Conversion Rate Optimization · Follow-up to the June audit
Pott Candles
CRO Re-Audit · August 2026
Three months after the June audit: which fixes shipped, what the funnel did in response, and where the remaining money leak is. Fresh 91-day data window plus fresh on-device UK captures of mobile and desktop.
Pott Candles·August 30, 2026·TW Pixel + Google Ads + Microsoft Clarity + Shopify + on-device UK review
Section 01 — The Headline
The June fixes landed and the funnel responded. Three of the five June priorities are verified shipped on the live site: the canonical Starter Pack PDP no longer defaults to a subscription, the Outdoor (now Citronella) collection leads with product, and the mobile homepage has a GET STARTED button above the fold. Conversion rate moved 2.72% → 2.78% and 91-day revenue grew 20% (£424,722 → £511,158) against the spring window.
Pott's proof and its explanation are real. Almost nobody sees either.
Two separate problems, both about what a visitor is shown. First, the duplicate page. The subscription-default buy box removed from the canonical Starter Pack PDP in June is still live on /products/refillable-candle-starter-pack-old-copy, taking 1,195 Google clicks (£3,302) a quarter at 7.4% CVR versus the canonical's 8.9%. Second, and larger: Pott has 1,687 reviews at 4.77 and shows none of them on the homepage, while the Starter Pack PDP displays a bare "4.8" with no count behind it. The homepage does explain how refilling works, what is in the pack, and why the Refill Club is worth joining, but all of that sits between 34% and 64% of the page, and 82% of mobile visitors never scroll past 25%. And nowhere on the site does Pott say that a refill costs about half the price of buying the candle again. Modeled combined opportunity: ~£1,600–3,200/month.
91d Sessions
172,080
~85% mobile (Clarity sample) · +13% vs spring window
Conversion Rate
2.78%
up from 2.72% pre-June-fixes
Store reviews held
1,687
4.77 average · 92% are 4-star or better · shown on the homepage: none
Mobile sessions under 25% scroll
82%
Homepage education starts at 34% of the page
Section 03b — Proof & Education
You own 1,687 reviews. The homepage shows none of them.
This section answers three questions that sit behind the ranked fixes: what trust assets does Pott actually have, where does a visitor learn how refilling works and what it saves them, and does anyone scroll far enough to find out. Review data pulled live from the Yotpo storefront API on 30 August. Scroll behaviour from Microsoft Clarity (3-day window, mobile).
Store-wide reviews
1,687
Average 4.77. 1,476 of them are 5-star; 92% are 4-star or better.
Shown on the homepage
0
No rating, no count, no press badge anywhere above the fold.
Median mobile homepage scroll
12%
Of a 6,771px page. 82% of sessions never pass 25%.
Reviews on the Starter Pack PDP
51
Displayed as a bare "4.8" with no count and no review widget on the page.
Finding AThe June canonical switch orphaned three quarters of the Starter Pack's review historyBoth
Old-copy: 147 reviews @ 4.78 · Canonical: 51 reviews @ 4.84
Yotpo keys reviews to the Shopify product, not the URL. The page promoted in June (refillable-candle-starter-pack, id 16010672046458) is a different product record from the one deprecated (-old-copy, id 15177603055994). The deprecated record carries 147 reviews; the promoted one carries 51.
This changes the sequencing of Priority 1. A 301 today would move paid traffic onto the page with less proof and, as Finding B shows, no subscription path at all. Merge the Yotpo review groups and port the subscription block first, then redirect.
Finding BThe canonical Starter Pack PDP offers no subscription at allBoth
Recharge widget block present in the DOM, renders empty · no selling_plan input in the cart form
June's fix was to stop pre-selecting the subscription. What actually shipped removed the subscription offer. The canonical buy box is now: variant picker → Add to Cart. The recharge-subscription-widget block is still installed on the page but renders nothing, and the cart form posts no selling plan.
The deprecated page is the only Starter Pack page that still presents the subscription, and it is also the only page anywhere on the site carrying the recurring value math: "£25 monthly cost (save £7 versus buying one-off refills)", plus free shipping and skip/pause/cancel. Starter packs are the front door to the subscription, and the front door currently has no handle.
