hocostore

Challenge

To get a relevant market share with zero awareness of the brand and in the competition of seasoned CE players like Alza or Mall and well-recognizable brands like Sony, Panasonic or JBL.

The process

To confirm our hypotheses and verify the brand potential, I decided to examine the market first. 

We (with the help of my colleague Lenka) began with researching audiences and personas which helped us to identify who they are, and what’s important for them. Later on, we determined the product market fit and changed the brand strategy to the needs of European Customers.

Then the identity was created. Hocostore.sk identity was based on the existing hoco design manual. In an effort to keep the brand recognized, we only bend its identity slightly. We played with color, typography and logo, which resulted in a new, visually lightweight concept. Minimalist and clean.

As the budget was limited, to verify our assumptions about the market fit, we decided to do the physical guerilla testing. We asked the selected friends of ours (who meet our buyer personas requirements) for feedback. Basically, it was a simple conversation about their experience with the product/s and how much money they are willing to pay for such a product/s.

After the preparation phase was done, our designer put Adobe Xd into work and we began sketching a few ideas and creating first low-fidelity wireframes. After wireframes were done and we were all satisfied, we then transformed them to functional prototypes. With the help from our friends, we were able to test our initial ideas on real users. With real feedback from real people (and real friends), the webdesign was super-fast. Our main focus was the mobile version, because we knew that a majority of visitors will be from mobile phones. Eventually, it turned out to be true, because the mobile traffic is now over 80% and generates almost 79% of total revenue.

As a person responsible for marketing strategy and marketing budget, I took a lean approach. We all knew that to build a strong awareness presence, we would need a lot of money (which we didn’t have 😄) So we decided to do almost everything in-house. With the help of the media writing about smartphones and mobile accessories, we got some attention. Later on, we knew that the visual content will be the one which sells. 

To make hoco. a lifestyle brand, i did a photo shoot where my goal was to show the products being used on real people. This content was later used on social media and PPC channels. To create even more buzz, we shot a video which was used for a brand awareness campaign on Facebook and Instagram.

Right now, we continuously take care of PPC campaigns on Facebook and Instagram, social media and cooperation with influencers. In addition, my responsibility is to constantly improve the shop experience through regular CRO.

Results

Clean, and simple to use e-commerce website with potential for expansion abroad.

Here’s what we have achieved so far :

• -30% bounce rate after 3 months from go-live
• +600% conversion rate during first year of cooperation
• Average ROAS 12 on conversion campaigns (Facebook + Instagram)

Credits

Photography : Peter Nemeth
Photography (user content) : Bianka Rumanova
Research / copywriting / PPC : Lenka Krizkova
Design : Ondrej Kollath
Dev : Ondrej Kollath, Erik Selecky