How we beat a top CRO agency head-to-head and made Bareline 46% more profit per visitor
Bareline sells denim and streetwear to an audience that decides in seconds whether a brand is worth wearing. Social was already doing its job: heavy traffic, real revenue. What the store did with that traffic was the problem, and there was barely any profit left at the end of it. They came to us by referral after a redesign from one of the top CRO agencies dropped their conversion rate. We rebuilt the store on audience research and data, then split-tested it against that agency's build. Ours won across the board.
The Brand
A lot of traffic. Real revenue. Not enough profit
Bareline sells denim and streetwear — jorts, baggy sweatpants, selvedge — to an audience that decides in seconds whether a brand is worth wearing. Social was working hard and the traffic was heavy, so on paper the revenue looked healthy.
What the store did with that traffic was the problem. Too few visitors converted, and the ones who did didn't spend enough to leave much behind following customer acquisition cost. They had already tried to fix it: a redesign from one of the top CRO agencies for consumer brands, built on heuristics, competitor teardowns and UX best practice. No audience research, no data analysis. Conversion went down. They came to us on a referral.
The Approach
Heuristics and competitor research are only half the picture
Heuristics, competitor research and UX data are useful, and they're also where most CRO agencies stop. They describe what tends to work in general. They can't tell you who this brand's customer is, what they're actually worried about, or where this store is losing them. That takes audience research and data analysis, so that's where we started.
- 01
Researched the audience before touching the design
Who actually buys Bareline, what they wear it with, what they compare it against, and what stops them the first time they land. Best practice can tell you what usually works; it can't tell you any of that.
- 02
Read the store's own data before proposing a single change
GA4 and Clarity behaviour, session recordings, and checkout drop-off, so we were fixing where visitors actually stalled rather than where a heuristic said they might.
- 03
Fixed usability first, which most CRO work undervalues
Every key objection answered on the page, model size references added, size guides rebuilt, navigation reworked so nothing a buyer needs is more than a step away.
- 04
Optimised for profit per visitor, not conversion rate alone
A discount lifts conversion and costs you the margin. We went after order value and trust at the same time, so the extra conversions were worth having.
- 05
Split-tested the whole build against the incumbent agency's version
Instead of shipping on conviction: same traffic, same window, both versions live. The numbers settled it rather than the argument.
The Results
The other agency's build lost on every metric
We ran our build against the incumbent agency’s head-to-head: same traffic, same window, both versions live. At a 95% confidence level the test gave our version a 100% probability to beat. Conversion rate came in 41.78% higher, revenue per visitor 41.49% higher, and profit per visitor 45.82% higher. The intervals are wide, which is what an honest readout looks like, but the worst case in every one of them is still a double-digit lift.
Both versions ran on the same traffic over the same window, with a 100% probability to beat. Point estimates shown; the 95% confidence interval for each metric is given alongside.
The Foundation
Four bottlenecks, fixed together, because profit is a chain
A store that converts but sells one cheap item doesn't make money. A store with a high order value that nobody trusts doesn't either. Each fix below is worth something on its own; shipped together they compound, which is why the profit lift came in ahead of the conversion lift.
| Bottleneck | What changed |
|---|---|
| Usability | Objections answered in place, model size references added, size guides rebuilt, navigation reworked |
| Visual identity | Restyled from generic-dropship to an up-and-coming brand worth being seen in |
| Order value | Intuitive cross-sells, incentives worth taking, and urgency that's real rather than decorative |
| Trust | Stronger branding, reworked copy, better trust signals, reviews easy to reach |
Nothing here came off a best-practice checklist. Every change traced back to something the audience research or the store’s own data said was costing money.
For Apparel & DTC Brands
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