Story of partnership
After sending out an RFP for an ambitious growth project to the top eCommerce agencies, Dollar Shave Club chose Anatta to be their CRO partner at the start of 2022.
In the year-long partnership, Anatta was able to not only launch 60+ high-value tests for DSC, recovering considerable growth—but also empower DSC to seamlessly run their own CRO program. With Anatta’s support, the output of work DSC accomplished in 2022 shattered DSC’s previous internal records and enabled the brand to reaffirm its position as an industry-leading grooming company.
- Launched 60+ high-value tests for DSC, recovering considerable growth
- Output of work DSC accomplished in 2022 shattered DSC’s previous internal records and enabled the brand to reaffirm its position as an industry-leading grooming company
- 60+ Tests Launched
KPIs & Results
Anatta’s redesign of DSC’s guest homepage reduced bounce rate by 24%.
The UX Research conducted by Anatta on both mobile and desktop experiences helped lead to an 11% increase in conversions.
Anatta led the helm on Dollar Shave Club’s CRO program, increasing conversion rates across several touchpoints throughout the website and recovering considerable revenue.
After integrating Optimizely into DSC’s legacy stack, Anatta’s team was able to launch 4+ CRO tests in a single month, whereas prior, DSC’s stack could only accommodate a single test every 4+ weeks.
All of Anatta’s work with DSC was supported and informed by qualitative testing, as well as extensive website audits that uncovered both quick wins and long-term opportunities.
Success in collaboration
DSC Notices It’s Time For a Cleaner Shave
Dollar Shave Club has had a large-scale, multi-viral trajectory in the DTC space. Over its 10+ year history, DSC has built a brand firmly positioned as a leading men’s grooming company.
But in Q4 2021, DSC decided it was time to make moves on what the company believed were high-value growth opportunities that, for years, had been overlooked.
DSC understood that if the company could close the small but growing gaps in their customer funnel via CRO, millions in potential revenue might be recovered.
DSC sent out a Request for Proposal for an ambitious growth initiative to all the top eCommerce agencies. A hyper-competitive pitch process quickly got underway.
DSC, an enterprise brand well-known in eCommerce, attracted numerous agencies to their project. In the final stage of pitches, however, Anatta’s flexible partnership model and company culture became the deciding factors.
What really resonated with us about Anatta were two things: Number one was Anatta’s flexibility. Anatta has assets distributed all throughout the world. But despite that, there's that level of flexibility to say, ‘Look, we can accommodate your needs; we can be flexible.’
Kevin Sakamoto
Director of Product Management at DSC
The second thing that resonated about Anatta was, quite honestly, the culture. Having come from a place like Zappos and Lululemon, culture is very important, and that's the same for Dollar Shave Club. The openness and honesty we got from Nirav and everyone else on Anatta’s team was something that we really resonated with.
Kevin Sakamoto
Director of Product Management at DSC
In the end, Anatta’s flexibility, culture, and commitment to transparency convinced Dollar Shave Club that Anatta was the right eCommerce partner for their monumentally ambitious growth initiative.
Anatta knew their capabilities, and Anatta was very, very transparent about what they could do. Other agencies were just looking at our project like, ‘If we can get Dollar Shave Club, that will elevate us to the next level.’
Anatta was the opposite.
Kevin Sakamoto
Director of Product Management at DSC
Anatta and DSC began their partnership in Q1 2022. DSC partnered up with a UX Designer, a UX Researcher, Project Manager, UI Engineers, and Quality Assurance.
While DSC anticipated a slow, cumbersome onboarding process like the kind of onboarding associated with traditional agencies, Anatta instead came to the table with ideas ready, and solutions already in the works.
Having never worked with an agency like Anatta before, I thought there would be this sort of strange, get-to-know-you period. But everyone was just so open right off the bat. It was a culture of: ‘What can we do to help?’ ‘How do we collaborate and make things happen?’ Already from day one, I was impressed by how Anatta did their homework. I didn't have to come to the meeting and explain all of these things.
Anatta’s team had questions. Anatta was looking at the code already. Anatta already had ideas. And that made for a very efficient and exciting onboarding process.
Kevin Sakamoto
Director of Product Management at DSC
Throughout onboarding, Anatta looked for ways to integrate effectively with DSC’s internal processes and broader, company-wide initiatives. Because of DSC’s size and scale, Anatta wanted to ensure a stubble-free smooth unification between the two businesses and their respective teams.
We were working on very targeted CRO opportunities while DSC’s development team of 15-20 developers was working on larger, strategic initiatives. Our goal was to learn where it made sense for Anatta’s team to engage, and how we could integrate and come together as two teams.
