woven in. 
If you select Purchase, the algorithm is scanning for people most likely to purchase based on:

👉️ Your pixel data
👉️ Your conversion history
👉️ Your creative content, style, setting, layout, creators 
👉️ Your copy, headlines and keywords in your video 
👉️ Behavioral signals across the platform

It reads your ad. It interprets intent. It matches message to person.

So how does this shift impact campaign setup?

I always use exclusions when I want to reach new customers. That is non negotiable.

What I do not do anymore is create five ad sets split by micro interests thinking I am “controlling” audience targeting.

When business friends become real friends. This is Mike Koziol.
 
He coached me when I was in the early stages of my agency, only making 200K a year, right up to when I became a seven-figure agency and in the top 1% of female-owned businesses in the UK.

Mike was there for me on every step of the journey, warts and all.

He coached me through the highs and lows and helped me grow a sustainable business that I was able to then sell and have a successful exit from a couple of years ago.
 
I was lucky enough to meet up with Mike in Portugal last year and then this year he came all the way to New Zealand to visit me.

Here we are in Queenstown, having the best time ever, talking a bit too much shop but also talking life, relationships, philosophy, and everything in between.

We even managed to get to a gig and dance in a vineyard under the sun. He met my family, my friends IRL.

Business at the end of the day is about connection, and shared values.

So glad we met by chance all those years ago in an online community!

ps. we walked on foot from lake level up to this viewing platform while others took the easy route in the gondola - a bit of a metaphor there on how we both approach life.

I don't use engagement pods to grow. 

27k people decided to follow me because I (try to) have something useful to say. 

I am not here to hack the algorithm, not the Meta one or this one. 

I believe in sustainable marketing, not BS tricks. 

The End.

Are you still using Ads Manager metrics to measure your creative? 😬 
You are already behind. I was too, watching: CTR. Engagement rate. CPM. Conversion rate.

I believed if the numbers looked good, the creative was good.

Then everything changed.

Meta is not just looking at hard metrics anymore.

The GEM/Andromeda system is actually watching your ads.
Understanding what they are about.
Assessing whether they are unique.
Deciding who they are for.
Choosing when to show them.

If you are only looking at Ads Manager numbers to judge your creative, you are already behind.

After 15 years in eCommerce, I have learned that you have to run to keep up. Creative analysis is no longer manual pattern spotting in a spreadsheet. The algorithm is interpreting context, themes, repetition, and differentiation at scale.
So I started testing a tool that keeps me a step ahead of Meta: 

Aggero. 

This thing is wild. 

It analyses creative in a similar way Meta does.

It has been trained on 7 million hours of content.

And the most interesting part is its “Drivers and Drainers” feature.

It tells you:
• What elements are driving engagement
• What is quietly killing performance
• Which hooks actually hold attention
• Where viewer drop-off happens

As of this week, it plugs directly into your ad account. You can analyse live ads and see exactly what needs to change to get them working harder.

This is where creative strategy is heading.

Not guessing. Not colour-coded spreadsheets.

Machine-level pattern recognition applied to your own ads.

You can keep analysing the old way.

Or you can understand how the platform is really judging your content.
If you want to test the tool, comment 'CREATIVE' and I will ping you the details. 
@Aggero, #AggeroPartner

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Myths about DTC eComm:

- You can't scale if your AOV is less than $30
- You shouldn't enter a category that is already competitive 
- You can never compete against established players with huge budgets 
 
Reality:
 
✅ Native Deoderant has a price point of $13 and scaled to $100M in two years 
✅ True Classic entered one of the most competitive fashion categories - basic tees, and has done $250M in revenue since launching in 2019
✅ HiSmile competes against toothpaste giants and is set to hit $200M in revenue. 
 
Don't believe everything you read - know your customer and your category and you can prove the rule makers wrong.

Spicy debate topic alert! 

Is anyone using the traffic objective to drive top of funnel awareness to feed ASC and other conversion campaigns? 

An account I'm auditing is doing this - with 0 conversions coming from traffic campaigns but very high ROAS in the ASC. 

Some would say turn off the traffic objective, it's driving garbage traffic that is of no value - and that is certainly what I would have said this until very recently. 

But as Meta no longer lets us limit our conversion campaigns to truly cold audiences, I am wondering if there is some validity to using traffic to build out a full funnel and have more cold traffic for the ASC and conversion campaigns to convert. 

