A cookware brand rebuilt for search, speed, and second purchases.
Ember & Oak
Ember & Oak makes carbon-steel cookware with a devoted chef following and a wholesale business that dwarfed its direct channel. The direct store ran on a heavily plugin-laden theme: 6-second mobile loads, no content strategy, and paid ads carrying 80% of revenue.
Every dollar of growth was rented. CAC had climbed 60% in two years while organic search — where buyers research 'carbon steel vs cast iron' every day — sent almost nothing. The brand had authority in kitchens and none in Google.
Replatform before optimizing
No CRO program survives a 6-second load. We rebuilt on a headless storefront first — nine weeks, revenue-neutral cutover, every URL mapped and redirected.
Content mapped to the research journey
Buying guides, care guides, and comparison pages built around the questions chefs actually search — each one internally linked to the products it answers for.
CRO as a weekly habit
Post-launch, the retainer runs structured experiments: product page layouts, bundle framing, shipping thresholds. Winners roll out; every test is logged in a shared decision journal.
A storefront that loads before doubt does
1.1-second mobile loads, product discovery in two taps, and a checkout stripped to essentials. The before/after below is the same brand, twelve months apart.
Owned growth over rented growth
Organic search now drives 47% of direct revenue. Paid spend didn't grow — its share of revenue simply shrank as owned channels compounded.
Drag to compare · same brand, twelve months apart
organic revenue in year one
mobile load time, down from 5.8s
conversion rate after replatform
of direct revenue now from organic search
“We stopped renting our growth. The site finally matches the product — and the search numbers pay for the retainer several times over.”
Tom Ellery
Co-founder, Ember & Oak