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Photographer and entrepreneur Shant Kiraz faced a common challenge: finding the perfect camera bag. He knew he wasn’t alone in his struggle. Why was it so difficult to find a bag that was both functional and thoughtfully designed?
Determined to solve the problem, Shant set out to design the ultimate camera bag for photographers and creatives, and with that, Sunny 16 was born.
As the COVID-19 pandemic slowed the world down, Shant worked relentlessly to bring his vision to life. He found a factory partner, built a prototype, created marketing materials, and launched on Shopify.
Like many brands, Sunny 16 grew steadily and gradually. A few months after launching, Shant realized he needed to make more impactful customizations on his website, specifically his product pages.
He installed Shogun and began customizing product pages with the powerful visual editor and the impact was immediate.
“The second I was able to add more value to the product pages using Shogun, it increased our sales immediately,” Shant shared.
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Over the last several years, Sunny 16 has grown into a brand beloved by photographers, filmmakers, travelers, hikers and content creators.
Even with a loyal following, Sunny 16 still had challenges. One of those challenges being the instability and rising cost of Meta advertising.
At first, Shant didn’t focus on optimizing his pages. “I lost sight of our conversion rate because I was getting the cha-chings from Shopify and at the end of the day, it had a decent ROAS so I never looked to optimize beyond that,” he explained.
But as sales from Meta ads continued to be inconsistent, he began to explore ways to improve conversions.
“The rising cost of Meta advertising and the instability sparked this in me initially. We’re spending the same amount of money every day yet the conversions aren’t consistent.”
Shant’s experience reflects a broader trend in ecommerce. Rising customer acquisition costs (CAC) have become a significant challenge, with the average CAC jumping $9 in 2013 to $29, according to a recent SimplicityDX study.
Despite having no prior experience with A/B testing, Shant decided to experiment using Shogun’s A/B testing tool.
Shogun’s native A/B testing tool makes it easy to quickly spin up and launch A/B tests on pages built or imported into Shogun, even for A/B testing novices.
Sunny 16’s product pages had been consistent over the last few years so Shant decided to go big and test multiple changes for his first test.
On his test variant, Shant:
While testing multiple changes simultaneously doesn’t reveal which specific element had the greatest impact, it can yield substantial results for brands like Sunny 16 that haven’t made significant page updates in years. And the results were remarkable.
The results were astounding in favor of the variant. The test variant had a 2.8% conversion rate, a massive 279% uplift from the original’s 0.74% conversion rate!
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Not only was this a huge win for sales, but it also opened the Sunny 16 team’s eyes to the possibilities of A/B testing.
“The A/B functionality allows us to experiment freely without being tied to anything. It creates a sandbox effect where we can make changes and analyze the data ” Shant explained.
Since launching this first test, the Sunny 16 team has since met with Shogun’s Customer Success team to discuss more A/B testing strategies and ideas and have launched several tests since then.
They continue to fight against the instability of Meta ads and optimize their store for more conversions and sales.
For Shant, A/B testing is more than just a tool for sales optimization. “From a behavioral standpoints, it’s very interesting to understand the psychology of the buyer.” Shant says. “Why does someone buy from us? Nothing beats raw data from these A/B tests because it proves my theories right (or wrong). This ultimately informs business owners and marketers on making better decisions based on results versus just feelings. That’s hugely beneficial.”
To other business owners considering optimization, Shant’s advice is simple: Identify where your traffic is coming from and focus on optimizing those landing pages first.
The future is bright for Sunny 16 as they continue to optimize their product pages, curtailing the impact of Meta’s rising ad costs and creating more consistent sales for the brand.
