From Awareness to Consideration: How Onewheel Boosted Conversions by 65% With Eric del Valle

Eric del Valle is the Director of Ecommerce at Onewheel, a self-balancing electric skateboard brand developed by Future Motion. With a background that includes experience at Google and various DTC startups, Eric leverages behavioral psychology to enhance customer acquisition and user experience strategies. Under his leadership, Onewheel has grown significantly by transitioning marketing efforts from mere awareness to deeper customer consideration.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [2:00] Eric del Valle explains Onewheel’s shift from awareness to consideration marketing
• [4:40] How Onewheel discovered its core demographic through customer research
• [8:57] Using authentic user stories to increase relatability and drive conversions
• [13:57] How reducing price points and simplifying bundles boosted Onewheel’s sales
• [17:25] Eliminating micro-decisions in the purchase funnel to combat decision fatigue
• [20:21] Eric highlights the power of removing unnecessary bundle choices

In this episode…

Many brands struggle when their once-thriving marketing tactics hit a wall, leaving them wondering how to sustain growth in a shifting market. How do you take customers beyond simple awareness and move them into true consideration — especially when your product comes with a high price tag and a niche appeal? The challenge lies in breaking through audience assumptions and reshaping brand perceptions to tap into a wider, more willing customer base.

Eric del Valle, an expert in ecommerce and behavioral psychology, shares how his team overcame these hurdles by focusing on authentic user stories and deep customer research. Eric highlights how Onewheel identified an unexpected core demographic, leveraged emotional testimonials, and restructured marketing to focus on relatability over features. By employing strategies like reducing product price points, simplifying purchase bundles, and removing unnecessary micro-decisions in the funnel, niche brands can make it easier for hesitant buyers to commit.

In this episode of the Minds of Ecommerce podcast, Raphael Paulin-Daigle interviews Eric del Valle, Director of Ecommerce at Onewheel, about transforming marketing strategies for lasting growth. Eric discusses customer-driven marketing, price point adjustments, and optimizing the buyer journey. He also delves into overcoming audience misconceptions, leveraging authentic stories, and removing decision fatigue to boost conversions.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Raphael Paulin-Daigle: LinkedIn | X
• SplitBase
• Eric del Valle on LinkedIn
• Onewheel: Website | Instagram
• ”Recycling, Retail, and Rapid Pivots: The RAREFORM Growth Playbook With Alec Avedissian” on Minds of Ecommerce
• “How Bison Coolers Drives Explosive Ecommerce Growth With Limited Edition Products With Mike Lewis” on Minds of Ecommerce

Quotable Moments:

• “It really came down to, like a lot of brands, listening to our customers and going back.”
• “We wanted to give customers the choice to change everything you can visually see on a Onewheel.”
• “It really was pinpointing how do we really shift, as a whole company, not just advertising.”
• “It was honestly difficult, I think internally, to sell the rest of my leadership team on that.”
• “We ended up taking some of our Black Friday pricing and decided to basically extend that.”

Action Steps:

1. Conduct in-depth customer research: Understanding who your true customers are helps tailor messaging and products more effectively. This ensures marketing dollars are spent reaching the people most likely to convert and stay loyal.
2. Use authentic user stories in marketing: Sharing real customer experiences creates emotional resonance and builds trust with potential buyers. It shifts marketing from product features to meaningful impact, driving deeper audience connection.
3. Simplify purchase decisions in your funnel: Reducing unnecessary micro-decisions helps prevent customer overwhelm and improves overall conversion rates. Streamlining options makes it easier for hesitant buyers to commit confidently.
4. Reevaluate product pricing strategies: Adjusting price points to align with customer perceptions and needs can significantly boost conversions. Strategic pricing helps balance affordability without sacrificing brand value or profitability.
5. Focus top-of-funnel messaging on relatability: Crafting relatable campaigns broadens your appeal and attracts diverse customer segments. This approach helps redefine brand identity while keeping existing loyal audiences engaged.

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by SplitBase.

