S15 E7: More Website Design Lessons From the Best Brands

0:00Welcome back to Limited Supply, the podcast where we get deep into the tactical and strategic side of e-commerce, digital marketing, and building consumer brands. I'm your host, Nik Sharma. I've spent the last nine years building, scaling, and investing in brands. And through this show and my weekly newsletter at nik.co slash email, I'm here to share everything I've learned. The wins, the losses, the experiments, the tactics, and the insights, all so you can unlock your next$100 ,000 in revenue. Today's episode is a good one, but before we dive in, let me tell you about our chosen sponsor for this week's episode.

0:34If you're a Shopify brand, pay attention.

0:37Nik:Roku Ads Manager is built for growth marketers and makes connected TV way easier to test. Go to advertising.roku.com slash limited supply. All right, welcome back to another episode of Limited Supply. My name is Nick, as usual. I'm your host for today and really every episode. but uh you know last week we had a fun episode we went super tactical got a lot of good feedback on uh on last week's episode really going diving in into websites and you know we were supposed to go through eight different websites we only got through three because there was just so many things to pull apart or talk about or discuss on those three websites if you didn't get a chance to look at those you know we went through um a couple of websites let me check my notes and see which ones they were.

1:26I believe it was Siren, which is Sydney Sweeney's new brand, Parachute Home, Gray Matter, and Sniff. And then today I've got a few other sites I want to go through along with two brands. One has 2 million page views a month, according to SimilarWeb, and one has about a million. I want to go through those two and just talk about their funnels, their upsells. These are both, one is like a supplement brand selling women's supplements. One is a device, kind of like a medical device that helps you get more calm, more sleep. It's basically a nerve stimulator. And they're interesting because they run these very unique funnels where it seems like they're driving a bunch of traffic, both from Facebook, but also from native channels to Bula, Outbrain, ZergNet, et cetera, where they kind of find older demographic of people to click things and usually lead them in with clickbait.

2:20So I'm always fascinated by those types of brands, specifically because I think they do usually the best job of getting people toward checkout, mainly because they're dealing with usually an older demographic. So they just make things easier to understand, easier to read, like even iconography wise on their website, their icons tell better visual stories than the icon of like a fancy new direct to consumer website. So I want to finish with those at the end. So regardless of how many sites we get through before we get to that. I'm going to make sure we have time at the end to go through that. So without further ado, let's get into today's episode.

2:57I want to start with The Absorption Company as kind of the first website. And the reason I chose The Absorption Company is, you know, I'm not sure if you've heard of this company before. This is, I believe his name is Ian Summerholder. He's a famous actor. I didn't know who he was before this company, but I don't know many actors and actresses. I'm mostly a music guy. So I came across this brand, you know, back pre-launch when Zeke and his partner were putting this thing together. And it's been amazing to kind of see the evolution. The brand itself is doing super well. I've seen it pop up in retail quite a bit.

3:33Even on direct-to-consumer, it looks like they're pulling about 100 ,000 page views a month. So it's not like it's a small brand by any means. And they've done a really good job both on the branding and kind of brand marketing side of this business. Like if you go to their website, their packaging is beautiful and consistent. The packaging does a really good job kind of separating itself within the brand based on what it does or what the product is. And then also standing out on the shelf, the packaging is really easy to read. You can immediately tell just from looking at it, you know, it's a really nicely branded brand.

4:08And when you go to their website, you kind of see the same thing, right? Whether it's the sizing of how everything is done in relation to one another. So the headline one to maybe the headline three to the CTA, to the body text, to the call outs on the labels on product overlays. Everything is beautifully sized. You know, what's also interesting is on the homepage, they've got the Front Row MD, which I talked about last week on a couple of sites, I believe, on the Gray Matter site. But they've got that Front Row MD right up front. Again, Front Row is one of those things. By the way, if you want an intro to Front Row and like a deal on it, you can DM me.

