SwimOutlet clocks in 13% increase in Revenue per Session (RPS)

What’s better than a top-selling Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) swimwear & gear brand that already has a loyal customer base and best-in-class website order conversion rate > 3%?

That same brand deploying a SaaS conversion rate optimization (CRO) solution that proved an additional 7.4% incremental lift in that same conversion rate, driving mid-6 digits of incremental monthly revenue. This is exactly what SwimOutlet did in deploying the FenixCommerce Delivery Management platform.

Launching over 20 years ago, SwimOutlet.com is now the largest online specialty store for aquatics in North America. Part of the Spiraledge family of internet brands focused on healthy living, SwimOutlet features the broadest selection of performance swimwear and apparel at the best prices and recognized in the industry for its superior customer service and best-in-class shipping.

Today eCommerce profitability is all about CRO. With costs of driving website traffic ever rising, DTC brands are under increasing pressure to make every session visit count. SwimOutlet has invested in a best-in-class customer experience (CX) and sells directly to organized swim teams (schools & clubs), in addition to consumers. With very strong conversion rates and high customer loyalty to show for it. 

But even they are not immune to the pressure to do even more, driving them to eveluate several CRO solutions for various parts of their website and CX. “With our extremely loyal customer base it's all about CRO,” says Alexander Sienkiewicz, Cheif Marketing Officer of SwimOutlet. “How can we increase revenue per session for all that traffic we're already getting?”

FenixCommerce proposed adding estimated delivery dates (EDDs) to Product detail, Cart and Checkout pages to increase Add-to-Cart rates and reduce Cart Abandonment. And replacing SwimOutlet’s existing date ranges (i.e., ‘2-7 business days’) with shipping options displaying actual EDDs to increase Conversion rates.

SwimOutlet has a highly customized Checkout experience, with multiple offers, discounts and different terms for ‘Teams’ orders. Plus, with drop-ship vendors and using multiple carriers and services, including low-cost, less predictable hybrid carrier services, they have a complex shipping environment. With these factors in mind, SwimOutlet felt most Shopify and similar solutions offer only basic capabilities that would not meet their CX and logistics requirements.

In Fenix, SwimOutlet instead found a solution that uses predictive AI to calculate accurate actual delivery dates, and the flexibility to easily manage multiple shipping offers and carrier services behind the scenes. Seinkiewicz states, “adding estimated delivery dates is something we wanted to test… and we've just been amazed by the results. A massive increase in conversion rate, and a massive increase in revenue per session rate, as a result. The benefit of all of this is a 6-figure monthly revenue incrementality from Fenix.”

And now with accurate EDDs for all shipping options, SwimOutlet can confidently use those same low-cost hybrid carrier service much more often and reduce overall carrier spend.

Deploying Fenix on PDP and Checkout pages is phase one and already generating strong financial benefits. Next phases include piping dynamic EDDs into customer retention channels – specifically into Cart Abandon emails and SMS – directly communicating to customers, increasing their confidence to buy. 

SwimOutlet also believes soon they will have the opportunity to leverage Fenix onto advertising platforms such as Meta Paid Social or Google shopping. Seinkiewicz indicates that knowing when you can receive the product “builds customer confidence when they're in that discovery phase off your website.”

Given the high bar of having to improve upon an already strong conversion rate, SwimOutlet subjected Fenix to rigorous A/B testing.

Working with SwimOutlet’s digital agency, Acadia, a staged A/B testing regimen was built across different stages of the buying experience, on multiple devices and customer groups. Test metrics were broadened beyond just conversion rate and included AOV, cart abandonment, and revenue per session visits, ultimately including over 500,000 unique sessions.

As Alexander indicates, “Out of all of I'd say 30 AB tests we've done in the last year, this [FenixCommerce] is the one that actually drove the highest in RPS [revenue per session].”