Case Study | Ecommerce
Fomo and ecommerce go together like Blockbuster and Late Fees.
Since our platform syncs purchase orders for over 3,000 Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and Magento businesses, our database is rich with insights about the impact of social proof for online storefronts.
To put our data to the test, we launched a basic insights dashboard that pulls our customers’ Google Analytics data to calculate direct sales attribution from Fomo.
As of this writing, the 130 Fomo customers who connected their stores with our dashboard have generated over $510,000 in direct sales. Phew!
Recently we had the opportunity to catch up with a few of these businesses to learn more about their inspirations, struggles, and triumphs in the competitive e-commerce ecosystem.
Featured in this post
- Keyway Designs -- wood and leather iPhone cases
- Bariatric Pal -- support community for weight-loss surgery patients
- Trolling Motors -- shipping boat motor specialists
Keyway Designs
“Nothing is worse than seeing a product online or on the shelf that has been put out into the market and you can tell that it was rushed and poorly executed, that the designers got lazy or ran out of money and just wanted to finish the product. We want our products to be ones that people look at and think ‘These people enjoy what they do, and it shows.’ Our group of founding partners have always been driven to build, create, and do things for ourselves and in 2011, when we got our new iPhone 4's, we decided to do just that.”
That’s Kyle Russell, founder and CEO of Keyway Designs.
Having been in business for 5 years, Keyway has helped consumers protect their phones with beautiful cases, ever since the iPhone 4.
Here’s the conversation that got his team fired up about the glaring opportunity:
- Cases like Bullet-Proof are bulky and ugly
- Designer cases are expensive, but poorly made and not protective
- Cheap cases are also low quality
- Why is there no high quality, stunning, reasonably priced gear?
By combining the founders’ skillsets of art, design, engineering, and woodworking, they began a plan to make all their cases locally, to create jobs and guarantee high quality for their customers.
When asked about the difficulties of starting out, Kyle says this:
“Back when we launched the store, getting high quality traffic was one of the hardest things. Once you've got your first little bit of traffic, keeping them is the next hurdle because you've got no brand recognition or social proof, no clout. We believe that we've got a great product, and we've got many happy customers as proof, but continually getting in front of large amounts of the right people is always the challenge."
Most of Keyway’s customers come from social media, as well as some organic traffic on search engines and promoted content on Instagram.
In regards to their working style, Kyle was kind enough to share their manifesto:
- We are the limit pushers, the mold-breakers, and the different ones.
- We are the statement, the personality, the self-expression.
- We are the exploration, the challenge, and the achievement.
- We are the details, the little things, the obsession.
- We are the confident, the passionate, and the trusted.
- We are the curated, the created, the crafted.
- We are the bridge between art, engineering, and you.
- We are the experience.
Now we’re just jealous. Do you have a manifesto?
Of course, we also wanted to see how Fomo impacts Keyway's business:
"The Fomo App is, in my opinion, a trend-setter; and I mean that literally.
We have seen mini-trends start and end within a day just because one person ordered a certain case in the morning, and it started a wave of people seeing that someone else purchased it, giving that design some social-proof. Before installing Fomo, our sales still showed trends, but they were spread out over weeks and months. With Fomo on our store, we now see streaks of the same case selling multiple times in a row as people see and click the notification. We use third party click tracking software to validate these ideas, and the proof is in the pudding!"
This is not only awesome, but it makes sense.
Since ecommerce search and discovery is still largely broken, it's very difficult for consumers to find the [often buried] inventory that’s right for them.
We’re glad that Fomo can encourage shopping trends for Keyway, and hope to continue working with them for a long time.
Bariatric Pal
With over 300,000 members, Bariatric Pal is the largest social networking for the weight-loss-surgery community.
This isn’t your corner vitamin store either -- founder Alex Brecher tells us that following weight loss surgery, patients are commonly instructed to begin taking [potentially hard to reach] medication.
Where do they find it? Bariatric Pal.
According to Alex, managing an inventory of over 600 products is no small feat. We imagine this rings particularly true when your customers truly depend on your ability to reconcile in-stock vs out-of-stock, and help them plan appropriately.
When asked how Fomo impacts this thriving community, Alex tells us that it “socially influences potential customers purchasing decision by showing them what other customers have already purchased or reviewed.”
Trolling Motors
Trolling Motors sells trolling motors, accessories and offers helpful resources for product selection and installation.
Owner Clayton Chrisman acquired the business 3 years ago, and having been familiar with the industry already, Clayton tells us he was looking to get into ecommerce and that the opportunity made sense.
We asked Clayton what it’s like running a thriving business as a CEO…
“While it provides a tremendous amount of flexibility, you can never truly get away from it 100% - it just becomes a part of your life, for better or for worse! Oh, and never knowing what the search engines are up to with their algorithms.”
Search algorithms, tell me about it! Do you think we’ll rank page 1 for “Fear of missing out” anytime soon? Not a chance. Thanks #Forbes / #HuffingtonPost / #HBS.
Clayton also had something nice to say about setting up Fomo:
"Setting up Fomo was an easy implementation. [I’m] Interested to see what new features and related products might come out of this. Would also be interested to see data on what settings produce the best conversions.. if you're a store-owner on the fence, try it!"
Summary
These are just 3 unique stories, from 3,000+ ecommerce stores who use Fomo to increase conversions.
If you’re interested in trying Fomo on your store or website, start free today.
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