- Correct end state is neither June's forced default nor today's absence: offer both plans, one-time selected by default, with the saving stated next to the subscription option.
Finding CThe homepage education exists. It sits below the point where four in five visitors stopMobile primary
Clarity 3d, mobile: median scroll 12%, p75 20%, 82% of sessions under 25%
The mobile homepage is 6,771 CSS px tall. The median session stops at roughly 813px; 82% never pass 1,693px. Everything Pott uses to explain and justify the product is below that line:
| Homepage section | Position & who reaches it |
|---|
| Hero + GET STARTED | 117px 1.7% of pageNearly all |
| Featured collection tiles | 667px 9.9% of page~Half. The median session stops here |
| "Get started here… Our Starter Packs include everything you need" | 1,314px 19.4% of page~1 in 4 |
| "How Pott works. It's very simple." | 2,305px 34.0% of pageUnder 1 in 5 |
| "What's included in your Starter Pack?" | 2,754px 40.7% of pageFew |
| "As seen in" press proof | 3,276px 48.4% of pageVery few |
| "The Refill Club" subscription pitch | 4,339px 64.1% of pageAlmost none |
The behaviour is consistent with how the homepage is used: visitors land, read the hero, take the first collection tile, and go. That is a reasonable path, but it means the "how it works", the press proof and the subscription pitch are all paid for and never seen. For contrast, the sale collection page has a median scroll of 70%. Pott's visitors will scroll; they are not scrolling this page.
Finding DThe strongest education pages are orphaned, and the best one gets 3 sessions in 3 daysBoth
Homepage links to zero of the three
Pott has good education assets. /pages/starter-pack-options carries size tiers with buying qualifiers ("Our best selling size"), a testimonial, a "What's inside" diagram, the "How it works" three-step, the refill video and an FAQ. /pages/candle-options is close behind. /pages/subscribe-save states the subscription benefits including "Save 10% versus buying one-off refills".
None of them are linked from the homepage, which links instead to /pages/subscribe-save and /pages/refill-options only, both far below the scroll line. Clarity 3d sessions: starter-pack-options 3, how-it-works 1, candle-options 118 with a 38% quickback rate. Those are arrivals that bounce straight back.
/pages/how-it-works is a dead end: a title, an unplayed video, a paragraph of brand poetry, no steps in text and no CTA.
Finding EThe single strongest value argument is stated nowhere on the siteBoth
Priced from Pott's own live catalogue, 30 Aug
Pott sells refilling as an idea ("Never throw away an empty candle jar again") but never prices it. The numbers are strong and they are Pott's own:
| Size | Full candle | Refill | Saved per refill |
|---|
| Petite | £32.50 | £15.00 | £17.50 (54%) |
| Standard | £55.50 | £27.50 | £28.00 (50%) |
| Grand | £89.00 | £44.50 | £44.50 (50%) |
Every refill costs about half of buying that candle again, and subscribing takes a further 10% off. A £69 Standard Starter Pack pays that back on the second refill. No page tested makes this comparison: not the homepage, not either Starter Pack PDP, not Just a Pott, not the collections, not any education page.
Finding FThe education is trapped in images, so search and AI assistants cannot read itBoth
Homepage: 39 images, alt text is filenames such as "How_to_Refill_21.png", "Website_Products_74.png"
The "How it works" three-step, the "What's inside" breakdown and the subscription benefits are all flattened into images whose alt attributes are filenames. Extracting the rendered text of every education surface returns no step-by-step copy at all, because there is none. It is pixels.
That has a cost beyond accessibility. It is the likely mechanism behind the AI-visibility gap found on 13 August: a competitor is the #1 cited source on refillable-candle education prompts while Pott wins only the shortlist prompt. Pott's education is real and good; it simply is not machine-readable. Re-cutting these three diagrams as HTML text with the images alongside is a small job with compounding returns.
