How Industry-Specific Landing Pages Boost Conversion Rates

Riley Stricklin is the Co-Founder and CEO of Lume Cube, an ecommerce brand designing premium lighting tools for the creator economy. Established in 2014, Lume Cube started with a portable waterproof light for GoPro cameras and has since expanded to portable lights, partnering with notable retailers like Best Buy and the Apple Store. Before Lume Cube, Riley led sales and marketing teams across various companies, including Octagon and Ludus Sports. He was also a member of the Board of Directors at the San Diego chapter of the Entrepreneurs' Organization.

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

• Riley Stricklin shares how Lume Cube increased conversions with industry-specific landing pages
• The value of creating various targeted landing pages for diverse audiences
• Landing page optimization tips
• Maximizing paid social and search ads through landing pages
• Why should you prioritize customer surveys?
• Riley reflects on the landing page mistakes made by Lume Cube
• The thriving ecommerce brands that Riley admires

In this episode…

A landing page, also known as a lead capture page, helps online stores generate leads and boost sales. Yet, the real challenge with landing pages is creating those that convert leads to buyers since the average landing page conversion rate is just 9.7%. Could industry-specific landing pages be a game-changer?

Seasoned marketer Riley Stricklin thinks so — however, all landing pages share the same goal, but there's no one-size-fits-all solution to increasing conversions. Riley and his team discovered that, although their paid search strategy effectively generated leads, all the traffic went to a single landing page that couldn't target the business’ different audiences. The company navigated this challenge by breaking paid ad funnels into customized industry-specific landing pages, skyrocketing conversion rates by up to 50% and add-to-cart rates by 300%. Riley emphasizes testing landing pages and experimenting with different pages for diverse audiences to see what performs best. In addition, leveraging customer segmentation and engagement strategies like surveys can help ecommerce stores refine their digital marketing strategies.

In this latest episode of the Minds of Ecommerce Podcast, host Raphael Paulin-Daigle chats with Riley Stricklin, the Co-founder and CEO of Lume Cube, on using customized industry-specific landing pages to increase conversions. Riley reveals the secrets behind Lume Cube’s high-conversion landing pages and highlights the importance of customer surveys and landing page testing.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Raphael Paulin-Daigle on LinkedIn | X
• SplitBase
• Riley Stricklin on LinkedIn | Instagram
• Lume Cube: Website | X
• “Category Creation: How To Thrive in a Crowded Market” with Matt Bertulli on the Minds of Ecommerce Podcast
• “How a DTC Cookware Brand Leveraged Product Bundling To Accelerate Growth” with Jordan Nathan on the Minds of Ecommerce Podcast

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 e-commerce 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

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  0:06

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. In the last episode, you heard from Matt Bertuili from Pela Case and Lomi, who shared his best tips on how to create your own category as a brand. Now today on episode number 33, get ready. Riley Stricklin is the CEO at Lume Cube, an ecommerce brand that designs premium lighting for content creation. We'll be chatting about how Lume Cube has been using industry-specific landing pages. I love that topic, of course, to increase conversions by anywhere from 35 to 50%. Over sending that traffic to PDPs super excited to dive into this with Riley. And today well I'm your host Raphael Apollon Daigle, and I'm the founder of Split Base. Now this episode is also sponsored by Split Base and ad Split Base we help leading direct to consumer brands such as Dr. Squatch, Hyper

Ice and Mica, AB test, design, build and manage high-converting landing pages and on-site experiences or optimization programs pinpoints exactly where your store is losing money most. And then we help you fix it. The result increased conversions, ao V and of course, improved marketing efficiency, with our team of conversion optimization specialists, performance marketers, and conversion designers. We've got your back when it comes to testing and optimization. Request a proposal on splitbase.com today to learn how we can help you get the most out of your marketing spend. All right, Riley, welcome to the show.

