Designing High-Converting Landing Pages with Replo

As an ecommerce brand, your ultimate goal is turning site visitors into paying customers. What is the best way to do that? Landing pages. 

They’re an essential part of any brand’s marketing strategy and an incredible growth tool.  They help lower your customer acquisition costs (CAC) and improve your conversion rate, ultimately leading to increased revenue and growth. 

However, building a landing page can be a challenging and time-consuming process. It requires resources and expertise from web developers and designers. Plus, it’s expensive.

This is where Replo comes in.

Replo is a powerful, no-code design platform that simplifies the process of building beautiful, effective landing pages for DTC brands. Since its launch in 2022, Replo has secured funding from Figma Ventures, YCombinator, and Infinity, among others. 

The platform is a game-changer for DTC brands. It’s used and loved by household names like Hexclad, Jones Road Beauty, and Supply, to name a few. 

Recently, the Replo team launched Replo 2.0, an all-in-one ecosystem specifically designed for ambitious ecommerce teams. This update includes several new tools, such as Replo UI, Replo AI, and Replo Marketplace that streamline the design and optimization process. Additionally, Replo released a range of fresh content resources to help ecommerce brands accelerate their growth, making it a valuable resource for any ecommerce business.

We sat down with Replo’s Cofounder Yuxin Zhu to understand his perspective on landing pages and how brands can leverage them to drive growth. 

Replo Explained

Replo cofounders Yuxin Zhu and Noah Gilmore met while attending UC Berkeley, where they both majored in computer science.

The pair developed a strong synergy early on, working as classmates throughout college and taking on side projects together, including a digitized core scheduling system for Berkeley (built on a phone network). Ultimately, they ended up selling the software to the school.

When the duo started discussing their next project together, Zhu and Gilmore were senior engineers at Uber and Plangrid, respectively. At the time, Zhu was also running a Shopify store and consulting for multiple larger brands on the side.

“A lot of the problems that you have as a startup, big companies also have–just at a much larger scale,” notes Zhu. 

Additionally, he noticed that many startup teams, especially brands, have plenty of great ideas but lack the developers and/or budget to execute them. They don’t have the bandwidth, and they aren’t tech companies.

For Zhu, it became evident that building on ecommerce can be extremely challenging for brands, especially if they lack the resources and funds to do so. 

“It’s not just about getting developers to build a static page,” explains Zhu. “The page needs to load quickly. It needs to integrate with different tools. Not only do you need to hire a great developer, but you also need to hire someone who knows the full picture.”

This ultimately led Zhu and Gilmore to build Replo.

With Replo, teams can launch landing pages and marketing campaigns in no time, with full control over the whole process, and without having to write a single line of code.

Even better, Replo also has a template library that boasts multiple collections of pre-built, landing page designs from world-class DTC brands like Glossier and Athletic Greens, so teams can get started right away and build quickly.

“Even though I was an engineering manager, I was intrigued by the idea of making it easier for these companies to build online. Because, arguably, ecommerce is where your website matters the most.”

Landing Pages as a Storytelling Tool

Landing pages have always been important for ecommerce brands, but there is an even greater emphasis on them now more than ever before—due to increasing competition.

Industry-wide changes, such as iOS privacy updates and attribution tracking, have forced brands of all sizes to adapt their marketing strategies while still aiming to increase conversion.

One way that brands can achieve this, according to Zhu, is by investing in storytelling and creative design. Naturally, landing pages are prime real estate for this approach.

“I feel like ever since I got involved in this space, every other Instagram ad is another brand,” notes Zhu. “How do you stand out? How do you tell a compelling story?”

Huron, another DTC fan-favorite and Replo client, is a performance-based men’s personal care brand to “help guys help themselves.” They harness the power of storytelling in everything they do. 

Their website is a direct reflection of the story that they want to share: that their brand is a safe space for men to figure out their routines from a lighthearted, educational perspective. 

The flexible nature of the Replo platform gives Huron’s team the ability to quickly iterate and ship landing pages that directly speak to those values and vibes.

The best example of this is Huron’s Build Your Own Bundle page, which allows customers to create a tailored routine instead of settling for pre-made bundles that may not completely meet their needs.

Huron’s advice for brands: Remember your OGs. Note your most loyal customers who have supported you since the beginning. Segment this customer group and market to them. 

“Landing pages are becoming a relatively easy lever to pull in terms of driving that storytelling of who you are, or what your brand is, and getting that sale.”

Empowering Data-driven Decisions

In the ever-evolving world of ecommerce, the brands that win are the ones that listen to their data.

According to Zhu, many of Replo’s clients are businesses generating $40-50M in annual revenue. These businesses understand that in the highly competitive world of ecommerce, even small changes can make a big difference.

And as CACs continue to increase, brands are turning to factors they can control, such as the color of a button or the copy next to a hero image.

While running A/B tests can be a challenge, especially for smaller brands just starting, they’re critical in understanding what messaging and creativity resonates with your audience. 

Replo makes it easy for marketing teams to run tests on their own, without having to wait for a developer to make changes. Brands can quickly iterate and improve their messaging to see what resonates with their audience.

A representative from Nathan James Home Furniture, one of Replo’s clients, noted that Replo’s quick-turn program has allowed their team to be more hands-on and proactive in iterating their site to improve the user experience. Additionally, they’ve been able to add interactive elements to let the brand shine.

One of Nathan James’ top tips? Customer care counts! 

Caring about your customer’s experience at every step of the buying process is key. A great way to do this on your landing page is to consider the interactive elements, and how to best highlight your products.

“There’s almost an art to how people run tests, and how they change and modify messaging.”

Building Hand-in-Hand with Community

In addition to an outstanding product that empowers ecommerce founders and operators to take full ownership of their online brand experience, Replo also has an active Slack community of experts and operators that have come together in the name of landing pages, ecommerce, and technology in general.

From the beginning, the Replo team knew that they wanted to provide a user support network, but they didn’t know it would take off. 

“I don’t think we had any great ambitions of building a community right off the bat, it kind of happened that way,” notes Zhu. 

Within just a few months, the Slack channel grew into a thriving online community of 750+ members, including freelancers, web designers, and users.

According to Zhu, the most active channels within the community are typically landing page-adjacent. In a channel dedicated to general marketing chatter, members frequently discuss topics such as sales attribution and the marketing tools in their tech stack. 

Additionally, there are channels dedicated to finding experts and requesting Replo templates, allowing members to share their skills and collaborate with others in the community.

“A lot of building, creativity, and life, in general, is just about learning from people around you.”

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