Equator Coffees grew online conversion by 20% and amplified AOV with deep insights and store optimizations
Talking with Joe DeMars, Digital Marketing Manager at Equator Coffees
About
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Industry
Food and Beverage
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Platform
Shopify Plus
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Website
equatorcoffees.com
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Instagram
@equatorcoffees
Integrated with these apps
Equator Coffees story
Equator Coffees began with founders Brooke and Helen from a rented garage in Marin County California in 1995. Since then it has grown into a recognisable and hugely popular brand, with their coffee sold at 12 of their own cafes in California, to many restaurants and hotels, and to customers throughout the United States buying from their online store.
Equator became the first coffee roaster in California to become a Certified B Corporation, which approves the highest standards of social and environmental transparency and accountability. This confirms Equator’s mission to uphold quality, sustainability and social responsibility as a core value since the beginning.
Sustainable operations among Equator Coffees' producer partners are as important to the company as the final product served to customers.
We spoke with Digital Marketing Manager at Equator Coffees, Joe DeMars, to learn about their journey, how they achieve growth in a highly competitive market, and why AMP’s products have become so important to their online operations.
Sustainable operations among Equator Coffees' producer partners are as important to the company as the final product served to customers.
+18%
Increase in Revenue 2023 to 2024
The Problem
Joe recognises that there are lots of options out there for consumers in a competitive coffee market, so he and Equator's small marketing team have developed a strong focus on lifecycle marketing and on using those methods and insights to try and give a highly personalized experience to loyal customers.
Subscriptions, where customers are sent their roasted coffee beans on a recurring basis, represent a large portion of their sales but also creates a challenge around showcasing new varieties and products to these subscribers who don’t necessarily need to revisit the storefront. Joe spends a lot of time in Klaviyo crafting email campaigns and nurturing strategies to boost repeat customer purchases and extend their lifetime values.
Efficiency of customer acquisition is another focus. With their retail locations and history they have the benefit of a highly recognisable brand, but as they continue to grow online ad spends also become higher and more competitive.
+12%
Increase in Average Order Value 2023 to 2024
The Solution
Seeing the product journeys visually is incredibly helpful data for us, to see how our customers think and what we should market to them either onsite or through email flows.
Joe DeMars, Digital Marketing Manager at Equator
Understanding detailed lifetime value of customers and cohorts is incredibly important for online marketers, yet Shopify doesn’t show this in detail, so Lifetimely by AMP has been a game changer for Equator.
“Seeing the product journeys visually is incredibly helpful data for us” says Joe. “To see how our customers think and what we should market to them, either onsite or through email flows, has helped us achieve a +18% increase in Shopify order revenue in 2023/24 since using Lifetimely.”
Along with overall revenue, Lifetimely helps them immensely with other key efficiency metrics such as conversion rate, AOV, total net new customers, and retention of cohorts from when they first purchase to how long they stay as customers.
When it comes to boosting AOV and conversion rate, Upsell by AMP has also become instrumental for online growth at Equator.
Joe explains… “Upsell is essential for improving the online checkouts portion of our revenue. We always try to balance showing more upsells without overwhelming our customers. We also look carefully at how an element on the site looks on both desktop and mobile. This was a big benefit with Upsell because it does the right thing with recommended products while respecting the site design and looking good on all devices, optimized for both commerce sales and the site experience.”
Mobile users on their website have become the majority of traffic over the past year so the design and customization of an element such as the shopping cart is incredibly important.
Joe tells us more about why Upsell has worked so well for them: “For Equator, the Upsell app has provided a really strong balance between commerce operations and fitting into the design and branding of our site. The value at the price point is very appealing as well.”
A major benefit of Upsell is that it’s really well optimized for both driving sales and for maintaining a good customer experience. It respects the site design and looks great on all devices.
Joe DeMars
Joe continues: “We as a brand were using a 'Smart Cart' from another Shopify App and were consistently encountering functionality issues with the cart not triggering, experiencing low load times, inconsistency with discount code application, and not being compatible with our website bundles. This served as a barrier to provide a consistent customer experience, especially during high-traffic promotions.”
“The AMP team came in with their own smart cart via Upsell to solve all of our issues, and worked with us to reflect our site theme in the new cart. We have stress-tested the new cart with multiple promotions since and are happy with the functionality. It's our ideal Shopify Plus companion for scaling our onsite growth without sacrificing site performance for mobile or desktop.”
We love that with AMP our website is learning from our customer journey data and that this is then personalized down to the level of individual customers.
Joe DeMars
Joe and his team at Equator Coffees have seen an increase of +20% in onsite Conversion Rate over the past year, and a +12% increase in Average Order Value.
“It makes so much sense to have one ecosystem where the onsite experience is managed by the same platform as the lifecycle data.” Joe says. “We love that our website is learning from our customer journey data and that this is then personalized down to the level of individual customers.”
+20%
Increase in Website Conversion Rate 2023 to 2024
AMP is one of the most responsive product teams I have ever worked with.
Joe DeMars
Thanks to Joe and the team at Equator Coffees for speaking with us!
Visit equatorcoffees.com to see all their amazing coffees and products for yourself.