Riley Stricklin 1:53  

Thank you so much for being here. Absolutely stoked to be here.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  1:56  

So you've been doing a lot of cool things with your brand Lume Cube. Initially, I thought we'd be talking about how you're targeting creators and building creator communities. And turns out, we're still gonna be talking about how to target creators, but in a slightly different way. Because you told me you had some pretty amazing results with landing pages. Absolutely. And as you know, this podcast is all about going deep, right. And we're going to be dissecting one key growth strategy, so our listeners can get the most value right away. And before we get into landing pages, I'll have a lot of questions for you. And I'll really want to know what you've done that you think made landing page successful for you guys. But before just maybe to provide some context to the audience for how long have you been working on Lume.

Riley Stricklin2:37

Started the brand in 2014. So nine years next year will be our 10 year anniversary.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  2:42  

Amazing. Any highlights or anything that you're particularly proud of having achieved with that brand over the last 10 years?

Riley Stricklin  2:49  

Yeah, I mean, a lot of growth. We started back then as a GoPro accessory brand with lighting and have now kind of wrote written that content wave of YouTubers content creators, but we've we've put two SKUs in 600 Apple stores around the world, we've made it into Best Buy's across the country. And obviously now, the the primary focus of the brand is direct to consumer. That's where we've been able to build a relationship with customers. But yeah, when I look at our product line from where we were to where we are today, product development is probably what we're most excited about. It's gotten lightyears better.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  3:18  

Amazing. So let's talk landing pages. Now. I'd love maybe just to get your first take an overview on how do you guys use landing pages at Lume Cube

Riley Stricklin 3:29

Yeah, we've we've experimented a little bit over the years, but we're the most success is happening in the last call it 90 days is really in custom paid media funnels. So our top seller is a ring light. I think everybody knows what a ring lead is. But really what has become interesting to us is it has so many vast applications, so to to target and portray those applications on a single PDP was really challenging for us. And we had really dissected our customer base and realized there's content creators, there's tattoo artists, there's salon owners, and beauticians, and we were creating custom ad content that was performing really well. But it was all going to a single landing page that just couldn't really portray all those uses. So we started breaking those funnels out to kind of industry specific where paid media would drive that traffic to a single landing page and we saw conversion rates skyrocket amazing.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  4:23

Now, I'd love to know like how custom are each of those landing pages to to different audiences because, you know, I think a lot of people can think of customizing landing pages in different ways like maybe just a headline change, maybe we're changing the images or maybe the entire landing page is fully fully fully different. So what are we looking at for you guys?

Riley Stricklin 4:42  

It's it stays on brand in terms of color and field but the content is completely customized. So for we have a healthy business selling to tattoo artists for example. So that page we look like we are a native tattoo company. We talk about five reasons tattoo to artists specifically, like this light, we show before and afters of their work, we show imagery and content from in the studio. And then we have, you know, four to six testimonials of tattoo artists saying this is why I use the light and showing them using it. And so there's nothing about YouTube content creation or any of that it is fully skinned with all around that particular audience. And obviously, you know, we we highly focus on even that demographic as well what age that's highly male versus beautician one is much lighter colors all female oriented. So yeah, it is it is full lean in, we swing the pendulum pretty hard. And you can still link to the landing page and the general landing page and explore the website to see kind of Hulu cubed is. But that page in particular is highly focused on that that user.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  5:47

Awesome. You mentioned five reasons, the five reasons why type of landing page is obviously very popular. So what do your landing pages look like? Are we talking about actual five reasons types of landing pages? Or are those five reasons just listed on a more traditional type of landing page,

Riley Stricklin 6:03  

we've actually we've kind of tried two versions. So we built this out for about three of our top seller. And we've tried more for each product. And it's interesting that depending on the product, and the individual, different ones work for different products. So that kind of artists, that tattoo artist, that beautician has responded very well to the five reasons why. Because they're, you know, look at this, this is an investment for them, it's not a nice to have, they're using it in their studio in their their Med Spa as a tool. So they want to really know intricate reasons why this tool might be better than something that they buy on Amazon. So that kind of listicle, as we call it has been working really well, for the general content creator. That same same concept hasn't performed as well as just more interesting. Info graphically, let's show a bunch more content examples. Let's show a bunch more testimonials. So it's been interesting that we tried to both examples, a listicle. And kind of just a deeper info content focused one. And some have worked well for others. So it just kind of, I think enhances that, that concept that testing is a real great part of the process. Yeah,

