The challenge.

Croq la Vie’s blog was a major traffic driver, bringing in large numbers of users at the research and discovery stage. However, this engagement wasn’t translating into revenue.

Users were consuming content, but failing to progress naturally into the shop or product pages, leading to a weak conversion rate from blog to purchase. This was really surprising, because the blog content is all about pet diets and solving common pet issues, and the shop is packed with the very products that could help solve their problems! In short, they had plenty of interest, but too much friction between inspiration and action!

The opportunity wasn’t about driving more traffic; it was about making the existing traffic work a bit harder.

The approach.

Deep-dive research and insight gathering.

We started by analysing user behaviour through GA4, supported by user testing, experience-based reviews, and exit polls. This gave us a clear picture of where users were dropping off, what they were looking for next, and what was stopping them from moving forward.

We found a few clear themes:

Clearer signposting from content to commerce.

Blog readers often didn’t know where to go next. They were reading about the solutions, but didn’t actually have a direct way to the solution, which was right in front of them! We recommended and introduced clearer internal signposting and more intentional CTAs within blog posts, guiding users towards the relevant products based on the content they were engaging with.

Rather than feeling ‘salesy’, these touchpoints were designed to feel helpful and natural, meeting users at the exact moment they were ready to explore further.

Navigation and discoverability.

We found that reaching relevant products wasn’t as intuitive as it needed to be, particularly for users with a clear end goal in mind. Cat and dog products were initially housed within the same journeys, creating unnecessary friction. We recommended separating these into distinct, clearly labelled CTAs to help users self-select faster and move more confidently towards the right products. 

Optimising product and category pages for reassurance.

Once users reached the shop, there were still barriers that were causing slight hesitation to convert. We made targeted improvements to product and category pages, including enhanced imagery and stronger reassurance elements, to build confidence and reduce hesitation, particularly for first-time buyers. Alongside this, we suggested enhancing on-site filtering to allow users to refine by pet age and specific dietary needs, making it significantly easier to find suitable products quickly and reducing drop-off during the browsing phase.

The output.

The output was a detailed slide deck bringing together insights from every strand of research, clearly outlining what we uncovered at each stage and how those findings directly informed our recommendations.

Alongside this, we delivered a separate, comprehensive recommendations document designed to support confident decision-making and prioritisation. Each recommendation was scored based on ease of implementation, expected impact, and overall priority, making it clear which fixes and tests would deliver the greatest value fastest, and which could follow later as part of longer-term optimisation.

The results.

The impact was immediate and measurable!

With the Croq la Vie team quickly implementing the recommended changes on site, we were able to accurately measure performance and assess whether our hypotheses held true. This collaborative approach led to a 200% increase in blog-to-shop traffic, and as a result of these improvements to the user journey, the site saw a 10% uplift in year-on-year transactions! 

This goes to show that a better experience and not just more traffic, was the key growth lever in this instance.