But the question then becomes, how do you test whether the traffic campaigns are helping your funnel - aside from doing a test that keeps all other variables the same, and monitoring for 30-60 days to see if your overall funnel performance declines without the upper funnel spend.

What does everyone think? Are traffic campaigns now a valuable part of a DTC funnel? If so, how do we track their efficacy?

Until recently - I thought the only thing holding back a product brand from growing was hitting a profitable customer acquisition cost (CAC) or ROAS. 

Once you hit that number, you can theoretically start to print money by scaling. 
 
It's why we love eComm - as long as your addressable market is big and you solve a big problem, once you crack ads it is off to the races. 
 
Right? I thought so! 
 
But I have been super shocked discover a tonne of businesses actually suffer from the oposite problem. 
 
They are hitting a great CAC and acquiring customers profitably. 
 
But they don't grow because they see media spend as a cost instead of as a growth lever, or they don't feel confident in which channel will actually give a profitable ROI. 
 
Example - a brand doing $80k in monthly revenue, spending $2000 per month paid ads with a 8X tracked ROAS and a blended ROAS of 40X. 
 
This might sound crazy - why don't they just scale spend so they can make more money? I'ts wild. I have seen this in multiple businessses now, particularily those that started out in wholesale or retail where marketing is seen a cost. 
 
They simply haven't grasped that in DTC, the more you spend, the more you make. 
 
The problem seems to be that they don't feel confident enough in their agency to give them more money and they lack the knowledge to know what is working. 

The result - for every business that can't seem to crack ads, there is another business sitting on a goldmine with no idea what they have, and not mining it all. 
 
Has anyone else come across this?

Most brands build ads backwards and it’s exactly why they stay stuck. Instead of starting with the customer, they start with guesswork.

If your ads feel random right now, go back to the source: your buyer.

That’s where the answers and the revenue are hiding.

Which path are you taking right now: the shortcut, or the strategy?

2 ways to create ads, only 1 builds an iconic brand

Last week, Google announced that products from Etsy and Wayfair will now be shoppable directly within its agentic AI search experience.

For anyone in eCommerce, this is not just another product update. It is a structural shift in how discovery, consideration, and purchase happen.

Years ago, I worked at Etsy running Google Shopping. One of the biggest challenges we tackled was making an enormous catalogue of one of a kind products actually discoverable by Google’s crawlers.

We were not dealing with 5,000 SKUs neatly organized into standardized attributes. We were dealing with millions of unique, handmade, vintage, custom items. Each with its own nuances. Each needing to match to a real user query like:

“14k gold minimalist ring under 200”
“Mid century walnut credenza 60 inches”
“Personalized leather anniversary gift”

The heavy lifting was in organising the feed. Making sure Google could understand not just that a product existed, but exactly who it was for and when it should appear.

The goal was to surface the most relevant unique product at the exact moment of intent.

What is changing now is where that moment happens.

With agentic AI search, Google is not just returning links. It is interpreting intent, curating options, and enabling checkout within the experience. That compresses the funnel dramatically.

Discovery, comparison, and transaction are converging.

For marketplaces like Etsy and Wayfair, if the last decade was about ranking in search results and Google shopping queries, the next one is about being structured in a way AI can interpret, trust, and transact on your behalf.

And the same goes for eComm brands - your product data is not a back office function. It is a growth channel, and this update makes this even more the case. 

What are you doing to be ready for this shift?

Meta creative testing structure we start with on most accounts: 

1. Winning creative - running in Advantage Plus Shopping Campaigns (ASC) 

2. Testing creative - CBO, broad audience, very few exclusions. Each persona gets its own ad-set. Once a creative starts to perform - scale 'in place' - because moving creative can kill the winning streak, but duplicate into the ASC. Add new creatives into this structure and new ad-sets when you have a net-new concept or persona with a set of ads. 

3. Set up new creative testing ad-sets within the CBO to ensure creative diversity. 
 
Continue to increase budget to winning campaigns. 
 
Does this work for you? What other structures do you use for testing?

"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face."

The Middle East situation was the punch we didn't expect in eComm this week. 

Mike Tyson said it about boxing. It also applies to global supply chains rn. 

What looked like another Red Sea style disruption has turned into something far bigger for global commerce.The Strait of Hormuz is now declared a closed military zone.

For operators this is what it means right now:

- The Suez Canal is now blocked. Carriers are already planning routes around the Cape of Good Hope, adding 10 to 15 days to transit times and burning far more fuel.

- Air freight demand is surging. When sea lanes slow down, high value categories move to air. Electronics and pharma capacity is already being bid up.

