How The Oodie Reimagined CRO & A/B Testing With Visually
Conversion Rate Uplift
Per Session Value Increase
Total Experiences & Tests
Background
The Oodie is a global leader in comfort wear, best known for its signature oversized wearable blankets. Founded by Australian entrepreneur Davie Fogarty, the brand was born out of a passion for creating ultra-soft, cozy products that bring joy to customers worldwide. Leveraging his expertise from previous ventures like Calming Blanket, Davie built The Oodie into a household name, experiencing rapid growth, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, when demand for loungewear soared.
Today, The Oodie is more than just a viral sensation. It has evolved into a sophisticated eCommerce business with a strong brand identity, a loyal customer base, and a commitment to innovation. As the company matures, its team is focused on refining the shopping experience while expanding to other product categories.
Challenges
Matt Stenning leads CRO operations at The Oodie. His team consists of two eCommerce managers, two developers, and sometimes collaborates with an external agency as well. While the team has long been focused on CRO, they faced significant challenges when it came to A/B Testing:
- Developer Dependency: Previous tools required technical resources for implementation which severely reduced testing volume and velocity.
- High Costs: Testing was expensive and never seemed to justify the ROI.
- Data Inconsistencies: Discrepancies between data sources made it difficult to trust test results.
Frustrated with these limitations, Davie decided it was time to look for a more efficient and reliable solution. One morning, Matt received a Slack message from Davie:
“Look at this. Let’s try it.”
The message included a link to Visually, and that moment will forever mark a turning point for The Oodie…
For Matt and Davie, Visually was an easy choice:
- No-Code Simplicity: Tests could be launched quickly and effortlessly, without requiring developer intervention.
- Reliable Data: Unlike previous tools, Visually’s reporting is both incredibly robust and accurate.
- Exceptional Support: Visually provides not just the platform, but also the insights and recommendations for tests
Outcome
At first, Matt assumed Visually was just for simple visual tweaks. But as time went on, Matt realized Visually wasn’t just a lightweight testing tool - it had Enterprise level power to support custom coded tests, price testing, shipping testing, and even checkout testing.
Looking back, these are some of Matt’s favorite tests:
OUT-OF-STOCK RECOMMENDATIONS
For any store, out of stock product pages are usually a dead end for shoppers. Or worse, a frustrating moment that sends them away from the site, feeling that they weren’t able to find what they were searching for.
With a number of limited edition products, the Oodie naturally has a solid number of out of stock product pages. Like most brands, they simply included an extra CTA to “Notify Me When Available”.
Visually’s team suggested adding a personalized product recommendations block to turn this unsettling situation into a moment of discovery. Instead of shoppers feeling lost, point them in the direction of similar products they may also enjoy.
With Visually, The Oodie was able to set up the experience with ease, displaying a native product recommendations widget only for products that were out of stock, while all other pages remained as they were. The test showed a 9.5% increase in conversion rate, and is now running on all out of stock product pages.
TRENDING PRODUCTS
When it comes to social proof, The Oodie typically leverages reviews and other user generated content to further endorse their products. Visually’s team proposed one more touch: highlighting how many shoppers bought the specific product. Doing so creates a sense of popularity and urgency, encouraging shoppers to hop on these trending products before it’s too late.
It was a huge win for The Oodie, as conversion rate soared 12.5% with this simple addition. But there’s so much more to optimize and consider moving forward.
What metric to display: viewed, added, bought? What timeframe to use: day, week, month? What threshold to use: 50, 100, 500? Matt and the team will continue to experiment to determine what works best.
QUICK LINK STORIES
Nowadays, the majority of The Oodie’s customers are purchasing on their mobile devices. However, the team has so far struggled to improve the mobile navigation experience.
Visually’s CRO experts often recommend a “quick links” navigation to mimic the desktop feel of collection page headers. Matt was intrigued by the idea, but wanted it to align more with the brand look and feel. So Visually’s team swapped the links for circular images to give off an Instagram “story” like feel.
The experience sure did resonate with shoppers, and contributed to a 2.8% uplift in conversion rate. Now, Matt will look to further test the specific collections and hierarchy to display.
PRODUCT PAGE RECOMMENDATIONS
The Oodie has long been utilizing product recommendations to encourage further product discovery and increase AOV. However, the approach was simply to set it and forget it.
Visually’s CRO experts encouraged Matt to take another look at their product recommendations, and make an effort to continuously test and optimize - from styling, to layout, and even the algorithms.
The first test compared the original horizontal product slider to a vertical mini-collection. The hypothesis was simple: the product slider displayed only two products at a time, while the mini-collection would show six products at once. Not to mention, the vertical scroll is much more natural and intuitive than a horizontal scrolling motion.
The test was a great success, leading to a 2.6% uplift in AOV. More importantly, Matt and his team are inspired to continue refining their product recommendations and upsells to determine what works best. Fortunately for them, Visually makes this almost effortless.
Conclusion
Visually has fundamentally changed how The Oodie approaches CRO. From a no-code editor to enterprise-grade testing capabilities, Visually delivers the flexibility, reliability, and power the brand needs to scale. Now, as The Oodie refines its brand and expands into new product categories, Visually remains an essential part of its growth strategy - helping it maximize every dollar spent on driving traffic to the site.