4:48I'm happy to connect you. A lot of my brands use it. So I have a good relationship with them, them and both Light Labs. But you get the Sharma discount to start, and then you get a couple of these doctors on board. You really don't even pay for Front Row until you start using it with doctors who've already approved it. So there's really no risk to it. But you go down on their website. So first, you've got the Hero up top, which I love. I think they did a really nice job with the Hero. They've got the image at the top half and text at the bottom half. You can kind of go either way. We looked at the Parachute site last week, which basically combines both of those.

5:22So you've got text overlay over the video or the image on the home screen or the homepage, but here they've got it kind of separate, which I'm not opposed to. And if you look at the desktop version of it, you can see it's basically a side-by-side kind of split hero, which I am a fan of for desktop sites. So then you scroll down, you've got immediate social proof. I would probably add a couple of like customer testimonials somewhere here or speak maybe to, they do have 4.97, 30 ,000 plus reviews, which I think is really strong. It is a bit hidden. So I would maybe call that out a little bit louder, maybe even add a quote that speaks to, you know, the absorption of the actual supplements, mainly because they've got, the whole company is about the absorption, right?

6:06So their whole claim is like, we use different technology that allows your body to absorb these supplements better. So I would probably put some sort of social proof that speaks to the absorption before I get to the actual product carousel here. So then you scroll down a little bit, you've got our supplements, you can toggle between stacks, powders, and capsules, which is cool. Stacks is essentially bundles, which I might change just because I think if you're in the health world, you understand peptides, for example. you've seen that word stack, or maybe you're deep in the supplement world, you've seen that word stack, but the average person maybe has not seen that, but maybe they saw this brand at Air One, and now they want to come back online and check it out.

6:45So I always think about catering towards the person who's got really no experience, no understanding, no chops of the brand itself, but is looking to become a customer. So that's the only thing I would change there. I do really like this problem solution module. I thought this was really interesting. and not only is it just a regular problem solution module, but they kind of very visually explain. So like they've got this image where the water is being poured outside of the cup and it's spilling on the table, right? And then the text below it is most supplements are not designed for your body to absorb them.

7:19What an amazing photo to juxtapose next to that section. And then what What I also like is their kind of like problem solution framing brings numbers in. So it reads, 77 % of Americans take supplements, yet over 90 % remain deficient in key nutrients. Effort doesn't equal outcome. Your body never benefits. Your potential goes to waste. So what's cool is, and then in the next part under the solution, it says, we create comprehensive supplements with up to 8x more absorption, providing solutions you can actually feel. Now, the key language or the key wording there is up to. That means that one of the products is tested up to 8x, and then they basically have that messaging to use.

8:02If you scroll down, though, you do get a module for the Essential stack, which talks about up to 5x more absorption. It's probably just an overlook there, or maybe it's that that specific stack doesn't have the product that has the 8x. Here, they can only talk about the 5x, which, you know, I'm not a huge fan of that, like the language that, what's the right word, contradicts itself within, you know, section over section. I'm also a fan of that kind of push-pull section mentality. So I do think this does follow the push-pull, although between the problem solution and the essential stack, there's another shop by goal, which in my opinion is a poll, right?

8:43You're getting somebody to click a goal to shop by. But anyways, I think overall, it's pretty nice. They also did a really nice job creating a nice little homepage feature section below that essential stack where they talk about the clinician's choice reviews and specifically speaking to the bioavailability and the absorption of these specific supplements, which I think, you know, that's what I was talking about doing earlier. What else is cool is, you know, basic, actually that's pretty much the end of the homepage. So now let's go over to the shop page. So what's cool is when you click between, this is just one of those, I just want to call this out because everybody always likes to ask, well, how do you build brand?

9:22Right. And two things come to mind right as I click to the collections page. One was there was a mini loading screen in between going from the homepage to the collections page. And I believe if you go to, let's see, I'm just pulling it up right now, but if you go to Parachute Homes website as well, they also have a loading screen in between. But loading screens, they just basically show you that, or actually even if you go to sharmabrands.com, we've got a little loading screen that shows you 0 to 100, which basically all this does is as the site loads in the back, this loads first and just gives you two to three, maybe one or two seconds of entertainment as the site loads in the back.