- Oil pushing past $85 feeds straight into the cost stack. Packaging production, freight surcharges, and even the last mile van all get more expensive.

This becomes a margin and cash flow situation. 

What can you do now to stay front footed? 

1. Do not wait for delivery delays to happen. Update shipping pages and post purchase emails now. Customers handle the truth far better than surprises.

2. Think about freeing up cash flow to order more stock now, so you have a big buffer if delays happen down the line. Build more buffer into your timelines. 

When supply chains get punched in the face, the brands that stay calm, communicate clearly, and protect stock levels are the ones still standing when things settle.

What else are you doing to prepare or react? 

ps. I know this is a business post - but my thoughts are with anyone currently living in a conflict zone.

With all the changes lately - I wanted to share the Meta Ads Structure that is working for my clients right now. This works for eComm brands from $0-$

Open article: Steal My Exact Meta Media Buying Structure in 2026 by Jessie Healy 🎨 • 2 min read

Steal My Exact Meta Media Buying Structure in 2026

Low AOV doesn’t just hurt your margins.

It makes paid acquisition feel “impossible”.

Here’s a quick AOV boosting idea that you should incorporate into your email + CRO strategy: 

👉 Make your default path a bundle (and send traffic + emails to the bundle page, not individual products).

Most brands do the opposite:

- Ads land on a single product
- Email pushes a single product
- The bundle is hidden in a menu (if it exists at all)

If you want higher AOV, you have to stop treating bundles like an optional add-on.

Make the bundle the default:

“Starter bundle” as the hero
“Best value” bundle (anchor it)
“Deluxe bundle” for price anchoring
Clear comparison table
One-click add to cart

Then align your email:

Abandoned cart flows for bundles
Post-purchase cross-sell built around “complete the set”
Campaign emails that sell the bundle outcome, not the SKU
Bundling is one of the cleanest levers in eComm.

Because it makes the same traffic worth more. The key thing to monitor though is to raise AOV without tanking conversion rates. Figure out the break-even conversion rate and make sure you are above that. 

If you already have bundles: are you actually sending traffic to them, or just hoping customers find them?

Founder - Customers Who Click | CRO for eCom brands - turning traffic into customers using "The U.A.M Method"

Most DTC brands want to scale their paid media. But few focus enough on converting that traffic.  

Customer acquisition costs are rising, and while brands invest heavily in driving traffic, too many are wasting thousands of dollars sending traffic to friction-heavy, confusing websites with poor user experiences.  

The brands that win are not just the ones with the best ads. 

They are the ones that ensure every click leads to a seamless, high-converting customer journey from the first visit through to repeat purchases.  

Yet, many brands still rely on best practices, gut instinct, or copying competitors instead of using real customer insights to optimise their websites and landing pages.  

This is where CRO comes in.  

Through data-driven research, behavioural psychology, and rigorous testing, we help brands remove friction, increase conversion rates, and maximise revenue from their paid traffic.  

Giving them room to scale comfortably, and profitably.

At Customers Who Click, we specialise in turning more visitors into buyers, helping ambitious e-commerce brands scale profitably and sustainably.  

We’ve helped businesses see real improvements, like:

🚀 MOD Lighting added $3,300,000 in additional annual revenue.
🚀 Ozarke saw an increase in Revenue Per User of 37.8%.
🚀 Groove increased conversion by 53% and AOV by 23% in 6 months.
🚀 D.Louise added $372,000 in revenue from their existing traffic.
🚀 neat. Doubled AOV and increased revenue by 102.3% with bespoke landing pages.

If you want to get the most from your paid media and scale efficiently, let’s talk.  

👉 Book a free conversion discovery session at www.customerswhoclick.com/apply

Or, if you’re not quite ready, follow along as I share practical tips and insights on optimising your website’s performance.

Will Laurenson

Customers Who Click is growing.

So I’m hiring a CRO Strategist.

Contract / freelance. Fully remote.

Open to different levels of but you must have real DTC / ecommerce experience.

I’m looking for someone who can:

- Lead client CRO strategy
- Run meaningful A/B tests
- Conduct real customer research
- Use behavioural analytics properly
- Turn insights into structured roadmaps

This isn’t a button-colour role.

You’ll take ownership.

You’ll challenge assumptions.

You’ll think commercially, revenue over vanity metrics.

If you understand ecommerce deeply and enjoy figuring out why customers buy (or don’t), we should talk.

Connect & DM me.