Section 04 — The Plan
Priority fixes, ranked
Ordered by impact × effort. Priorities 1–4 are the ones that move revenue: they consolidate the Starter Pack, put Pott's 1,687 reviews in front of people, lift the explanation above the scroll line, and finally price the refill promise. Most are Shopify admin, theme-section or copy changes; Priorities 1, 3 and 6 need some theme work.
1
Consolidate the two Starter Pack pages, but port before you redirect Both
/products/refillable-candle-starter-pack-old-copy is a live duplicate and it still has "Monthly Refill Delivery £65.00" pre-selected, the exact pattern removed from the canonical page in June. Google Ads sent it 1,195 clicks (£3,302) this quarter; it converts at 7.4% vs the canonical 8.9%, and 1.84× vs 2.13× ROAS. The obvious move is a 301, but do not redirect yet. The deprecated record holds 147 reviews to the canonical's 51, and it is the only Starter Pack page that still offers the subscription at all (see Findings A and B). Redirecting today moves paid traffic to a page with less proof and no subscription path.
Do it in this order: (1) merge the Yotpo review groups so the canonical inherits all 147; (2) restore a subscription option on the canonical with one-time selected by default and the "save £7 a month versus one-off refills" line visible; (3) then 301 the old-copy URL, update Google Ads final URLs, and sweep Klaviyo and Meta for links to it. While in there: grand-starter-pack runs at 0.57× ROAS (£683/quarter) and its near-namesake grand-starter-pack-copy now sells a different product, so it is worth a media-side review of which Grand URL ads should target.
£3,302/quarter on the duplicate · 7.4% vs 8.9% CVR · 147 vs 51 reviews · subscription present on old page only
High impactMedium effort~£300–500/mo
2
Surface the review count everywhere it is currently hidden Both
Pott has 1,687 reviews at 4.77, 92% of them 4-star or better. The homepage shows none. The Starter Pack PDP shows a bare "4.8" with no count and no review widget on the page at all. A rating with nothing behind it reads as decoration, not evidence. A number does the work: "4.8 from 147 reviews" is a different claim from "4.8".
Fix, in rising order of effort: (a) add the count next to every PDP star rating and make it jump to the reviews block; (b) put a store-level trust line in the homepage hero area, "4.8 average from 1,687 reviews", which is the single highest-leverage change available given 82% of mobile visitors never scroll past 25%; (c) add the reviews widget to the Starter Pack PDP, which currently has none.
1,687 store reviews @ 4.77 · homepage shows 0 · Starter Pack shows a count of none
High impactLow effort~£400–800/mo
3
Move the homepage's proof and explanation above the 25% scroll line Mobile primary
Nothing here needs writing. It needs moving. "How Pott works" sits at 34% of the page, "What's included in your Starter Pack" at 41%, the "As seen in" press block at 48%, and "The Refill Club" at 64%. 82% of mobile sessions never pass 25%. Meanwhile the median session stops right at the featured collection tiles (9.9%), which is exactly where they click through.
Fix: promote three things into the first 1,700px: the store rating line, a condensed three-step "how it works" strip, and the refill saving (Priority 4). Then push "As seen in" up under the tiles. The homepage is 6,771px for content most visitors will never request; consider cutting its length rather than adding to it.
Median mobile scroll 12% · 82% under 25% · education starts at 34%
High impactMedium effort~£400–900/mo
4
State the refill saving in money, on the pages that sell starter packs Both
Pott's own prices make the argument: a Standard candle is £55.50 and a Standard refill is £27.50. Every refill costs half of buying that candle again (£17.50 saved on Petite, £28.00 on Standard, £44.50 on Grand), and subscribing takes another 10% off. A £69 Standard Starter Pack pays that back on the second refill.
No page on the site makes this comparison. The refill promise is sold as a sentiment ("never throw away an empty candle jar again") and never as an amount. Fix: add a one-line saving statement to the homepage, both Starter Pack PDPs and the subscription block: "Refills cost about half the price of a new candle. Standard: £27.50 versus £55.50." This is the cheapest high-value copy change on the list, and it also gives the subscription a reason beyond convenience.
