Client Background

Texas Hill Country Olive Co. (THCOC) is a family-run olive oil company and orchard located in the Hill Country outside of Austin, Texas. The online store sells their olive oils and balsamic vinegars, gift sets, membership programs, skincare products and more. Texas Hill Country Olive Co. works with Experiment Zone via our Conversion Strategy and Testing program in order to drive higher conversion rates on their ecommerce website.

The Challenge

Texas Hill Country Olive Co. sells olive oils that are grown, harvested, and pressed at their orchard in Texas, and they have been recognized and awarded with many honors for their high-quality products.

The Experience Zone team wanted to draw attention to critical accolades and product features to help customers connect with and make a decision to purchase from THCOC. We determined that the best research method would be a survey of existing customers to understand which value propositions are the most important when considering an olive oil purchase.

We conducted a short survey to understand:

• What are the top ranking attributes for why visitors purchase from Texas Hill Country Olive Co?
• What other reasons do participants give for purchasing THCOC?

Our Strategy

Prior to the survey, Experiment Zone ran a test that included trust badges on the THCOC homepage. The test included trust badges such as the “Most Awarded Olive Oil Company in Texas”, which ultimately drew more on-page engagement but did not result in impacts further down the conversion funnel. The data indicated that this type of content was important, but needed to be refined.

Following the A/B test, we determined that a survey would be a valuable tool in understanding the value propositions that were interesting and important when considering an olive oil purchase.

We distributed a targeted survey to THCOC customers who had made a purchase from the website within the last 12 months. Participants were asked how they would describe Texas Hill Country Olive Oil to friends or family, what types of products they’ve purchased in the past, why they chose THCOC particularly, and what key factors they consider when shopping online, purchasing olive oil and purchasing balsamic vinegar.

The Results

We learned that customers were familiar with and highly valued the high-quality nature of the THCOC products.

• Customers’ top considerations for online purchases included: “product” and “product quality. ” When considering olive oil and balsamic vinegar purchases, their top considerations included “taste,” “quality,” and “price.”
• Customers also conveyed that they heavily value the location of the orchard in the Texas Hill Country. One customer described: “‘Texas-made’ interested me, taste and quality convinced me.”

With these new insights, the Experiment Zone team set out to validate the new value propositions focused on taste, quality, and location. We ran a homepage A/B test and saw a 33% lift to mobile orders with these new messages.

Experiment Zone continues to see the power in combining the question (“Why didn’t this test work?”) with focused, customer-centric research, so that we can ultimately drive higher conversion rates by understanding customer needs.