CV, portfolio, case studies, Loom - send whatever shows how you think.

Over 1,000 DTC brands downloaded our last ecommerce playbook.

So we decided to go bigger this year.

If you're running a DTC brand in 2026, this might be the most useful resource you read this year.

Together with some of the smartest operators in ecommerce, we created:

👉 How to Move the Needle in 2026

A collection of 18 real strategies brands are using right now to drive growth.

No theory.
No recycled advice.
Just practical changes that actually impact revenue.

Inside the playbook you'll see how brands are:

- Increasing revenue per visitor by +21% without driving more traffic

- Generating $32,835 in extra monthly profit from a simple shipping test

- Increasing abandoned flow revenue by 40% without changing email templates

- Improving conversion rate by 28% after fixing product discovery

- Cutting ad spend by 50% while maintaining growth

and many more...

Huge thanks to the partners who shared their insights:

Quickfire - Shopify Premier Partner, Rebuy Engine, Intelligems, Soar With Us, Octane AI, Zigpoll, Leaf Signal, Videowise, Nosto, Flare - Scheduled Delivery, Sweet Analytics, KnoCommerce, Order Editing, Littledata, PostPilot, Growthub

If you want the playbook

1. Like this post
2. Comment "PLAYBOOK"
3. Share this post to skip the queue

And I'll DM you the link.

$50m+ Generated for DTC Brands With CRO | Host of Customers Who Click 🎙️ (500,000+ downloads)

If your brand can’t clearly answer what it stands for, you don’t have a growth problem.

You have a trust problem.

This week on the podcast, I sat down with James Connell, CEO of LOULOU LOLLIPOP - a Vancouver-based baby lifestyle brand and certified B Corp - and we unpacked what “brand” actually means when the stakes are high.

And in baby, the stakes are very high.

One line from James stuck with me: “Good product is table stakes.”

That’s it. That’s the shift.

We talked about how brand isn’t colours and fonts. It’s storytelling. It’s trust.

It’s what you stand for when a parent is choosing something for their child.

Some of the parts I found most interesting:

– Why service, packaging, and fulfilment should be treated as part of the product

 – The idea that every touchpoint (including customer service) is something the customer has already paid for

 – Winning the “baby shower moment” and entering a family’s life from day one

 – Why creativity thrives when profitability is the constraint

 – And why execution beats perfection every time

We also got into B Corp values, hiring for lived culture (not brand docs that sit in a drive), distributor governance, and how AI could actually make online shopping feel more human again.

If you’re building a consumer brand and thinking beyond short-term conversion tactics, this conversation is worth your time.

Give it a listen and let me know what you think - link in the comments

Newsletter Sign Up

CEO Loulou Lollipop | Global Omnichannel Strategy | Brand Building | Awarded Canadian Marketer of the Year |

LOULOU LOLLIPOP

Your CRO team might be making your numbers look better…

While quietly making your business worse.

I see this constantly with 7–9 figure DTC brands.

Conversion rate goes up.
Everyone celebrates.
Board decks look healthy.

Three months later?

Revenue is flat.
Margin is tighter.
Paid media feels “harder” to scale.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth:

You can increase conversion rate while reducing revenue quality.

Example:

CVR: 2% → 2.4%
AOV: $120 → $95

That looks like progress.

It isn’t.

Because revenue per session just dropped.

And revenue per session is what actually compounds.

RPS = CVR × AOV

It forces commercial honesty.

If your team pushes heavy discounts to lift conversion, RPS exposes it.

If merchandising shifts focus to lower-priced SKUs, RPS shows it.

If cheaper traffic converts but spends less, RPS makes that trade-off visible.

Conversion rate answers: “Did they buy?”

Revenue per session answers: “Did this meaningfully grow the business?”

At scale, that distinction matters more than almost anything else in CRO.

I’m not anti-CVR.

It’s a useful diagnostic.

But if it’s your north star, your team will optimise for the easiest lever, not the most valuable one.

And what gets measured gets manipulated.

If you’re a founder or CMO, check your dashboards.

What’s headline metric #1?

If it’s conversion rate, you might be celebrating the wrong wins.

—

If you want practical CRO breakdowns like this, join 5,000+ DTC founders and marketers getting my twice-weekly newsletter.

No fluff.

No vanity tactics.

Just commercially grounded strategies that actually move revenue.

Link in the comments to subscribe

Want to unlock an extra 10% from your website?

Most 7–9 figure brands don’t have a traffic problem.

They have a funnel problem.