At SplitBase, we design, test, and manage high-converting landing pages and on-site experiences for fashion, luxury, and lifestyle ecommerce brands. Our optimization program pinpoints exactly where your store is losing money most, and then we help you fix that.

The result? Increased conversions and profits for our clients.

With our team of conversion optimization specialists, performance marketers, and conversion-focused designers, we've got your back when it comes to testing and optimization.

Request a proposal on SplitBase.com today, and learn how we can help you get the most out of your marketing spend.

You can find us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Don’t miss out on our exclusive podcasts at Minds of Ecommerce.

Episode Transcript

Intro: 00:06

Welcome to the Minds of Ecommerce podcast, where you'll learn one key strategy that made leading ecommerce companies grow exponentially. We cut the bullshit and keep the meat. In a 15-minute episode, founders and executives take us through a deep dive of a strategy so you get to learn and grow your online sales.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 00:27

In the last episode, you heard from Mike Lewis, who's the VP of Bison Coolers, and we talked about leveraging limited edition products as an engine for growth. Now, today on episode number 51, get ready. Eric del Valle is the Director of Ecommerce and advertising at Onewheel. And today, we'll be talking about how they increased conversion rate by 65% by pivoting from awareness to consideration. And this is the step-by-step on how they've done it.

I'm your host, Raphael Daigle, and I'm the founder of SplitBase. This is Minds of Ecommerce. Now, this episode is brought to you by SplitBase. At SplitBase, we help leading eight- and nine-figure brands such as Dr. Squatch, Hyperice, and Amika grow through customer-focused conversion optimization programs. Now, our programs pinpoint exactly where your store is losing money most and then, well, we help you fix it. 

The result you get increased conversions, higher AOV, and of course, well, more money, which in return allow you to scale advertising profitably. We've been at it for over a decade now, and we can help you manage CRO from A to Z. That means from customer research, conversion design, strategy, copywriting, and development. We focus on growing your ecommerce sales while you get to focus on what you do best. So, go to splitbase.com today to learn how we can help you get the most out of your marketing spend. 

All right, Eric, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Eric del Valle: 02:00

Thanks for having me excited for this chat.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 02:02

Yeah. Well, as you know, now this podcast is all about going deep, right? And dissecting one key growth strategy so our listeners can get the most value right away. And now at Onewheel, you've done a lot of great things. And one of those things was pivoting from awareness to consideration in your marketing by using a couple of things, user stories, authentic user stories, and a couple more things.

And that led you guys to increasing conversions by 65%. So maybe just to give more context for our listeners, can you tell us a bit more about that? What in your words, does it mean to pivot from awareness to consideration? And what exactly was the problem at hand before we actually talk about the solution?

Eric del Valle: 02:48

Sure. Onewheel is a bit of a unique product, and it's, you know, an electric skateboard that self-balancing, and it is a bit unfamiliar to most folks. And, you know, it's kind of the first of its kind in the market. And, you know, because of that, there's also an unfamiliarity associated with it and a high price point ranging from $1000 to $4000. Right.

So most folks during the Covid outdoor recreation boom really, you know, wanted to get outdoors. They were bored and needed something fun to do. And most folks found out about Onewheel through that process. And then the normalization occurred. And like other industries in the outdoor space, you know, sales came down a bit, but it was really finding out where is the new normal and where are, you know, the next 10,000, 50,000 customers for us. 

So it was less about, oh, what is that Onewheel thing? And more about, hey, I'm not coordinated enough. I'm too old and that's too expensive. The list goes on as far as the, you know, blockers that people created for themselves in their head. And so it really came down to how do we actually redefine what onewheel is in someone's mind when, you know, in reality, our core demo is 35 to 50 years old, and most folks really thought that our core demo was 18 to 30, because that's who they would see on our Instagram, on our website. 

And so it really was pinpointing how do we really shift really as a whole company, not just advertising and ecom from awareness to consideration and getting folks over those barriers and really thinking about Onewheel in a totally different way.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 04:40

I'd love to dive into your core demo. I think that's super interesting, because I also assumed that your audience was probably a bit younger, but it sounds like obviously that was something important that you guys noticed at one point, how did you guys realize that maybe you were targeting the wrong core demo at one point? Because I see this across a lot of companies we work with. They think their core demos X, then we do customer research and then we realize it's Y. In your case, what happened that you realized you were targeting maybe the wrong demo?