50–54% saving per refill, priced from the live catalogue 30 Aug · stated on 0 of 10 surfaces tested
High impactLow effortConversion + subs mix
5
Route people to the education pages, or fold them into the pages that get traffic Both
/pages/starter-pack-options is the best sales page Pott owns: size tiers with buying qualifiers, "What's inside", "How it works", the refill video, an FAQ and a testimonial. It received 3 mobile sessions in three days. /pages/how-it-works received 1, and is a dead end anyway: a title, an unplayed video, a paragraph of brand copy, no steps in text, no CTA. /pages/candle-options gets real traffic (118 sessions) but 38% quickback. People arrive and immediately go back.
The homepage links to none of the three. Fix: either link them from the fold and the collection tiles, or move their content into the homepage and PDPs and retire the pages. The second is probably right. Orphaned pages that duplicate PDP content rarely earn their upkeep.
Best education page: 3 sessions/3d · candle-options 38% quickback · 0 homepage links
Med impactMedium effortAssist + AI visibility
6
Re-cut the education diagrams as real text Both
"How it works", "What's inside" and the subscription benefits are all images. The homepage carries 39 images whose alt attributes are filenames such as How_to_Refill_21.png and Website_Products_74.png. Pulling the rendered text of every education surface returns no step-by-step copy, because there is none.
Beyond accessibility, this is the most plausible mechanism behind the AI-visibility gap found on 13 August, where a competitor is the #1 cited source on refillable-candle education prompts and Pott wins only the shortlist prompt. Fix: rebuild the three-step and the "what's inside" list as HTML text with the illustration alongside, and write real alt text. Small job, compounding return across SEO, AI answers and screen readers.
39 homepage images · alt text is filenames · 0 education steps present as text
Med impactLow effortSEO + AI citation
7
Fix the placeholder "Product Title £19.99" cards on the top-spend landing page Both
The Just a Pott PDP is the #1 Google Ads landing page (£3,756/quarter). Its "Why not add some refills?" section renders three unconfigured template cards: blank image, literal "Product Title", £19.99. Paid visitors scrolling past the reviews see scaffolding. The cart drawer already has a working refill upsell, so the products exist; the section was published without assigning them. Fix: assign real refill products in the theme section (or hide the section until configured).
£3,756/quarter LP · 201 conversions · defect confirmed in 30 Aug capture
Med impactTrivial effortTrust + small AOV
8
Put a free-shipping progress meter in the cart drawer Mobile primary
Free shipping kicks in at £75. AOV is £55.31, and mobile paid orders average £63 vs £75 on desktop, so the typical mobile cart sits £10–20 below the threshold. The site header announces the threshold, but the cart drawer itself, where the decision happens, never says "You're £6 away from free shipping", and the drawer has a large empty block where a progress meter would sit. The refill upsell already in the drawer is the natural threshold-filler (+£20). Fix: add the progress bar + dynamic message to the drawer (native in most themes / free in apps like UpCart).
10,376 ATC sessions/quarter · AOV £55.31 vs £75 threshold · mobile AOV £12 under desktop
Med impactLow effort~£500–1,000/mo
9
Move the Pott Perks widget off the buy box: this is site-wide, not one page Mobile primary
Carried from June (P5), and broader than June recorded. The bottom-left floating pill covers a variant chip on both Starter Pack PDPs and on Just a Pott, sits over the "£25 monthly cost" subscription disclosure on the duplicate page, and on the homepage it overlaps the Summer Sale tile. It is not a single-page defect; it lands on every mobile template captured. Reposition bottom-right, shrink to an icon, or auto-collapse on scroll.
Overlaps content on every mobile template captured, June and August
Low impactLow effortUX hygiene
10
Sale-page hygiene for the next promo, including the homepage tile Both
Three things spotted while the August Bank Holiday Sale was live. (a) The sale collection's hero banner was published with no background image, so the white title is nearly invisible on the cream background. (b) The homepage Summer Sale tile has the same fault: a flat red block with white text and no image, sitting in the featured-tile row at 9.9% of the page, which Section 03b shows is the most-seen block on the homepage after the hero. That is the worst place on the site to run a broken image. (c) The Standard Size Citronella Starter Pack showed Sold Out mid-sale while its ads and sale badges were still running. None of it matters after 31 Aug; all of it is worth a pre-flight check on the next promo, and Q4 is close: hero image set on collection and homepage tile, text contrast checked, stock cover on every advertised hero SKU.