Before you brief another test, redesign a PDP, or blame your paid media team…

Look at this:

Sessions → Product Views (~65%)

Product Views → Add to Cart (~12%)

Add to Cart → Start Checkout (~45%)

Start Checkout → Complete Purchase (~55%)

These aren’t perfect benchmarks.

They’re directional sanity checks from working with high-revenue DTC brands.

Now here’s the strategic bit most teams skip:

Don’t optimise everything.

Find your biggest gap vs benchmark.

Start there.

If you’re converting 8% add-to-cart instead of 12%

→ That’s not a checkout issue.
→ That’s positioning, PDP clarity, offer strength, or intent mismatch.

If you’re only getting 30% checkout completion instead of 55%

→ That’s friction.
→ Trust gaps.
→ Payment UX.
→ Delivery anxiety.

Your funnel usually isn’t broken.

One step is.

And that step is where your next 10–20% revenue lift is hiding.

Senior teams scale faster because they prioritise bottlenecks, not ideas.

Go check your numbers before you plan your next test.

Want access to our Looker Studio Funnel Report? 

Comment FUNNEL below and I'll send it over 

(Must be 1st connection)

AOV is a terrible number to set your free shipping threshold with.

Look at the table below.

Most brands anchor their threshold to average order value.

But AOV is usually the mean.

And the mean lies.

Because it gets dragged up by:

- High-value customers
- Bulk purchases
- Seasonal spikes

So you end up setting a £100 threshold...

...based on an £83 mean AOV…

…when the most common order value is £44.

That’s not a lever.

That’s wishful thinking.

The modal value tells you what customers typically spend.

The mean tells you what happens once outliers get involved.

They are not the same thing.

But this doesn’t mean:

“Drop your threshold immediately.”

That’s too simplistic.

The real analysis happens here:

- Of carts below the threshold, how far below are they?
- Of carts above it, how far above are they?
- How many are actually close enough to be influenced?

On a call last week we found:

- Only 8% of abandoned carts were within £10 of the threshold
- Most carts above the threshold were massively above
- Most carts below it were massively below

So lowering it slightly wouldn’t suddenly “give away” shipping to everyone.

But lowering it slightly and improving upsells?

That turns it into a behavioural lever.

Free shipping shouldn’t be set on a whim.

It should be used strategically to change behaviour.

Do you know your modal order value?

Or are you setting thresholds off an average that hides whats really going on?

---
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“We went from 400 assets a year…to 400 a month.”

That line alone stopped me mid-conversation.

In this week’s episode, I sat down with Katherine Cousins, CEO of QUAY  and honestly, it’s one of those conversations that makes you rethink how fast this space is moving.

Katherine spent nearly 20 years in footwear (Timberland, Wolverine Worldwide) before stepping into Quay and helping evolve it from a social-first sunglasses brand into a serious multi-channel eyewear business.

But what stood out wasn’t just the growth, it was how they’re navigating it.

A few things we got into:

- How their “summer of AI” led to content that’s genuinely indistinguishable from traditional production

- Why they’ve scaled from 400 assets per year to 400 per month (and what breaks if you don’t adapt)

- The reality that 80% of customers still want to buy glasses in-store - despite everything we say about ecom

What I liked most is how balanced Katherine’s thinking is.

Yes, they’re pushing hard on AI and speed.

But she’s very clear: brand integrity comes first, and just because you can use something (like avatars), doesn’t mean you should - at least not yet.

If you’re working in ecom, growth, or even just trying to keep up with how messy this landscape is getting…this episode will give you a much clearer lens on what actually matters right now.

Give it a listen and let me know what you think, especially on the AI vs brand trade-off.

P.S. Are you increasing content volume right now, or trying to be more selective? Curious what people are prioritising right now?

Conversion Rate ↑ 20%.
Revenue ↓ 8.8%.

Look at the table below.

Nothing is broken.

Sessions are flat.
Orders are up.
Conversion rate improved.

On paper, this looks like a win.

It isn’t.

and this exact pattern shows up more often than most teams realise.

Here’s what happened:

- Conversion rate increased from 2.0% to 2.4%
- Orders increased by 20%
- AOV dropped from £50 to £38

Revenue fell.

Revenue per session fell.

And that’s the number that actually matters.

This is why we don’t optimise just for conversion rate.

Conversion rate moves because of:

- Traffic mix
- Discounting
- Campaign strategy

You can “improve” it by:

- Pushing heavier discounts
- Reducing prices
- Shifting acquisition channels

None of which guarantee better commercial performance.