Eric del Valle: 05:14

Yeah. It really came down to like a lot of brands listening to our customers and going back and doing customer surveys and, and really doing a number of organic, you know, contests. We would either do giveaways or some type of like content marketing push where we would have people, you know, dress up in, like dress up, you know, your favorite Halloween costume. And there's had a number of viral videos there. And, and and then it's also just, you know, tell it, tell us your favorite story.

You know, about Onewheel and how Onewheel changed your life, which is one of the UGC campaigns will. I'm sure, talk about later. It really started to become evident that our core demo is is a bit older. And also because of the price point, you know, needs to be, you know, a bit more affluent so that it's not always a, you know, something big you have to save up for. It really needs to be people need to have a certain level of discretionary income in order to, make this purchase more, more of an everyday buy for them.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 06:23

Yeah. And so okay, so understanding the right demo, that was kind of the first step. Now pivoting from awareness to consideration like in concrete terms, what did your marketing look like when you were more in the awareness stage. And then how did it pivot and how differently did it change? Or did it look like once you guys started focusing more on that consideration stage?

Eric del Valle: 06:48

Yeah, I think from, you know, from, from the beginning, during, during the kind of peak Covid years I'd say we were really focusing on, you know, we're based in California and a small surf town. It's called Santa Cruz. And so because of that, we really focused a lot on that lifestyle and, you know, creating it to be very aspirational. And I think, you know, for a time that that did work really well for us. Because the folks that most naturally had a crossover were either into surfing or snowboarding.

And so that was a very natural fit. And so we tended to speak the lingo and the language, you know, of those folks. But once you start to get to, to a certain level, you know, of, of, you know, of revenue and growth, you know, since we're we're in 140 countries now, we really needed to be a bit more mainstream, but not lose our sense of, of of brand identity. Right. Make sure that we don't abandon that original culture. 

So that really allowed us to take it, to take it to the next level with, with kind of evaluating as a company, what is our what is our ethos and how do we continue to move forward while making people feel that, you know, they're seen and that our content is more relatable and not just pushing forward the audience that we think we have, but pushing forward the audience that we actually know we have.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 08:22

Relatability is, I think, the takeaway here. And, you know, I've been doing conversion optimization for about 12 years. My agency's been around for ten. And the number one thing that we've seen increased conversions is when your message can be relatable to your customer, right. So what you're sharing here definitely doesn't surprise me, but it's also awesome to hear the impact of it.

But I'm also curious, what are some Specific actions that you guys have made throughout your funnel to help with that.

Eric del Valle: 08:57

Yeah, I think specifically one of the bigger things we noticed that, you know, early on, Instagram was huge for us and a big growth driver. And as we've gotten to be a larger company, you know, wide videos, commercials have really been the key to changing people's perception at the top of the funnel. And so because of that, focusing in on, you know, campaigns that began as UGC, like, you know, we did a, you know, Onewheel Change My Life campaign. And, you know, we were able to source stories from all over about how, Onewheel is positively impacting people's lives. And that, you know, we ended up flying people out to Santa Cruz, to our headquarters, and interviewing them in and kind of capturing their story of before and during.

And that ended up kind of opening, I think, you know, my team's eyes to what was possible. And this eventually, you know, led to a series of of additional testimonial driven commercials, and most of them really centered around, you know, people being more vulnerable, being more, you know, heartwarming, and, you know, telling the story of, like, how, you know, a mom is able to reconnect with her kids through, through riding Onewheel together after school. Or you know how someone who you know now is, you know, struggling with with a pretty, pretty significant, you know, back injury and can no longer walk easily without a cane, but he's able to Onewheel and and gain his mobility back through through the use of, of, you know, of a personal electric vehicle. And, you know, in most recently a couple of weeks ago, we just released two commercials that were focused on overcoming addiction. You know, one was about alcohol was. 

