A "Gardyn" within Every Home An Online Success Story

Innovative indoor garden kit Gardyn utilizes for their goal to create a Gardyn at the door of every home. Featured by Forbes, Good Housekeeping, Time, Real Simple, Goop and many more. Gardyn chose for its scalability and customizability. And they've used tools like Trustpilot, Affirm, Klaviyo, and Amazon Pay to improve their online marketing, and convert rates.

Meet Gardyn

The Gardyn's founder and chief executive FX Rouxel began Gardyn in 2019 with a simple yet visionary goal -- to help make a better world for all who could access affordable, convenient, all-natural food, grown sustainably and with minimal impact on the environment.

Through the Gardyn indoor gardening system, you can grow plants, fruits, vegetables and even greens within just two square feet of space, with similar yields that require more than a thousand square feet for the traditional garden!

The app allows users to have access to the device which allows them to set their light and water schedule or put it into vacation mode or purchase more Y cubes, which are the plant's seedlings.

The story of Gardyn

Gardyn began in the year of 2019 , and they shipped their initial prototype in February of 2020 in the same month the company launched its new website  .

When he moved to the U.S., Rouxel was disappointed that he was unable to locate fruits and veggies that were as delicious as the fresh and organic fruits and vegetables from the land of his birth in Provence, France. This quest for tastes from his childhood that inspired him to design the Gardyn process. Instead of working on ideas at the start of the process -- helping farmers in general- FX focused on the consumer at the end. Now, almost anyone can cultivate their own vegetables with minimal hassle and space.

The technology was built in partnership together with McGill University in Canada, and is the first product of its kind specifically designed to be used indoors to cultivate more than 30 plants.

The company was launched at a time of COVID-19 increased interest across the world for family-run, sustainable food supplies and home-based initiatives, Gardyn grew rapidly. The company is located at Bethesda, Maryland, Gardyn now employs a remote staff that includes more than 50 individuals.

The engine that has led Gardyn to success

We sat down with Ava the person in charge of their marketing as well as their website. Ava first met Gardyn while working at an agency that they employed for their marketing. She became absorbed by the passion and mission of Gardyn's management team.

"I am in love with this company." The woman said "They decided to make marketing internal and I was not ready to go. So I asked to remain and they offered me full-time employment."

Her enthusiasm is evident -- coming across more like an entrepreneur than a head of website.

Choosing

Ava was instrumental in selecting as the preferred platform. She is not as a web developer, but she does have some experience with WordPress.

"The reason we chose is that it works well with WordPress and also gave us the most flexibility. We didn't want to have an additional cookie cutter Shopify store. Shopify would be more of a pain to customize. You'd definitely require a developer...and there wasn't one.

In the end, as I have some experience using WordPress but not as much with it , I was able to search for the best way to create our new website."

Their first website was developed entirely on their own, using Elementor, and with no developers. The site had everything they required for the launch including a product details page (PDP) and membership capabilities as well as a user-friendly shopping cart as well as a checkout process for their customers.

"There were, of course certain growing pains" Ava says. Ava. "Just trying to plan to increase scaleability. It was a matter of coding something in one way and after two months then we'd need to change the code since I hadn't thought further in the future."

It was a blessing, as it gave Gardyn the flexibility to adapt quickly as the company soared in popularity -- even in the span of a month or next.

As the head of website, Ava keeps a close check on the performance of metrics. "I would like to know that, if people land at the homepage, will they go to the PDP? Then from there I'd like to check what is the PDP in the form of an "add to basket" cost, and after that naturally, they add it to the cart to checkout. It is my goal to have everything be smooth and seamless through the funnel. Particularly those important metrics"PDP to conversion, cart to conversion, checkout to conversion." PDP to conversion from cart to conversion check out and conversion."

A major way she's found how to boost these metrics is via customer feedback.

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 the way it differs from other in-home food growing systems.

"It's telling people that we've got Tesla however, if they've never driven, do they know what a Tesla is? It's been a challengeto explain it in a way so they know how it will fit into their lives. This isn't just another job or an activity that's likely disappear. It's extremely simple, and is always around."