Revenue per session forces a better question:

Are we extracting more value from the traffic we already have?

It captures:

- Conversion rate
- Average order value
- Traffic quality

In one number.

If you’re a Head of Ecommerce, ask yourself:

Are you reporting a metric that’s easy to celebrate...

Or one that reflects the P&L?

If you’re a founder:

Would you rather see conversion up...

Or profit up?

They are not the same thing.

---
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“You might just be throwing money into a vacuum.”

That’s how Josh Roberts described paid media in 2025.

And honestly…he’s not wrong.

In the latest episode of the podcast, I sat down with Josh Roberts, co-founder of Very Special Games - the team behind Ransom Notes and a range of hugely successful tabletop games.

What makes their story interesting is how they’re scaling across DTC and retail at the same time.

Roughly 75% of their revenue comes from DTC, with the rest coming from retailers like Walmart, Target, and Barnes & Noble.

But once retail enters the picture, the data gets messy fast.

A few things from this conversation that really stuck with me:

- Why Meta ads are still their strongest acquisition channel, even though they’re far less predictable than they used to be

- How selling through retail forces you to build a much more sophisticated data stack just to understand if your marketing works

- Why TikTok performs far better organically than through paid media for their category

- And a fascinating point about the tabletop industry: brand loyalty is surprisingly weak - the logo on the box barely matters

We also got into the economics of licensing big IP (Star Wars, Futurama, etc.), why most tabletop games shouldn’t become apps, and how Josh is thinking about designing games that help kids with autism engage socially without feeling like therapy.

Really thoughtful conversation about the trade-offs between creativity, growth, and data.

If you work in DTC, paid media, or product-led brands, you’ll probably recognise a lot of the challenges Josh talks about.

🎧 Episode 291 is live now.

Give it a listen here: https://lnkd.in/ememaXYT

Most brands say they care about the customer journey.

Very few actually obsess over it.

In the latest episode of the podcast, I sat down with Michael G. Callahan , Global SVP & GM of Luminex Home Décor & Fragrance – PartyLite - a 53-year-old brand that’s gone from direct sales heritage to a digital-first DTC business operating across North America and Europe.

What stood out straight away was Michael’s mindset.

He told me:

“What I obsess about every single day is the consumer journey.”

And they take that seriously.

A few things we unpacked in this conversation:

- Why his team pressure tests their website daily, and even asks job candidates to buy a product during interviews

- How they’re experimenting with TikTok campaigns that don’t show the product at all

- Why their biggest growth lever right now isn’t acquisition…it’s loyalty and retention

- And the uncomfortable truth that your website will never be perfect, and that’s fine

We also got into some really interesting discussions around:

- Using AI for localisation without losing brand nuance
- Selling a premium product in a market full of £5 alternatives
- Why storytelling often beats product-led marketing in social

If you work in ecommerce, growth, or customer experience, there are a lot of practical insights in this one.

Michael was incredibly open about what’s working, what isn’t, and what they’re still figuring out.

Definitely worth a listen.

🎧 Listen to the episode via link in the comments

- - -

This episode is sponsored by the amazing Gavin Hewitson of In-box and his amazing Free Email Marketing Community on Skool - Get access FREE via the link in the comments

The agency matured.

The website hadn’t.

So we rebuilt it.

Over the last few years, our thinking has evolved a lot.

The strategy is deeper.
The testing is sharper.
he conversations with brands are more commercial.

But the old site didn’t reflect that.

It didn’t properly show:

- How we approach Customer Revenue Optimisation
- The strategic depth behind our experiments
- The standard of brands we work with
- Where we’re taking Customers Who Click next

Now it does.

The case studies are clearer.
The positioning is tighter.
The thinking is better represented.

And this is just the foundation.

We’ll be rolling out:

- A proper home for the podcast
- Detailed blog breakdowns
- More long-form insight into how we think about profitable growth

If you’re running a 7–9 figure DTC brand and scaling paid media feels harder than it should…

Start with the website.

It’ll give you a clear sense of how we approach growth.

Link in the comments...

You’re ignoring one of your highest-converting customers.

Not your competitors.
Not a new channel.
Your own customers.

I realised how big this was when I recorded my latest episode with Nick Kennedy, co-founder of Giftnote for Shopify.

Nick shared something that genuinely surprised me:

A gift customer converts 3x higher than a normal customer, and gift orders have ~30% higher AOV.

