I co-founded a blood testing subscription service that helps individuals live longer and healthier. We went through the Y Combinator 2022 summer batch. In a very short period of time, I created all the designs for the brand, website, packaging, and acquisition efforts. It was a wild ride with tons of learning, designing, and iterating.
Co-founder/CEO
Co-founder, CPO, Product Design, Service Design, User Research
Achieved $200K+ ARR in less than 12 weeks
Received 250+ pre-orders of average order $800 per year
Acquisition hack boosted pre-order conversions
The web app is where subscribers access their results and recommendations and manage their integrations with other health data sources. Aside from the sample collection process, this went through the most cycles of designing, testing, and iterating. Not only was I learning from the users but also using this feedback from users and knowledgable FDA experts to guide the scientific development.
Our landing page communicates what iollo is, how it works, highlights the key features/benefits, provides sneak peaks of the product, provides validation, satisfies legal requirements, provides strong calls-to-action, and pro-actively addresses objections. Each addition to the website was an effort to increase pre-orders with higher conversions.
The kit design, though initially was only a single designed image, was consistently complimented by pre-orders. I also tested versions of the kit using a quick and inexpensive Google Consumer Survey. The packaging design had a few nice surprised on the kit itself and the contents inside. After testing multiple boxes from various manufactures we elected for a premium magnetic-lid box with a premium feeling.
Influencer marketing is successful acquisition strategy for most consumer health companies. I had an idea for a hack where we weren't restricted by time (good influencers have long waitlists) or money (the bigger the influencer the more they cost). We created paid ads targeting keywords for the top health influencers in the field. The ads drove to dedicated landing pages with discounts consistent with those offered for the official influencer partners.
To avoid copyright issues and cease and desists letters, I avoided using official images or likeness of the individual, and rather used colors and similar imagery used by their brand. This was our second most successful acquisition campaign. The influencers were chosen based on pre-orderer interviews where I learned which health content our target group consumes.
I linked each plan page to a simple Stripe payments page. I also set up Google Analytics and Hotjar to learn and make changes. In order to keep us excited and informed I created a Zapier automation that sent a Slack message with a gif at every signup.
Based on research of plans and pricing user behaviors, I added the Elite plan in order to drive people towards the Premium plan. To our surprise, we had a significant number of users select the Elite plan.
After doing competitor research, I added the sample report as an effort to increase conversions. We noticed a slight bump after this change. On the homepage we ask for an email to send you a sample report so that we can continue to reach out. However, on the plans page, we let you immediately view the plan so we can close the pre-order.
We saw a bump in our conversion rate for website visits to pre-orders once we added the the sample reports. It's hard to tell exactly the amount attributed to the sample report page since we did many changes simultaneoulst or in quick succession. However, after reviewing the Hotjar recordings, I observed a clear pattern of users who successfully completed a pre-order, first visiting the sample report.
My scientific cofounder and teammates selected a novel blood collection device. It presented an interested challenge since the device came a branded, sterile, and FDA-cleared box. This created lots of issues with our pilot users, like thinking it was spam mail from the shipped from address and hard to follow instructions. We did not have the time or money to do this ourselves so I designed around the constraints. The kit came with key first instructions printed on the box like fasting and morning collection. Immediately upon opening the box, the user was delighted with friendly warm messaging and a QR code to access digital instruction (seen below). After 3 rounds of testing with pilot users, I was able to iterate until we reduced collection errors to almost zero.
Achieved $200K+ ARR in less than 12 weeks
Received 250+ pre-orders of average order $800 per year
Acquisition hack boosted pre-order conversions
