How FullBeauty Could Make at Least $100 Million More by Using These 3 Simple Tactics
Meghan Trainor, she of the “All About the Bass No Treble” fame is a FullBeauty ambassador.
FullBeauty is the leading retailer for full-sized women, with about $1.4 billion in annual revenue across all their brands: Jessica London, Roaman's, Woman Within, KingSize, BrylaneHome, Ellos
They’ve been around since 1920, have changed ownership several times and recently filed for bankruptcy protection after being sold by Apax Partners, a private equity firm. Private Equity is indeed eating the world!
In this post we analyze FullBeauty.com’s purchase funnel from a CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) perspective to show how they could make significantly more money—at least $100 million more annually.
We’ll review three pages, starting with the lowest hanging fruit: The Thank-you, email capture and checkout pages.
By the way, I actually bought an item on their site, to fully experience the checkout process. Here’s proof: me wearing the full-size dress I bought 😊
The Thankyou Page
This page represents the biggest opportunity as they do not do any 1-click-upsells. As we have written before ‘Thank You’ pages are rarely monetized, yet doing so is easy and can increase revenue by 10% plus overnight.
They have the right idea in showing me other clothes that shoppers liked, but this is not a true 1-click-upsell. In a true 1-click-upsell, the shopper can purchase more items without having to re-enter credit card information. Instead, they present a puny $10 cash-back offer!
Both Shopify and WooCommerce have plugins that allow you to do 1-click-upsells. And even with a homegrown ecommerce solution it shouldn’t be too hard to implement. If they got even a 5% lift in sales from doing this, it would be worth $70 million!
The other issue is, it doesn’t look like much thought went into their “people also liked” items list as they show me the same dress I just bought. It would be more profitable to show items that make a complete outfit.
The Email Capture Form
Below is the current form. It is better than most but can still be improved:
Here’s our optimized mock-up along with notes about the specific changes made (they are similar to those recommended for The RealReal [link])
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Uses point sequenced grammar to convey the benefit before the ‘cost’ (sign up)
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Makes the other key benefit (besides get 40% off) much more prominent i.e. you’ll also be the first to know about exclusive offers that typically sell out.
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Uses a visual to further entice visitors
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The Call-to-Action reinforces the benefit
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A privacy seal and associated messaging reduces anxiety
If you are thinking, “it is just a bunch of emails what is the big deal?”, think again! Good, old, boring email is still one of the most lucrative marketing channels, especially for female focused fashion brands, because women buy clothes frequently.
By one estimate, each $1 spent on email marketing generates a $38 return and so each incremental email captured has a really high value. With some tweaking and testing, the optimized form can likely produce a 10% to 30% lift.
Checkout Page
Below is the current checkout page.
And here is our optimized mockup, along with notes:
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Adding a security seal where you ask for credit card information has demonstrably reduced cart abandonment and the Norton seal appeals to women.
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Using the satisfaction seal and a prominent reminder of the 60-day free returns policy at the point of purchase usually reduces anxiety and increases conversion rates
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Visually show the item that I added to my cart higher up on the page. Minor changes like this that ensure continuity in the prospect’s mind—and prevent hitting the browser’s back button—can reduce cart abandonment. In the original version the item appears but much lower on the page. On some screens it may not be above the fold.
Asking me to sign up for a credit card during purchase
As the screenshots above show, I am asked to sign up for a credit card within the funnel. The strict CRO perspective on this is that it is a source of friction, but maybe signing up people for credit cards is much more profitable than selling clothes. Maybe, like GM and GE, the core business long ceased being viable and they are now a finance company masquerading as an online retailer!
More Serious Issues
While these tactical changes will almost certainly generate more revenue, the business appears to have more serious underlying issues. Their reviews and ratings clearly show this, and they lag most of their peers. Solving these issues will go a long way in helping the company return to profitability and re-emerge from bankruptcy.
FullBeauty Average User Rating: 1.5/5 stars
Peer Group (Other Women’s Clothing Sites) Average User Rating: 3.5/5 stars