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  7:14

yeah, definitely highlights that a test is necessary. I always say Right, like landing pages. They're not like this magical pill that sometimes people think they are their hypotheses. They're just like a B tests on a site, except that they take a lot more work to build than most A B test. Right. But it's still the same thing, right? Like I think the industry wants to stick on a B testing is that one out of seven A B test actually outperforms only one out of seven. Right? So this is the industry wide accepted statistic. Now, there's no reason why it would be any different for landing pages as well, to me building a landing page that's brand new, that is as well a hypothesis. And sometimes you get lucky. And then bam, you know, the first one just creates great ROI. But sometimes it takes seven. And it seems like you guys have seen that as well, right? Like some listicles. That didn't work, but then the other ones work. And it just there's no one size fits all. Absolutely.

Riley Stricklin 8:12  

been fun to kind of watch with some heat mapping, you know, what components are those sites or those pages are actually getting the most engagement? And then, you know, if it's something that is more general, let's say just a testimonial section, you know, that's not industry specific. We'll take that and say, Hey, let's now pull that to the primary PDP are kind of testing these different components to see, do we want to is there anything that should live on the Native website for all of our products? That seems to be really high? But yeah, for right now, it's all paid media traffic. So that's where we're running all these. So in, in Native website, exploration, you can't find any these these are all running exclusively through paid phones.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  8:51  

Now, are you also it sounds like it's probably mostly paid social, but are you also utilizing those landing pages elsewhere? You can't find them on the website. But what about you know, paid search? Maybe tick tock? I don't know if you're big on that. But um, yeah, what type of exploration have you done when it comes to channels and landing pages?

Riley Stricklin 9:12  

Yeah, paid search as well. Because that's where, you know, I'll use that tattoo artists, as an example, who's kind of a specific individual, you know, they're searching for light for tattoo or tattoo light. So if they click that Google Search link and go to a page that just has some YouTuber kind of cooking with it, and stuff, not as specific, so we'll take those industry specific paid search terms, and then they'll go to that page that says, here's the best tattoo, like, check out the five reasons why it's the best tattoo light, and then we are just starting in this last 30 days. You know, we just kind of didn't think of it at the beginning, but if it works in paid social, social and paid search on these ad funnels, hey, let's run some email campaigns to Yeah, who's looked at that ring light and hasn't purchased? And yeah, so it's been a font, you can, of course, from the landing page, get to the homepage and continue shopping. But then you can't get that. So it's still hidden. And we're kind of messing with how do we want incorporate that in our native site? Totally

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  10:09  

awesome. Now, what's the strategy for getting people to add to cart Are you sending people from the landing page to a product page, or the entire process of adding the product to the cart happens on that one landing page,

Riley Stricklin 10:22  

we started with redirecting to the product page. And it has worked but we have seen add to carts increase a lot by just adding that correct Add to Cart button on the landing page. The interesting thing is we've seen add to carts go up about to 300%. It hasn't necessarily changed the conversion rate. But what I'm happy about is that we just have a lot more people we can put in our cart abandonment funnels. So while the page, they've converted revenue wise, the same, and even though one has a higher add to cart, you know, it's that one extra touch point that allows us to follow up with that person and put them through another campaign. So we're just starting to test kind of that tail end. And is that going to work for us? So still in testing phase there, but we have definitely seen Add to Cart jump pretty significantly when adding it just directly? Got an awesome.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  11:11

Um, what about bundles? Are you currently promoting single products, bundles? Obviously, I've been talking bundles, I think, in the past few episodes, with Jordan of caraway home. And then Matt, virtually in the last episode, we talked about that a little bit as well. What about bundles on landing pages? Have you have you gotten there? Is that something you're actively experimenting with?

