How a small addition resulted in 50% more sales
Footfolk ApS
Footfolk is a fast-growing eCommerce brand based in Denmark, specializing in barefoot shoes — a rising niche within footwear with a strong but narrow customer base. The business went from zero to multiple daily sales in a matter of months thanks to well-targeted Google Ads, quickly establishing a top position in a market with few direct competitors.
But as early demand was captured and ad costs rose, the limits of traffic-driven growth became clear. Conversion rates began to slip — particularly after seasonal changes — and it became obvious that unlocking further growth would require something else: better on-site performance.
The Challenge
Diminishing Returns from Traffic Growth
After the initial burst of success from paid search campaigns, Footfolk faced a challenge common to niche DTC brands: they were running out of room to grow via traffic alone.
The barefoot market is still small — and much of the addressable audience had already been reached.
Google Ads were still performing, but scaling them up meant competing for less qualified clicks at a much higher cost.
Meanwhile, conversion rates began to decline, particularly going into the summer season, when a wider (but less committed) audience started arriving at the site.
At around 1.5% conversion, Footfolk saw signs that they were losing high-value visitors due to friction on the website — not a lack of interest. Something in the buying journey was slowing users down, costing attention, and eroding intent
The Solution
Identify Friction, Design Around It
We began with a structured audit:
Stakeholder interviews with the founders
Full review of analytics data (Google Analytics + ecommerce conversion funnel)
Installation of session recordings and heatmaps to study real user behavior on key pages
What we found was simple but significant:
Missing shoe sizes created dead ends. Users were clicking into products only to discover that their size was out of stock.
This repeated friction created frustration and cognitive fatigue, especially on mobile.
Instead of continuing the shopping journey, many users simply dropped off.
Insight: Every unnecessary click or moment of hesitation increases the risk of distraction. In real life, a dog barks, a notification pops up — and a customer leaves.
To solve it, we designed and tested a size availability preview on the product grid itself — allowing users to quickly scan and identify shoes in their size without entering each product page.
We didn’t guess whether this would work. We built an A/B test and ran it across several hundred sessions to get a statistically valid read.
Results
+54% Sales from a Single Experiment
The results were immediate and unambiguous.
The variant with size previews:
Increased conversion rate by 54% compared to the control group
Shortened average session time before purchase, showing less friction
Generated learnings that now inform ongoing improvements in the product discovery experience
This single, insight-driven experiment turned a frustrating dead end into a value-add moment — and unlocked meaningful growth without touching traffic volume or budget.
For a brand like Footfolk, it proved that small, strategic changes based on user behavior can outperform big ad spends.
Ready to take the
next step?
Then we are right answer
- When increasing ad-spend no longer works
- When you want to understand your users
- If you are a D2C e-commerce store
- If your traffic is over 5000 visitors/mo