Another one was about cigarettes and how Onewheel kind of allowed people to. You know, allowed these two guys to tap into, you know, the dopamine and serotonin rush. That, that they get. And instead of feeding that urge, they hop on their Onewheel and they ride. And it gets them into that flow state.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 11:11

You know, I'm smiling and people listening can't can't see. Me. But what I find fascinating about this, okay, is that when there are so many brands focused on selling. Kind of the features. Why this is a better method of transportation than others.

You guys are totally above. That it's like, what impact or what role in someone's life does this, you know have and I think. A lot of brands are probably afraid of thinking that big. And you know, one of the questions that. My favorite question to ask in customer surveys is always how does X? 

How did X make your life better? Right? And replace X by the brand or the product. And sometimes like we're talking about a makeup product or like something that you'd think, how can it make my life better? It's just a product. 

Like in your case, it could be, oh, it's just like a sort of skateboard or something like that. And I'm sure you guys have defined yourself as a skateboard, but yet the responses you get from that, sometimes you can't even imagine. It's just like, oh, wow. Like, this plays such a bigger role than the function we're selling it or for or that we're expecting. And this is what I'm getting from you guys. 

You guys are totally playing on a whole other level.

Eric del Valle: 12:28

I mean, it really surprised me. And it also, I mean, to your point, Raphael, it was honestly difficult, I think internally to to sell the rest of my leadership team on not being more product focused and not saying, oh, this board is better because of x, y, and z. And don't get me wrong, we still do have ads like that, but they are no longer being shown. You know, top of funnel. It's only for remarketing.

Because ultimately we can say as a brand that, oh, we have many different uses and people, you know, use it on a farm or, you know, to get over addiction. But it's so much more powerful when you hear someone saying it themselves and you hear the emotion in someone's voice, you know, and and the look of, you know, change and positivity in their eyes. And so to me, I think that was was really important to not just for us to paraphrase as a brand, but for really us to give our customers a voice.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 13:29

I love it so it sounds highly relatable. High-level customer stories are really key for you guys when it comes to cold. Top of funnel acquisition. Now, I know you told me earlier as well that as we get kind of deeper in the funnel, you've also worked on reducing pricing and eliminating a lot of micro decisions around the funnel. Can you tell us a bit more about that and how you what what types of micro decisions we're talking about and how you guys got around to reducing pricing?

Eric del Valle: 13:57

Sure. Yeah. So we were at the $1,000 price point for years. And you know, in the past we we had two, 2 to 3 boards. You know, to choose from now we have six boards.

Currently which can be overwhelming. From a new users perspective. And so it's very much you know what, which boards for me. And you know we're still iterating and solving that through the use of quizzes. And you know, different on-site personalization tech. 

But you know, at the core that the biggest thing that made a change in Q4 of of last year, 2024, we were looking at start the decision tree, right. And on the site, if you were to go there, there, you know, you choose from, first of all, you know, the decision, okay? Onewheeling is for me. I'm open to spending 1 to $4000. 

And from there, you go in and you say, okay, let me gravitate toward what is most affordable. And we found that a thousand thousand dollars. It was our oldest board and it was our worst selling board. It was the pint. And, you know, we ended up taking some of our Black Friday pricing and, and we decided to basically, you know, extend that into, you know, Q1 of last year and started to re reframe it as, you know, the different practical use cases. 

I live in San Francisco. I'm in the city. Personally, I take it to the grocery store. I take it to get my haircut. I you know, I take it to all these things where it normally would take me 20 minutes to, to walk. 

And we started to focus on these, like, very, like meaningful ways of of using it and, and starting to change that and educate folks on the various ways that it that it's easy to ride and that, you know, we have literally an 80-year-old that ride Onewheel. And so breaking that down, number one was important. But then once folks got to the site, we found that the difference in price point between 700 and $50 and 1000 was huge. And that ended up, you know, ended up driving significantly higher, you know, a 65% higher conversion rates because folks felt the that the entry point was, was more approachable. And once you got there too, you know, you decide on six boards down to one board, say it's the most affordable one. 