Paul Smilie
Managing Director at Anatta
We did not want an agency relationship that was solely staff augmentation. We did not want Anatta to just be the agency that would handle JIRA tickets for us.
Kevin Sakamoto
Director of Product Management at DSC
As DSC and Anatta began collaborating, it became clear that DSC’s now decade-old legacy platform wasn’t optimized for the number of CRO tests Anatta wanted to launch.
Navigating DSC’s intricate codebase with great care, and seeking out ways to streamline the A/B testing process, became Anatta’s highest priority.
I think the challenge was—and this isn’t anything Anatta could have prepared for—our legacy platform and our way of doing business. When we partnered with Anatta, DSC was a 10-year-old subscription company. And subscription services require a different codebase, and a different mindset. Our codebase wasn't designed for someone to come back on a weekly basis and discover and learn new things.
That was the challenge, and Anatta excelled at that challenge tremendously.
Kevin Sakamoto
Director of Product Management at DSC
After maneuvering through DSC’s legacy platform, Anatta began to see the full picture. Because Dollar Shave Club didn’t have dedicated CRO specialists in-house, their system for collecting and analyzing data had become outdated. And even though DSC had access to the A/B testing software, Optimizely, DSC’s tech stack wasn’t in a position to leverage that software to its full potential.
Anatta set up a streamlined Optimizely integration leaning on their prior eCommerce experiences. The goal was to help DSC test faster and make it easy for the brand to hone in on high-return opportunities in the future.
Almost immediately, both the quantity and quality of DSC’s A/B tests took off.
The transformation was that, where one test once took four weeks to run, we were able to run four tests in a month.
Saras Arya
Technical Lead at Anatta
There was a multiple times increase in terms of our output of what we did in the year prior to partnering with Anatta. So much so it broke internal records. We've never experienced this kind of output, ever, in the history of Dollar Shave Club. And that's all because of the working relationship we had with Anatta and the willingness of Anatta’s team to get things done.
There was a multiple times increase in terms of our output of what we did in the year prior to partnering with Anatta.
Kevin Sakamoto
Director of Product Management at DSC
With a freshly sharpened A/B testing process in their shaving kit, Anatta began putting test hypotheses into action — leveraging exhaustive UX research to pinpoint where DSC’s funnel was leaking, and where their customers were ending up with scratchy razor burns.
One pivotal insight Anatta uncovered had to do with the way DSC showed product reviews on their site. As it turned out, customer reviews were distracting users along their purchasing journey. Haley Rabiu, Anatta UX Researcher, suggested that DSC feature product benefits and testimonials instead.
We wanted to feature product benefits and user testimonials instead of the star ratings DSC was featuring by default. By doing so, we were able to improve revenue!
Haley Rabiu
UX Researcher at Anatta
The result was an 11% increase in conversions.
What this partnership, and what this relationship, I would say, has allowed us to do, was not just move a lot faster, but also see more things. We never had someone like Haley on our team who could provide us that sort of visibility in terms of the landscape and do that UX research.
When you combine that with just the raw power that all of Anatta brings, it just elevated the whole adage of the rising tide lifts all boats.
Kevin Sakamoto
Director of Product Management at DSC
Entering Q4 of 2022, Anatta was keen on accomplishing even more.
Anatta built new PDPs, redesigned DSC’s guest homepage, optimized their quiz funnel, implemented a Cart Tray feature, adjusted DSC’s mobile UX, modified DSC’s account portal, and continued running CRO tests to enhance DSC’s entire storefront.
The Results
- Introducing a new two-column display of products on mobile increased add-to-cart rate by 3.67%.
- By optimizing DSC’s add-to-cart flow on PDPs, conversion rates rose 34%.
- Creating quick navigation links to make an account grew voluntary account registration by 90%.
- After shortening the number of questions, DSC’s homepage quiz completion rate went up by 6.62%.
Overall, 60+ high-value CRO tests were launched during the Dollar Shave Club and Anatta partnership.
Anatta is very thorough. Anatta is very careful. Anatta is very strategic in terms of introducing this one thing and thinking about, ‘What are the cascading effects of this said experience?’
Kevin Sakamoto
Director of Product Management at DSC
For DSC, their partnership with Anatta not only delivered on the original goals of DSC’s growth project but left a lasting impression on the DSC team.
This was the first time I've ever worked with an agency in a partnership. Having been in the business for a long time, and having been responsible for a lot of websites and product teams, what makes Anatta unique are two things: the care, and the dedication. Every touchpoint with Anatta has just been a pleasure. And I really do think that’s a testament to how Anatta runs their organization, and the values that Anatta has instilled within their team.
Anatta is the agency that can do anything.
Kevin Sakamoto
Director of Product Management at DSC