And yet…most brands have no idea who the recipient even is.

Traditionally, once a gift is sent, that’s it.

No visibility. 
No follow-up. 
No relationship.

As I said in the episode, the default mindset is:

“Well, they’re not our customers.”

But they absolutely could be.

We also dug into:

- Why gifting volume doubles in November…and doubles again in December

- Why around 12% of orders across brands are gifts

- How transactional messaging can stay GDPR-compliant

- Practical ways to make gifting an always-on strategy (not something you hide in January)

The big takeaway?

Gifting isn’t a seasonal UX add-on.

It’s a revenue lever hiding in plain sight.

If you’re running a DTC brand (or advising one), this is worth your time.

Give it a listen and tell me what you think.

Link in the comments 👇

Most DTC brands don’t have a scaling problem.

They have a subscription, creative, and attention problem.

Just recorded a really interesting episode with Jim Phillips, co-founder of Graymatter - a mental performance supplement brand built around nootropics and cognitive optimisation.

What stood out straight away is that this isn’t a “we spotted a trend and jumped on it” story.

Jim built the company off the back of his own experience struggling with startup pressure, diving deep into neuroscience, and trying to literally make himself think better.

A few parts of the conversation that stuck with me:

They’re running a 94% subscription take rate…and are happy to lose money on the first purchase to maximise LTV

AI is already handling parts of their operations, and he’s convinced most “button-pushing” marketing roles will disappear

Their biggest growth lever right now? 

Not media buying…content iteration and creative testing at scale.

We also got into the stuff most people don’t talk about:

→ Why having data gave him an unfair advantage when launching

→ How they’re thinking about new channels like Amazon, TikTok Shop, and affiliates

→ And how a serious health scare completely reshaped his motivation as a founder

If you’re working in DTC, there’s a lot in here about where the space is actually heading, especially around acquisition, retention, and how AI fits into it all.

Worth a listen if you’re trying to scale profitably rather than just chase growth.

Let me know what you think if you give it a listen - link in the comments 👇

Most Shopify advice is recycled.

Same playbooks. Same screenshots. Same “10x” nonsense.

This won’t be.

On Feb 25th (7pm CET / 1pm EST), 15 DTC experts get 5 minutes each to share one proven DTC hack.

No decks full of theory.
No 45-minute ramble.
Just what’s actually working.

I’ll be breaking down:

- The navigation change that lifted mobile revenue by 41.5%.

Simple fix.
Measurable impact.
No gimmicks.

Joining me:

🎯Phil Rees
Lada Khazanov
Phil Byrne
Jochen Hildebrandt 
Burak Yolga
Ernesto Barrientos 
Erin Watt
Anthony Morgan
Arni Gali "Arnius Galinskas"
AJ Saunders
Dušan Popović
Pasha Knish
Chase Coleman
Geoffrey Hurth

Hosted by Nick Penev.

If you run a DTC brand, manage growth, or care about improving unit economics - this is worth the 75 minutes.

👉 Grab your spot here: https://lnkd.in/eqCr7Kg2

Looking to sell or scale your 3PL? Get in touch ..

E-commerce Recruitment Expert | Amazon & DTC |Remote teams from Eastern Europe & LATAM | Junior to C-level

Commission Based PPC Advertising Pro. Digital Entrepreneur. Founder of Positive Sparks, Digification & The Digital Sparks Podcast

CEO at @Simpi | Transforming product experiences by creating intuitive instructions, enhancing customer satisfaction

Co-Founder & CEO @ Forceget Supply Chain Logistics

E-Commerce - Amazon Private Brands - Sales

Sr. Tech Partner Manager @ Triple Whale 🐳

Founder & CEO Enavi | We elevate the performance of 8 & 9 Figure Shopify Stores | Pioneering Human-Obsessed CRO

🏅 CXL Certified Conversion Rate Optimization & Digital Psychology Specialist (CRO) 💡 CRO Audits (UI UX, Heuristics) 🎯 Done-for-you A/B Testing 🛒 Landing Pages 📈 32.3x ROI per Test 📊 400+ AB Tests ⚡Ex Pulsetto

Your Next 250k Funding Raised Within 9 Months | Growth Advisor for D2C brands | NED

CEO @Byteout | Helping Amazon sellers go DTC | E-commerce & Shopify nerd 🎓

Helping brands level up on Amazon 🏆 Scaling FBA revenue with custom-tailored growth formulas

Growing Brands Through Content | Founder, Social Playbook | 180K+ Creator

Scaling Health/Beauty DTC Brands w/ Winning Creatives | $100M+ in Ad Spend | Ex-Aston Martin, Tinder, LVMH, Accor, Renault ◉ DM me and let’s chat

🚀 Co-founder @ XTREME POWER brands 🔥 eCom Hot Sauce and 10x5 Hack Series 🤝 Partnerships Advisor @ hellotax and 100+ Companies in the eCom Space 🎙Webinar Host 🏠 Fully Remote since 2010! Long before it was cool 😎

“You’re not doing your job unless you’re pissing off some percentage of people.”

