How Kate Hewko used Nostra to increase CVR by 30%

About

Founded in 2016, Kate Hewko is the eCommerce fashion brand revolutionizing style for women in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond. Their motto? “Fashion has no age limit — wear whatever the f*$k you want.” Based in Canada and built from scratch in their founder’s apartment, the Kate Hewko team began selling and shipping worldwide in 2020. Today, tools like Nostra’s Edge Delivery Engine™ help them create a frictionless user experience to secure conversions. 

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The Challenge

In today’s attention economy, slow site speeds tank your conversion rate

The team at Kate Hewko is painfully aware of this reality: In 2023, we’re all living and competing in an attention economy. “Attention spans have shortened so much,” explains Chrissy Hudson, Director of Business Development at Kate Hewko, “and if you can’t provide a shiny, new, instant experience, shoppers will dip out so fast.” 

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Knowing this, the brand’s painfully slow site speed was a red flag. Product images couldn’t load quickly enough to keep customers engaged, but when the company tried boosting speeds by lazy loading scripts and images, all of its media turned out fuzzy and distorted for visitors.

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Because the brand’s business model relies heavily on paid marketing, a laggy site soon led to inefficient ad spend. In Chrissy’s words, brands spend countless dollars to draw users to their online stores. Even if you successfully capture their interest, the visitor will instantly click away if your site takes too long to load. “In that case, you just paid $30 to get that customer on your page — only to have them bounce and never be seen again.” 

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Poor site speed was slowly but surely eating away at Kate Hewko’s conversion rate and ROAS. So, the team looked into any and all opportunities to accelerate their Shopify store — and soon stumbled upon Nostra. 

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The Solution

After an introductory call and an impressive demo of Nostra, the Kate Hewko team fell in love with our Edge Delivery Engine™. Since then, the Nostra solution has been a game-changer for both the brand and their shoppers. 

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Installing Nostra is so quick and seamless, you’ll forget it even happened

‍Kate Hewko, the brand’s eponymous founder and CEO, calls onboarding with Nostra a true “set it and forget it” experience. Including just a 15-minute Zoom call and adding a snippet of code to their store’s back end, installing Nostra was incredibly quick and seamless, Kate can barely remember ramping up before their site speed began to skyrocket. 

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Our Edge Delivery Engine™ makes your Shopify store feel as frictionless as in-person shopping

While the Kate Hewko team is clearly fashion-focused, they’ve also invested in tools like Nostra to ensure their online store is powered by a premier tech stack. As Kate explains, tech has become a major priority for this fashion brand because enabling a frictionless online shopping experience (one that mirrors in-store shopping) is crucial to stay competitive in their category and ensure a smooth path to purchase. 

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“With all of this tech, we just want to recreate that seamless in-store experience for our online customers in the best possible way. Nostra is a big part of that now.” - Kate Hewko, Founder and CEO of Kate Hewko

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Since Nostra’s Edge Delivery Engine™ dramatically accelerated Kate Hewko’s site speed, the online store feels almost as instant and dynamic as shopping for clothes in person would. 

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Nostra’s support team is exceptional — but you may not even need them

Our Edge Delivery Engine™ is built to supercharge site speeds and scale with little-to-no human maintenance. Nostra’s top-tier client support is just the cherry on top. “Nostra’s customer support is excellent, but it’s honestly more than required,” explains Kate. “After all, the software is so great, it does the job all on its own.” 

“We’re a fashion brand, but we also ensure our site has a premier tech stack so it can be operationally excellent. I love that when I click on our store, banners and images no longer delay for five seconds. Everything is just right there instantly.” - Chrissy Hudson, Director of Business Development at Kate Hewko

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The Results

With Nostra, Kate Hewko can 8–9x speed scores and supercharge CVR

Since installing Nostra’s Edge Delivery Engine™, Kate Hewko has seen almost unbelievable improvements to their Shopify store’s speed score. Impressive lifts in their conversion rate came soon after. Take a look at the results driven by Nostra so far: 

• Time to First Byte: 401 → 101
• 30% increase in CVR *

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Looking ahead, Chrissy tells us candidly, “Nostra helps us see a huge increase in our site speed — and we want to stay f*$king fast.” 

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Nostra has ultimately empowered Kate Hewko to provide a frictionless online shopping experience, boost conversion rates, and make the most out of their ad dollars. They have no intention of ever going back to clunky lazy loads that tank conversions. As Kate tells it, “We are happily locked in for the long run with Nostra.” 

‍“Since Nostra, we’ve seen a huge increase in site speed and conversion rates, which makes everything else more profitable. We want to make our site one of the best stores on the Internet. That’s it. And Nostra makes it possible.” - Chrissy Hudson, Director of Business Development at Kate Hewko

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No matter what your brand’s selling, site speed is always critical for growth and your bottom line. Book a demo with us today to see how Nostra can elevate your website’s performance, revenue, traffic, and conversions!

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^{*Results may vary. Typical CVR increase of 3-5%}

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