10:03depending on the internet connection you have. It's always a good thing just because either one, it looks cool, it looks branded, it looks unique. It's not something that's normal to a Shopify templated website. So people see that and immediately think, oh, wow, that's nice and on brand, or that's premium, elevated, et cetera. And then the second thing is if you've got slower internet, which it's not on you unless your site is built to be slow because your images are big, you have a bunch of extra code that loads on your page, yada, yada, yada. if your site is fast, but then your user, your consumer is on a slow connection, either because they have an older iPhone or they're just on bad wifi, or they're just like in the car, you know, on the highway somewhere underneath the bridge, then having that, well, hopefully they're not on their phone and shopping on your site, but you get the point I'm trying to make, you know, having this little two second delay that is still entertaining, has animation or motion, et cetera, does a nice job kind of breaking that apart.

10:59The next thing is, as soon as I got here, they had these icons that were side scrolling on a marquee right below their headline and subtext, which is another thing to look at because most collections pages don't include H1 and H2 or some subheading text. And it's actually a huge unlock from an SEO standpoint to just do that. So one thing I learned from Dylan Ander, who we had on a couple weeks ago, who does a lot of SEO stuff just for, I don't know, 10 plus years, is he's like, yo, if you just make sure that you have H1 and subheading, and it's actually properly coded as H1 and subheading, and then you have blogs on your website that have backlinks to your collections pages, and you have other links across the internet that have backlinks to the collections page, you can actually help your page rank quite a bit just by adding H1 and subheading text to the top.

11:54Most collections pages just say the name of the collection at the top. And then, and it's usually not coded in H1 or H2 or anything like that. It's just a large font size. And then they've got all the products below, but they don't tend to add like a product description. They don't add tags to the product. They don't add, collection titles with collection subheadings to kind of explain what that collection is. And of course, the way that Absorption Company does their icons here is also nice. But these are all things that, one, they build brand, right? Everybody wants to know, how do you build brand?

12:31Well, building brand is a culmination of 100 ,000 things done at a very small level, like doing things 1 % better over time, every day, all day, all the time in every channel at every touch point. That's how you build brand. And one of those things is like these icons here. Second thing is just making sure that you've got proper descriptions. So now getting back into this, I love that they've got the call outs of the discounts. They've got the ratings call outs and the reviews call outs. What would I do here? I'd probably add a little bit of social proof within the page. Like I still think collections pages are landing pages to some degree.

13:06And so you want to make it educational as well as easy to shop. What I did like is on the desktop side. So it's laid out in a nice way. But when you go down, I guess this is also on mobile, but it's just stretched out. But they've got this free gift with subscriptions call out. So you get premium gifts,$55 value on all subscriptions over 50. That's nice. There's no click here to go to a specific lander or collections page that's just focused on subscription either, which is something I do recommend doing. I used to do this at Hint where you would have a subscription-focused landing page or subscription-focused collections landing page where you can immediately start building your subscription.

13:51Everything that you add to cart automatically goes as a subscription, 30-day default versus one time. So if you're in a hurry and just adding things, which is very common, by the way, for brands that have multiple SKUs, flavors, vitamins, or whatever it is. If you're one of those brands that does have that kind of high activity of just add to cart, go to cart and checkout from a collections page, then you want to make sure you're optimizing that journey as much as possible, knowing that it's skipping the product page itself. I also like that they've got the FAQs at the bottom. I'm a huge fan of that.

14:26I think the one or two things I'd probably add, you know, social proof throughout the collections. So, you know, there's four product units kind of across in the rows. And so I would maybe take one of those four and turn that into like a poster or a call to action or direct people to what the, you know, best product purchase or best bundle purchases for a net new customer coming right out the gate. and just try to help them make that purchase, understand what they're buying, et cetera. I think one of the other things in supplements that I noticed from the best supplement brands is they do a really good job making it very clear up front what to expect for the next 90 days.