Observed live 30 Aug during the Summer Sale · homepage tile sits in the highest-visibility block
Low impactChecklistPromo insurance
£ figures are modeled opportunity estimates (closing part of the observed gap × current traffic), not measured results. Use them to size effort, not to forecast.
Section 05 — What We Saw
On-device findings
Every page rendered at a real iPhone and a real desktop viewport on 30 August, UK locale forced (geolocation, currency, timezone, Accept-Language), 5-second image-decode wait, then reviewed visually. Where the data proves the friction it sits on the finding; visual calls are stated plainly.
Priority 1Two Starter Pack PDPs: one fixed, one frozen in JuneBoth
£3,302/quarter · 1,195 paid clicks · 7.4% vs 8.9% CVR · 1.84× vs 2.13× ROAS
Canonical PDP · variant picker straight to Add to Cart. Fixed in June.
Same product, -old-copy URL · "Monthly Refill Delivery £65.00" still pre-selected, Pott Perks covering the monthly cost line
- The canonical page is in great shape: sale pricing, 4.8★, clean chips, no pre-selected subscription. The June fix is verified live.
- The duplicate at
-old-copy kept the old buy box: the radio defaults to a £65/month recurring plan while the page anchors £69 one-time. Every Google Ads click landing here gets the pre-June experience.
- The Pott Perks pill sits exactly over the "£25 monthly cost" disclosure on mobile, so the recurring price is hidden unless the shopper dismisses the widget.
- Fix: 301-redirect
-old-copy → canonical in Shopify (Navigation → URL redirects), swap the final URL on the two Google Ads campaigns pointing at it, and grep Klaviyo flows + Meta ad destinations for the old URL. 30-minute job, ends the split test nobody meant to run.
Priority 2The #1 spend landing page ships template scaffoldingBoth
Just a Pott PDP · £3,756/quarter Google Ads spend · 201 conversions
Below the reviews: three cards reading "Product Title · £19.99" with blank images
- The page itself sells well: 3.31× ROAS, strong reviews block, a working "4 × Standard Size Refill Set" cross-sell near the buy box.
- The "Why not add some refills?" section renders three unconfigured placeholder cards: blank image, literal "Product Title", £19.99, five stars. On the page receiving more paid traffic than any other URL on the site.
- Fix: in the theme customizer, assign the Standard Refill products to the section (they already exist and are priced £20). Or hide the section. Five minutes either way.
Priority 3The cart never mentions how close the shopper is to free shippingMobile primary
£75 threshold · AOV £55.31 · mobile paid AOV £63 vs desktop £75
Cart drawer, £69 in basket: no "£6 away from free shipping", large empty block mid-drawer
- The drawer already does two things right: a gift-note field and a one-tap £20 refill upsell at the bottom.
- With £69 in the basket (£6 from the threshold) the drawer says nothing. The only free-shipping mention is the rotating header bar on the page behind it. The decision point is the drawer.
- Mobile paid orders average £12 less than desktop. A visible "£X away" meter plus the existing refill upsell is the shortest path to closing that gap.
- Fix: add a progress bar + "You're £6 away from free UK shipping" line at the top of the drawer, and let the refill upsell reference it when the gap is under £20.
Priority 5Promo pre-flight: the sale page went out with an invisible titleBoth
Live during the 29–31 Aug Summer Sale · hero section has bg-secondary and no image set
"August Bank Holiday Sale" in white on cream. The products below are fine.
For contrast: the fixed Citronella collection page, hero + products immediately
- The sale hero is an image-with-title section published without an image, leaving white text on the cream background. Confirmed in the page source (bg-secondary, no media).
- One of the two hero sale products showed Sold Out mid-sale with a Save 20% badge still on it.
- Fix: a three-line pre-flight for every future promo: hero image set and text readable, every advertised SKU in stock, sale collection spot-checked on a phone. Matters much more for Q4 than for a 3-day bank-holiday sale.