That’s what Eric Bandholz said to me on the podcast this week.

And honestly…he’s probably right.

Eric is the founder of Beardbrand - 13+ years in, navigating a category that’s no longer growing

Search demand for beard care? Flat to down.
Competition? Higher than ever.

They’ve had three consecutive years in the red.

So this wasn’t a “how we 10x’d” episode.

It was a real conversation about:

- What happens when your category matures

- Why top-of-funnel gets exponentially harder

- The difference between a hook and clickbait

- Why brands that try to offend no one become completely forgettable

- Repositioning Beardbrand as a fragrance house disguised as a beard care company

- Selling out limited editions while traffic declines

The part that stuck with me most?

The idea that modern marketing almost requires a point of view strong enough to repel some people.

Because if everyone nods politely…no one remembers you.

Give it a listen, link in the comments

You can only optimise one for the next 90 days

- Conversion Rate
- Average Order Value
- Revenue Per Session

Which are you choosing?

Let us know why in the comments

You can only optimise one for the next 90 days:

They removed 70–80% of their team’s workload.

By answering seven questions.

This week I sat down with Simon Jablon, Creative Director and owner of Linda Farrow - the luxury eyewear brand he rebuilt from zero into a globally distributed business operating in around 100 countries.

What we unpacked wasn’t theory.

It was this:

Most teams are drowning in work that shouldn’t exist.

We talked about:

 – Why being busy isn’t the same as moving the needle
 – How comfortable tasks quietly replace meaningful ones
 – Why B2B customers often get treated like admin
 – And how simplifying just seven recurring questions removed up to 80% of internal workload

One line that stuck with me:

“I employ people to talk to other people, not service the master that is admin.”

If you run a brand, lead a team, or feel like you’re constantly firefighting… this one will probably hit.

🎧 Link’s in the comments.

P.S. What’s one recurring task in your business that probably shouldn’t exist anymore?

Founder/CEO Linda Farrow

Linda Farrow

“Everybody in ecommerce is doing the easy lift.”

Buy Meta ads.
Buy Google ads.
Scale until it gets expensive.

But what happens when that stops working?

That’s what I unpacked this week with Barclay Saul, CEO and co-founder of Kyrgies.

Kyrgies is built around a single product - felt slippers made in Kyrgyzstan - and a very deliberate decision not to chase trends or commoditised categories.


Barclay didn’t even start in ecommerce. He was a music teacher before building the brand. But his background around factories and garment production gave him a deep respect for quality control and long-term thinking .

In this episode we got into:

- Why they’ve significantly dialled back Meta spend
- Why word of mouth has always been their strongest channel
- The decision to pull the plug on Amazon entirely
- How ranked-choice customer surveys shape product decisions
- When customer research works…and when gut instinct matters more

And a fascinating scientific study showing their vegetable-tanned leather soles actively kill bacteria in the home

What I liked most about this conversation is that it wasn’t theory.

It was about making uncomfortable decisions:

- Reducing dependency on paid.
- Building wholesale relationships.
- Running trunk shows.
- Expanding internationally.

Growing in ways that require more effort, but build more resilience.

If you’re feeling the pressure from rising ad costs, or you’re too reliant on one acquisition channel, this one’s worth your time.

Have a listen and let me know your biggest takeaway.

Link in the comments

This has got to be the most generic, bland pitch email I have ever received...and they still managed to disqualify their guest 😂 

Tip for pitching to podcasts:

1. Give me a 2 sentence intro about you or the guest you're pitching.

2. Give me 3-5 bullet points about why you're a fit for the show

Thats it. 

That's all I need.

I don't need an essay, i dont need some 500 word cover letter.

Just give me a few short lines that make me say "yeah great, sounds like a fit, lets chat!"

If you're interested in coming on Customers Who Click - Drop me a DM, we're always open to new guests.

Just be someone who is involved in ecommerce/DTC and we'll get along just fine.

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