Cold drinks, hot conversions — it's BrüMate!

Project Overview

BrüMate is a US-based premium insulated drinkware brand focused on keeping adult beverages at the perfect temperature. With products ranging from can coolers to wine tumblers, BrüMate had built a cult following through aggressive paid media and product innovation.

upGrowth partnered with BrüMate from 2017–2020 and again from 2022–mid 2023, managing Google, Meta, organic, and Amazon across a monthly spend of $3M–$5M. While the performance marketing engine was strong, website conversion rates left significant revenue on the table, especially during seasonal peaks when traffic surged, but checkout completion didn’t keep pace.

Challenges

BrüMate’s business showed strong seasonality, with peaks in spring and summer. Traffic surged during these windows, but conversion rates didn’t scale proportionally, indicating UX bottlenecks during high-intent periods. With 70%+ traffic from mobile driven by Meta and Instagram ads, the mobile checkout experience was creating friction at critical decision points.

BrüMate’s expanding product catalog, with 20+ SKUs across multiple categories, led users to experience choice overload on collection and product pages, with no clear conversion pathways. The blended conversion rate ranged from 3.8%–4.5% by season, while the mobile conversion rate hovered around 3.2%. Cart abandonment rate reached 72%.

From seasonal spikes to sustained conversions

The Idea

When upGrowth began its CRO engagement with BrüMate, the first step was to understand where conversions were leaking across the funnel. Research included VWO heatmaps and 200+ session recordings across high-traffic product pages, identifying repeated rage clicks near shipping information and color selection dropdowns. Funnel analysis in Google Analytics, segmented by traffic source, revealed that Meta traffic had high Add-to-Cart but low checkout completion.

CX ticket mining surfaced top objections around delivery timelines, fit compatibility for can sizes, and gifting confusion. Competitive benchmarking across premium D2C drinkware brands identified urgency blocks and social proof placements that BrüMate lacked above the fold. The objective became clear: maximize revenue from existing traffic by systematically improving conversion rate across the entire purchase funnel.

Result

The systematic CRO program transformed BrüMate’s website from a traffic destination into a conversion engine. Site-wide conversion rate improved from 4.2% to 8.6%, a 104% increase. Mobile conversion rate jumped from 3.2% to 6.7%, a 109% lift. Cart abandonment rate dropped from 72% to 58%, a 19% improvement.

Average order value increased from $48 to $61, a 27% gain. Revenue per session surged from $2.02 to $5.25, a 160% increase. These changes positioned BrüMate with sustained conversion rates in the 6–12% range, depending on season and platform, significantly above the D2C e-commerce industry average of 2–3%.

Sneak peak of the solutions

Product page optimization

The first A/B test focused on the redesign above the fold. The variant moved color selection above the fold, added a real-time social proof module, placed UGC thumbnails under CTA, and included a shipping clarity message. This delivered a 22% lift in Add-to-Cart and a 14% lift in product page conversion. The second test added dynamic review counts and top-rated tags to best-sellers, resulting in an 11% lift in revenue per session and an 8% increase in AOV for highlighted SKUs.

 

Mobile checkout simplification

The checkout flow was reduced from 5 steps to 3, with express checkout buttons moved above the fold and address auto-fill enabled. The redundant billing confirmation page was removed, and a progress bar indicator was added. Mobile conversion improved from 3.2% to 6.7%. Checkout completion rate increased by 28%. This single optimization unlocked significant revenue from the 70%+ mobile traffic base.

 

Collection page UX overhaul

The solution auto-surfaced best-sellers in the top 4 positions, introduced Quick Add functionality, and added bundle blocks with Frequently Bought Together modules. The A/B test showed an 18% increase in Add-to-Cart from collection pages and a 27% increase in AOV driven by bundles. This transformed collection pages from passive browse experiences into active conversion drivers.

 

Seasonal landing page optimization

BrüMate’s seasonal peaks required dedicated landing pages for summer and the gifting season. Optimizations included countdown timers, simplified navigation, a bundle-first layout, and variants for Meta vs. Google intent messaging. The previous year’s seasonal conversion rate was 5.1%. Post-CRO seasonal conversion rate reached 9.8%, nearly doubling seasonal revenue efficiency without increasing traffic.