Then you know, you have three bundles to choose from. And then you choose one of three bundles because 80% of people buy a bundle. And you can only get these bundle deals when you purchase. Of course, like, you know, like most brands that will do this, similar to Peloton and others. Once you choose one of the three bundles, then there are five or more parts where you can choose from 20 different colors. 

And so you can see this decision tree, like while it is, you know, exciting for some, you know, like buying a car and you can customize it. Others are kind of like, I don't care, just give it. Just give me whatever is the most popular.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 17:06

Oh, interesting. I didn't think of it that way. Yes.

Eric del Valle: 17:09

And, you know, maybe I'm gifting it, you know, for Christmas too. And and so.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 17:14

In this case. Sorry just to interrupt. So, yeah. Were these additional customizations a friction point in the funnel, is that what we're getting at or ultimately? Oh, interesting.

Eric del Valle: 17:25

Yeah. And so it was almost what we wanted to give the initial thought was and we always had this set up in the past. We wanted to give customers the choice to change every everything that you can visually see on a Onewheel can be customized. The color can be modified so that it's almost like the Nike ID, you know, shoe. Yeah.

Where you can really make it yours. But not everyone wants to do that. And for the folks who don't, we, you know, made the decision and we're still AB testing it now to default to okay. These are this is our most popular color combo. This is our most popular bundle. 

Go ahead and just choose both of these and you're good to go check out. Have the confidence. This is going to look good and you're getting the best value. And so you know and I think as as time goes on you know we're continuing to to to iterate here and and potentially, you know, pushing this bundle decision out even to post-purchase for, for example, to say, hey, this deal is eligible for X amount of time, two weeks. But ultimately, let's just get you to buy the board and, and get that initial hook in so that you can feel like, yes, I've made this decision to buy a Onewheel. 

I don't have to make, you know, 15 other micro decisions along.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 18:46

The there is there, you know, decision fatigue is very real. And I think we have to be conscious of that. And it's funny you say that because it happened more times than I can count, that, you know, all those bundle builders and subscription flow builders that are super popular and that brands just assume, oh, we need to give people the option to build their bundles and all of that. I've seen it many times where we just removed it. And similar to what you're finding now, it just increased conversion rates because we remove steps in the funnel.

There were fewer decisions to make and some people just want to move faster. Eric, this is fantastic. We're unfortunately out of time. I wish this conversation keep going and going and going. Now, I think for just a couple things for people to remember. 

One, when it comes to winning top of funnel acquisition, it's really about How can you relate to your audience through your messaging, and the best way you guys have done it is really by just better understanding your customer. Customer surveys, customer interviews. You've even flew in some customers to the office to have conversations with them and better understand them. Then when it comes to actually looking at the funnel. And we'll also the marketing, it's still about that relatability, but also looking at what are the friction points, what are the things that the decisions or even the price points that isn't really aligning with the use cases and the audiences we've detected? 

And through that, you guys have seen quite a bit of success. So, Eric, that was a fantastic conversation. Now, if people want to connect with you, learn more about you or Onewheel, where should they go?

Eric del Valle: 20:21

My LinkedIn would probably be best, but our Instagram always has an endless number of entertaining videos as well.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 20:31

Amazing. Eric, thank you so much.

Eric del Valle: 20:32

All right. Thank you, Raphael.

Outro: 20:38

All right. Well, that's it for today's episode. And thank you so much for tuning in. Now, if you like what you've heard, and you don't want to miss any of the new episodes that are about to come out, make sure you subscribe to the podcast, and well, bonus points if you also leave a review in the iTunes store or wherever you're listening to this. Now, if you're working on an ecommerce store that does over $1 million in revenue and you need help with conversion optimization or landing pages, well, I've got some good news because there's a pretty good chance we can help with that.

Go to splitbase.com to learn more or even to request a proposal. If you have any guest requests, questions or comments, tweet me at Rpaulindaigle and I'll be super happy to hear from you. And again, thanks again for listening. This is Minds of Ecommerce.

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