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Sales on third-party ecommerce platforms contributed significantly to Aloha’s success, so the brand decided it was time to scale its own DTC channel to build a stronger community and connect with customers directly. However, the brand’s Shopify Plus theme was overly coded and challenging for its developers to manage, so it enlisted certified Shopify Plus Preferred Partners, Chelsea & Rachel Co., to help them restructure their site and fully take advantage of the platform’s features. One of their priorities during this process was to emphasize review generation: Aloha had been dissatisfied with two providers in the past, but Chelsea & Rachel referred them to Okendo to better leverage customer feedback and loyalty rewards. With a newly-developed storefront and verifiable testimonials in place, Aloha’s DTC channel has grown by 300% year-over-year and continues to capture reviews at an unprecedented rate.

Aloha is a leading maker of plant-based protein bars, shakes, and powders. 100% organic, 100% of the time, Aloha is a USDA-certified B-corp operating with a mandate to balance profit with purpose. To top it off, it’s products are delicious!

Implementing Familiar Elements to Boost Brand Authority

Aloha was aware that testimonials are more effective when there is a significant amount of them, so the brand’s next objectives were to incentivize review generation and apply them to customer service. With Okendo, Aloha was able to perform a lookback to make up for reviews it missed out on with its previous two providers and made significant strides toward accumulating enough reviews that they could influence shoppers’ purchasing decisions.

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When Aloha approached Chelsea & Rachel Co., the latter suggested a thorough overhaul of their Shopify Plus website and helped them centralize their reviews, subscription, and upsell systems onto one platform to create a cohesive shopping experience. An essential component of this experience was implementing elements that online shoppers are familiar with on other sites. Steven Gmelin, VP of Digital Sales & Strategy at Aloha, explains:

“You’re an unknown entity as a new DTC store, but consumers are familiar with shopping on other ecommerce platforms. Customers expect certain elements to give them confidence that they’re ordering from a reputable site. We wanted to provide these elements and use them to capture reviews on customers’ overall shopping experiences, which helps us glean contextual insights and drive conversions.”

One of the most critical elements Aloha wanted to implement was customer reviews. Consumers expect to see testimonials when shopping online that assure them of a brand’s legitimacy, and the presence of Attributes — Aloha measures product attributes including ingredient quality, value, and nutrition, as well as customer attributes such as age range and favorite flavors — helps them gauge how specific feedback applies to their buying scenarios. Conversely, Aloha uses reviews to glean insight into both its products and shopping experience, enabling it to remedy any issues that contribute to its bounce rate and assess the likelihood customers will make a second purchase.

The brand did not want to generate a vague number of reviews, though. Aloha needed Okendo to accomplish a specific goal it had in mind: reaching critical mass.

“Countless consumers start their purchasing journeys with product research due to the robust nature of reviews and the amount of feedback available. However, studies show that shoppers need to see a critical mass of at least 20-25 reviews per item to believe they’re real. Aloha wasn’t there yet. Since installing Okendo, we’ve collected dozens of reviews within the past 90 days and are well on our way to reaching critical mass for all of our products by the end of the summer,” Steven says.

“We’ve built three flows in the past two months that generate significant monthly revenue for our growing brand. Our abandoned cart sequence is one of our best performing thanks to the ability to integrate product reviews that remind customers what they’re missing out on,” Steven notes.

According to data from Chelsea & Rachel, Aloha’s cart abandonment rate has decreased from 70.93% to 58.63% and from 66.25% to 52.5% amongst returning customers.

Optimizing Aloha’s shopping experience also includes streamlining its customer service. The brand leverages Okendo’s Gorgias integration so that whenever a customer leaves a review with three stars or fewer, it automatically generates a customer service ticket that enables a representative to figure out what went wrong and how they can improve a particular customer’s experience.

Steven adds: “We love how Okendo integrates with our existing tech stack. It’s full of seamless integrations with some of our favorite tools, such as Klaviyo and Gorgias. Its UI is remarkably turnkey and intuitive, which enables us to be less hands-on while it operates in the background to deliver incremental value to our overall customer experience.”

With all of its processes in one place and elements customers expect implemented onsite, Aloha is well on track to realizing its DTC channel’s envisioned growth. Rachel Saul, Co-Founder and Chief Strategist at Chelsea & Rachel Co., adds:

Reaching Critical Mass and Recovering Lost Revenue

Steven notes that Aloha’s prior reviews apps were “functional, but not as easy to use.” Okendo enabled greater automation, so the brand wasn’t surprised when it generated a significant number of reviews for its bars, powders, and drinks during a five-month lookback. To incentivize testimonials in the present, Aloha takes advantage of Okendo’s native rewards feature. It offers customers 10% off their subsequent purchases for submitting a testimonial and 20% off orders $15 or above for reviews that include a photo or video. The brand’s review rate is now 5.57%, compared to the 2% that merchants can expect on Amazon.

Aloha attributes much of its success with testimonials to Okendo’s Klaviyo integration. Email marketing is integral to soliciting reviews and communicating to customers that rewards are available, but it also helps the brand recover abandoned carts.

“Aloha is one of those brands that is intentional in every step. Their emphasis on elevating the customer experience at all touch points is in their ethos. There is no doubt that by leveraging Okendo, Aloha can showcase both how loved they are as a brand as well as how amazing their products are. In turn, their conversion rates have skyrocketed.”

Aloha now boasts an average star rating of 4.73, and Chelsea & Rachel report that emphasizing Aloha’s customer experience has grown its conversion rate from .42% to 4.0%.