Riley Stricklin 11:31  

That's the next phase. So everything's been product specific right now. And just kind of proving out this concept. We're probably about 90 days in and seeing some great results. And we have over time, just us as a brand. That has been funnels has been key for us. You know, we've seen our it'll be double over the last three years, mainly due to that instead of kind of ala carte, hey, here's all the gear as a photographer, filmmaker, content creator that you need, the light, the standard, the accessories, we proven that out on our.com. And that that's exactly what we've been talking about lately. Hey, proven out landing pages work, can we get that POV higher and explain why this $500 kit is going to be exactly what you need. So I think there's a lot more testing next year for us that will do totally, because at

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  12:14  

the end of the day, right? I'm sure you have like the tattoo artists, I'm sure they need a very specific set of products that might be different than you know, the YouTuber, and then just kind of giving that entire bundle is definitely a low hanging fruit. super interesting. Now, I think this is this is one thing I really want to talk about, which is defining your audience. But you have different landing pages customized to different segments of your audience. There is also a such a thing as over personalization. And I think there's also a risk of brands guessing their audiences. And spending a lot of time and money building pages for who they think their audience is without truly knowing if that's their audience. And that's probably not going to work either. So what was your approach for understanding who's your audience and what they actually need and resonate with?

Riley Stricklin  13:06  

Yeah, and we are absolutely guilty of all those things. I'll raise my hand and that and it actually happened this year, midway through the year, we did our executive off site, and I pulled all of our year to date conversion rates on all of our PDPs. And we had gone into the year thinking a little bit more kind of the the higher end filmmaker who has you know, $5,000 DSLR, that that was our core customer. And we have three products for that customer, we have a number of products for the mobile creator. And what was showing is that that the products for that higher end filmmaker, were converting those PDPs were like, point 5.6, and then all items for tattoo artists, and beauticians and ring lights and mobile craters were at the 1.5 mark. So who I assumed and who we were showcasing on the website, where you would see a lot of these filmmakers was actually the lowest converting audience. So it kind of was a slap. And we went through this 60 day period, doing a lot of surveys for our customers and really talking to them. And that was absolutely eye opening where we thought, you know, the ring light PDP was highly focused on YouTube content creation kind of video. And we talked a ton of these artists are these customers. And they are saying no, I'm actually a tattoo artist, or I own three salons and I'm using it for this. So that was eye opening for us so highly endorsed, if you're a brand founder, like talk to your customers, run surveys that was great for us. And you know, offering a little discount, Hey, answer these 10 questions and get 20% off your next purchase, then we saw a lot of engagement. And that has really helped direct our direction, both in not just the short term of landing page testing. But in the next two years of product roadmap, realizing Whoa, what I thought I was selling to is actually a different customer and a different they need different things. So let's kind of pivot the roadmap and that was massive for

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  14:49  

Amazing. I love you know, for some people that word surveys probably not super exciting for me. I mean, it's one of the things I talk in almost every single episode, right and when we build landing pages surveys ended up becoming the backbone of a landing page strategy. So I'm 100% with you. Surveys are amazing, especially if they're done well, if they're qualitative. There's a lot to gain from talking with customers. Now, when you look at the past couple of months or so of testing, landing pages, building landing pages, what are maybe some mistakes that you guys have made? When it comes to landing pages? Is there anything notable that you can think of? Great

Riley Stricklin 15:29  

question, I would say, the we probably are on one product, we went a little cold over segmentation, we went a little too specific on some stuff, and that one didn't seem to work. And a little too technical, I think we being the manufacturer being the brand, there is, I could tell you, you know, the five or six things that make this product super unique, we've designed into it, why we've designed it, you know, the angles, the features, the materials, and we went a little too product oriented. And then I think, hold back and realized, you know, at the end of the day, people are more concerned with the benefit that the product is going to deliver than the feature. And I might, you know, so I'll go through these five reasons. And they're, they're technical, specific specs of the product, where when we pivoted that to just like, hey, check out the before and after, with light without light, check out, you know, how this helped this customer, being much more benefit focused was, was what really showed to work much more. So obviously, any founders very in love with their own product, they're the designers, they're the developers. But, you know, realizing I care much more about that than our end customer. They just care what your benefit is. Yeah, we went a little too. Product spec. Flip that and then it started to work. Awesome.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  16:44  

Yeah. And I think the one thing to always remember and like in your case, for example, people aren't really buying lights, they're buying better video, higher quality pictures, right. And that's what most people care about. And then the rest is obviously important too. But at the end of the day, same thing in skincare, right? When people are buying a cream they're buying, you know, better looking skin more confidence. Now, when you when you're testing those landing pages, like how this is a question that I get often, so I'd love to know kind of your take on it. But how long do you wait for your landing pages to run for you to decide if it's working or not? I've seen kind of all shades of the spectrum. But I'd love to know, how do you make a decision? And what are you looking for when deciding whether a landing page is working or not?