15:10So we saw this with Gray Matter. We've seen this with Lemmy. We've seen this with IM8. We've seen this with a lot of the supplement brands we've talked about here is that they'll tell you, hey, within your first 48 hours, this is what you're going to feel within your first seven days. This is what you're going to notice your first 14, 21, you know, 30 days. This is what you're going to notice. So the idea is twofold. One, it's that you kind of tell the consumer like, Hey, you know, this isn't going to be like maybe like an Adderall where you take it and you immediately feel it. Right. Like that's one of the things that, um, people generally look for in anything, whether it's a cocktail or, you know, uh, uh, a capsule or a pill is you want to feel something right away, which is why I think gray matter works so well because you feel that kind of caffeine hit right away.

15:57Um, but it also does a thing where it pro helps prolong the subscription from, from the brand. So if it's expected that, you know, this thing takes call it four to six weeks to really dial in and your body for your body to feel like week over week, you've got enough of that supplementation for whatever that vitamin is in your body to feel it. Then having that eight week timeline on your PDP or in your consumer journey as somebody is making that purchase is going to be super helpful for them to understand what to expect when. So it's not like, hey, within two weeks, oh, I don't feel this. Let me stop taking this.

16:31No, they know that it's going to take six weeks for it to kick in. And then hopefully it does kick in. You don't want to be selling a product that doesn't deliver on what it's supposed to deliver on. So hopefully it does actually kick in and you really start to feel that. Okay, let's go into a PDP. And then I realized we are spending a good amount of time on this. So I want to get through to the next website. Okay. So we get to the PDP. What do I notice right away? Well, right away they've got,

16:59Nik:so I'm looking on the desktop first, but maybe I should look on the mobile first. So I'm going to pull up mobile. So you pull it up right away. You've got this nice kind of header or notification bar and header bar where the logo is nice and compactly sized, right? Then below that, you've got the Daily Basic stack, you've got the clinician's choice badge. Underneath that, you've got a five-star rating with four reviews. I would probably switch this up a little bit. Something I've seen Caraway do is they take their total product reviews and usually put it on PDPs just to kind of add to, hey, 50 ,000 plus ratings.

17:35These guys have 30 ,000 plus. So even though this product or this bundle, the Daily Basic stack only has four reviews, it looks like, they should still talk about the 30 ,000 plus reviews that they have. The other thing I noticed is the initial PDP carousel image is pretty much blank outside of the three bottles.

17:55Nik:So you've got two capsules kind of rendered in front of a rendered bottle, which is fine. But there's all this white space above and below, which I think we can use to put some of those nice icons, whether they're animated or not. We've also got the next few images are, you know, focused on three different products. Again, the three different products are not in order. It's just kind of like randomly put together with supplement facts, kind of like a mini poster promo per one of the three products. And then like maybe mini infographic per product as well. So you got basically like nine or 10 images here.

18:29Nik:Ingredients and benefits. I like that the ingredients is written out and clickable and as is benefits. but this is a supplement brand. This is also a pretty high price supplement brand. I would make those individual pop-ups or slide outs from the right, kind of like a cart where you could see it. You've got a little description here, which is pretty dense in terms of a paragraph. I'd maybe turn those into icons, but then you've got this nice low stock few left call out. The subscribe and save toggle is really nice. I like that it's a toggle. It feels native to, assuming most people probably on an iPhone.

19:04Nik:It feels native to the iPhone. Most Androids use Toggle too, so it just feels native to a mobile user in general. And then you've got the Save 33 % call out. You've got Update, Pause, or Cancel Anytime call out. You've got Free Gifts valued at 55 % call out. The Free Gifts has a little eye icon where if you click it, you can actually see pictures of the stainless steel bottle, the tote bag, the frother. And I think those are cool. They also have a little call-out module below the actual thing. So I would just probably design that module that's already there, just make it slightly bigger, and just explain how the three free GIFs work all together so nobody has to click to see that, just because I am a fan of reducing the number of clicks.

