How a Record Sales Sales Day Came From One Small Change

I'm a product design instructor in Maine. Dylan, one of my past students started a project in class and started building it. He turns Maine's hemp waste into outdoor goods, like hemp firestarters. It's called Tree Free Heat.

Last month, Dylan launched a new website, and he's been running lots of experiments based on customer feedback. Below's the most successful experiment to date! (And thank you so, so much for reading about what he's up to).

After Tree Free Heat was featured in the Portland Press Herald and MaineBiz last week, Dylan saw a significant website traffic spike, which translated into his biggest day of sales to date.

But, a number of potential customers emailed Dylan to express frustration that the cost of one package of foolproof hemp firestarters was nearly equal to the cost of shipping. These potential customers would buy the firestarters, but paying significantly for shipping was preventing them from buying.

After he learned with these potential customers, Dylan knew that he didn’t want to significantly raise prices only to make shipping free by default. So he began a pricing and shipping investigation to figure out how to best serve his customers - lots of measuring and weighing, as well as a trip to the Post Office on six consecutive days to determine a complete matrix of pricing shipping options for each order quantity.

After talking with customers about their willingness to pay, and discovering that returning customers most often buy three packs at a time, Dylan decided to offer free delivery on orders of three packs or more.

With the strategic shift, Dylan has already seen his new highest day of sales (more than doubling his previous record).