Riley Stricklin 17:34

Yeah, great question. I tried not even to look at anything for at least two weeks. And we've been, we've run a nice little business. So I've been kind of putting about 10 grand behind each one, trying to get in that realm of you know, 10,000, give or take hits on the page to get a decent sample size. Right out of the gate. Obviously, we're excited we spent a month building our first page and after like two days, how is it working? Is it working and you realize there's other people who've been there, way too small of a sample size, oh, it, we do have about 10% of our monthly paid search paid social budget, we kind of allocate to just testing, knowing that, hey, that may not hit our 2x marker that may hit a point six return on that 10 grand, but my philosophy is experience and learning is what you get when you don't get what you want. So let's not pull that back and just do what works, you know, a little bit different this time of year for the next few weeks, you know, what's worse, but we try to try to commit to running 10% of our ad budget to testing. And yeah, for me, it's been about that, have we spent 10k on it? Have we gotten 10,000 hits on that page, then I can can watch it, you always do is on every single one. We use CrazyEgg as a mapping tool. So I launched the mapping on every single one of them just to kind of compare and see how it's being engaged with How deep are they going, you know, should we stack the content? Or should we have carousels, where they're they're scrolling and just try to best understand that

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  19:06  

the action is awesome. Really, I think what you just shared about the percentage of budget that you allocate to landing pages and how you test them is probably one of the most single important thing for people to remember out of this. Because I've been building landing pages probably for the past eight years through split base. And the one thing constantly, that leads to failure with landing pages at a brand of any size is the failure for a branch actually put enough money behind a landing page to see it's going to succeed or not. I've seen big brands not have the guts to put more than Believe it or not 50 bucks a day thinking that you know it. That's all they can risk. But here's the truth. No one's going to figure out if a landing page works or not. If you're a big brand and you're spending 50 bucks a day you need to put exactly like you said try to get a couple 100 If not 1000 conversions per page, run the test. For a while, trust the math. I think that that's super, super, super important. Riley, we're pretty much out of time. But there's one question I love to ask people like you, which is, you know, you've been an entrepreneur for a while, and you've built a great brand. Now, who's someone or a brand that you look up to? A

Riley Stricklin 20:19  

great question. We, internally, we use Yeti. As an example, it ended the day for us, you know, I don't sit on a number of patents that I can say we have a very unique product. We are called ring lights, for example, very commonly sold product, large situation on Amazon. So when we look at it, we are taking a commodity and trying to build a premium version and then a brand around it. And I think the pivotal The best one is somebody like a yeti igloo cooler has existed for years, I'm sure 10 years ago, people would have sat in a conference room and said, We want to build a $500 cooler and everybody would talk about man, you know, a cooler is a cooler, it's they all work. And so that's a brand that they have built a brand built an audience built a premium product. And then I think they have all of our trust where they could come out with coffee mugs, camping chairs, whatever. And you know, it's gonna be Quality Trust the brands are

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  21:15

amazing. Riley, thank you so much for being here. Lots of incredibly valuable information. Can't wait for this episode to go live. Now if people want to learn more about you or loom cube, where should they go?

Riley Stricklin 21:26

Yeah, Lume Cube l u m e cube.com. That's the website. We got a lot of great stuff happening this q4. And then I spent a lot of time on LinkedIn. I participate on there. So just Riley Strickland, find me out there. We'd love to connect.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  21:38  

All right, Riley, thank you so much. 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 E commerce tour that does over a million dollars 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 our pollen day goal and I'll be super happy to hear from you. And again, thanks again for listening. This is Minds of Ecommerce.