19:49If you scroll down, then you've got your add to cart, your free shipping, your money-back guarantee, HSA, FSA eligible,

19:55Nik:which hopefully they're using TruMed for that. And then right below that, you've got LightLabs, where it's been tested. It calls out, it was last tested in January, approves all the tests. It's got a signature from a lab director. So it just looks really good. Why the daily basic stack works better. I love this. I'm always a fan of adding this why section on websites, PDPs, specifically PDPs on landing pages, but they could also work nicely on collections pages if you can speak directly to that collection versus just generally the supplements you sell in general or the products you sell. And then they've got this nice chart.

20:30Nik:You know, I think these guys just do a really good job with their PDP and just adding a bunch of modules of content in there. So they've got this infographic, which talks about increase in bioavailability and then increase in absorption. And then they've got the month one, month two, month three call outs. Although the only thing I would change is it doesn't, it's not obvious you can click through month one, two, and three. So I would probably make it a little more obvious that you can click those, either by adding three little dots below the checkmark so you can see that there's three pages or three things to scroll through, or somehow make it noticeable that you can click month two or month three, or maybe your CTA below that is just like, or it's like a little right and left arrow that looks very clickable and desirable to click.

21:13Nik:Then you've got your classic, you know, what it pairs well with, your FAQ, your footer. So overall, I think it's a great site. empty cart state looks nice too. There's a free shipping threshold at the top. You have your notification bar, which calls out the discount on subscription. You've got an empty cart with basically pushing the products that I believe have the most sell through. So Calm, the Essentials Pack, the Restore product. And let's see, if you add something to cart as a one-time purchase, let's see what happens. Basically, yep, calls out one-time purchase. I would maybe make that button change from saying one-time purchase to, you know, make it look like a desirable button that says subscribe and save 30 % or whatever that discount is.

21:56Um, there's also no upsells in the cart.

21:59Nik:I'm not sure if that's maybe a mistake because there were upsells before. Um, and then in the quantity selector, it's also a dropdown. I'd probably just change that to plus or minus, or, um, you know, create some kind of offer there at a second one for 30 % off or whatever it may be. Shopify brands, this is the one. Roku Ads Manager lets you connect directly to your Shopify store and run streaming TV campaigns that can drive action, not just awareness. Roku's positioned this as a big differentiator, shoppable TV through action ads and their Shopify integration. If you want top of funnel on the big screen with a proper path to purchase, go to advertising.roku.com slash limited supply.

22:42Nik:All right, we're going to finish off with that and just going to do a quick time check. So because we have a time check here, I am going to go and move over to two brands that I came across. I don't even know how I came across these, to be honest. It might have been from like an advertorial because those are typically where I find these very performance market-y type of brands. so I'm just double checking that I believe what's happening here so okay so this brand really interesting so this company has 884.2k monthly visitors on their website so I usually find that this is data taken from SimilarWeb which is an overpriced tool that unfortunately doesn't have any better pricing options.

23:36Nik:SimilarWeb, if you're listening to this, change your pricing or sponsor me, please. I cannot afford to pay the paid version of it because it's so expensive. But I find that SimilarWeb is usually 20 % to 30 % lower than what the actuals are. So let's call it a million page views a month divided by 30 days. We're talking about 33 ,000 people hitting this site on a daily basis at a pretty conservative number, I would say. So the brand is called Pulsetto Tech. Pulsetto.tech is the name of the brand. And their website is, or that's actually their website, Pulsetto.tech. Looks like the brand name is called Pulsetto.

24:17Nik:But what's interesting about Pulsetto is if you try to go to their homepage, it's going to redirect you to a landing page, which is called FitLite, which I imagine is, I think, one of the variations of their product. And so, let's see here. So you get there, it's got about a million page views. It's primarily built for mobile traffic, which makes sense because if you're driving a million page views, most of these people are most likely coming from mobile. They're not going to be coming just from desktop. But what's really interesting is the website is almost built kind of like a VSL. So you've got this basic PDP or sorry, landing page.