B2C • User Research • Product Strategy • A/B Testing • Shopify
Detroit Grooming is a men's grooming brand specializing in beard and hair care, part of Merit Manufacturing. When I joined as a product designer, the brand was losing customers: conversion sat at 2.5% against a 3–4% benchmark, and 60% abandoned their carts. Over 12+ months, I ran research, built a strategy, and redesigned the product.
Product UX/UI Designer (Research, Strategy, Design)
Product & Marketing team
12+ Months
https://kinescope.io/gH3CrGYncEmKYvuwJMd83o
| Conversion | AOV | Cart Abandonment | Time on PDP |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2.5% → 7% | $80 → $110 | 60% → 40% | 1:45 → 2:35 |
Conversion is the key metric for this type of product: traffic was already there — the challenge was turning it into purchases. AOV and cart abandonment are supporting metrics.
A template-based site with no segmentation or personalization: one PDP, one landing page, one message — regardless of user intent, experience level, or job-to-be-done.
No mechanisms to reduce purchase anxiety at a critical conversion point — $80 AOV, mostly first-time buyers, yet no social proof, no video reviews, no trust signals on the product page. The cart lacked retention triggers: no shipping transparency, no cross-sell — nothing to reinforce the decision or increase order value.
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The problem wasn't that the site looked bad. The problem was that the product wasn't designed around real user needs.
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