One way to solve this issue, they have discovered, is utilizing user generated content (UGC), in the form of customer reviews. The Gardyn team noticed the value in reviews however, they needed a platform that would consolidate reviews in one location. It also needed to be authentic.

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

"It builds a sense trust when customers can visit the Trustpilot site and see that reviews and reviewers are genuine. They also write reviews that have five stars. They don't receive any incentives, it's just their desire to let us know that they are awed by Gardyn."

In order to get feedback, Gardyn reaches out via email to individual customers that are engaged- like longtime users. They also reach out in the Facebook group in which people collaborate and are succeeding to to get the maximum value from the system.

Trustpilot is a great way to make more of their reviews.

"The Backend experience with Trustpilot is so much easier to handle as well as view, and have the ability to download certain reviews, and other such. We can contact reviewers, request photos, or get more stories for our blog for a more human experience and emotional bond.

We especially found it useful to create ads or review cards within Trustpilot. I'm able to download all the SVG documents very easily. The system is already designed with best practices in mind which is very helpful."

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

"I did video user experience feedback where people went through the site and talked openly about their experiences and thoughts. I would say eight of 10 said"Oh, reviews! This is good.' We also use testimonials on every email. Every footer we include Trustpilot reviews in every single footer."

In real-life, the outcomes speak for themselves.

If Gardyn adds reviews to their Facebook ads, their click-through rates double. Also, when they introduced reviews to their website, engagement went up and bounce rates went down.

Integrating additional tools and features for success

Ava already mentioned that the selection of the store platform they chose to store was, in part because of the adjustable nature of the platform. What exactly is that manifested?

Extensions.

"I'm self-taught and have learnt to Google. I've been taught to be a better learner. It's impossible to determine what extension works until you test it. So the 30-day return policy can be extremely helpful.

The great part is, it's because WordPress is open source which is it being open source it's a lot of possibilities to explore. There are so many things to choose from, you'll find what you want. You can always find an extension of everything I'm looking for.

She claims that Trustpilot as well as Affirm are certain to have made the greatest impact in the growth of their sites.

"It was super simple to use . I'm not sure the reason we hadn't utilized it earlier. Klaviyo quickly understands exactly how to use the funnel. We actually doubled the number of contacts we capture from abandoned carts due to the fact that Klaviyo is able to connect abandoned carts using an ad. I believe we've got close to 50,000 users currently."

Implementing express pay

The MyGardyn website launched express pay options in November 2021 and quickly saw customers adopting them. A lot of adoption. Today the majority of transactions on desktops and 60% of mobile purchases utilize express payments. For the transactions in all 30% of transactions are made using a credit card, and 20% make payments through Affirm.

The most important thing is that they witnessed an increase of 50% on mobile conversions compared to desktop during the same time period. This underscores the significance of using express payment options like Apple Pay, Google Pay as well as Amazon Pay.

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

"If you think about it, everyone has Amazon. So I just feel everyone's like, 'Oh yeah I've got it. I'm already signed up to the app. It's only just two minutes. It seems like the rate of abandonment is 17% in that case. This is really low."

The future is in sight

Gardyn is a company that aims to provide everyone with access to fresh foods. A Gardyn in every home obviously, but that is the ultimate goal.

The company is currently engaged in an G3 Initiative, called Gardyn Grows for Good which is working in partnership with nonprofits and schools in order to provide food to deserts and affected communities. The goal of this project is to provide healthy and affordable food to communities with low incomes.

If asked for advice that she would give others, she doesn't begrudge it.

"Don't be afraid to take on major changes," says Ava. "A website never ends. It's always growing. It's always changing. Be aware of your instincts, and follow the data I would highly suggest and trustpilot.

If you're selling something or doing hardcore marketing make sure you're doing it to do something that makes the world better and feels good when people buy the product."

Then, Ava also shared her top things she has grown within her Gardyn: "My favorite thing is called Red Mustard. It's a very spicy salad that tastes similar to horseradish. It's great in sandwiches! Also, I've grown cherries and strawberries that were so delicious. I've never experienced anything similar to that."