The Conversion Optimization Strategy No One Talks About With Raphael Paulin-Daigle

Raphael Paulin-Daigle is the Founder and CEO of SplitBase, a conversion optimization agency specializing in luxury, lifestyle, and fashion ecommerce brands. Since 2015, he has helped companies like Dr. Squatch, Hyperice, Amika, Kiehl’s, NYX Cosmetics, and YSL Beauty generate millions in additional revenue while preserving brand integrity. Known for creating the 3P’s methodology and the Testing Trifecta, Raphael combines analytics, qualitative research, and A/B testing to align growth with brand value. A TEDx speaker and the host of the Minds of Ecommerce podcast, he shares strategies that challenge traditional CRO best practices and fuel sustainable growth.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [0:45] Raphael Paulin-Daigle reveals why traditional CRO best practices damage brand equity
• [5:20] Introducing the 3P’s methodology for balancing performance and brand growth
• [9:58] How positioning, trust, and narrative shape customer perception and conversions
• [15:40] Why offers, pathways, and experiences are the key areas to test for revenue growth
• [19:15] Case study: how Hyperice generated $900K monthly revenue while maintaining premium appeal

In this episode…

Ecommerce brands often face a tough dilemma: Increase conversions quickly or protect brand equity for the long term. Traditional CRO tactics, such as countdown timers, fake scarcity, and aggressive pop-ups, may drive short-term sales but can erode trust and tarnish a premium brand. How can companies grow revenue without sacrificing their identity and customer perception?

Raphael Paulin-Daigle, a conversion optimization expert, shares his 3P’s methodology — Patterns, Perception, and Proof — as a framework for driving growth while strengthening brand value. Raphael explains how to analyze behavioral and voice patterns, build trust through clear positioning and compelling narratives, and validate strategies through smart testing. By approaching optimization holistically, he shows how brands can increase conversions and revenue while maintaining the premium appeal their customers expect.

In this episode of Minds of Ecommerce, Raphael Paulin-Daigle, Founder and CEO of SplitBase, breaks down how to scale conversions without weakening brand equity. Raphael discusses the flaws of traditional CRO tactics, why positioning and trust drive long-term growth and the importance of testing offers, pathways, and customer experiences. He also shares a case study on Hyperice’s $900K monthly revenue increase while preserving brand integrity.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Raphael Paulin-Daigle: LinkedIn | X
• SplitBase
• Free Diagnostic Call (3P’s Methodology Audit)
• Dr. Squatch
• Hyperice
• Amika
• Kiehl’s
• NYX Cosmetics
• YSL Beauty

Quotable Moments:

• “Just because brand impact is harder to measure doesn’t mean it’s not driving revenue.”
• “Your brand deserves conversion optimization that makes it stronger, not weaker, and your customers deserve that.”
• “Conversion optimization should be about your entire business, not just UX changes, layout tests, or copy.”
• “When your story connects with how your customers see themselves, that’s when the conversion becomes natural.”
• “Brands that win long-term are the ones that figure out how to do both.”

Action Steps:

1. Identify customer behavioral, voice, and resistance patterns: These insights reveal what truly drives or blocks conversions, enabling you to prioritize the right improvements.
2. Optimize brand perception through positioning, trust, and narrative: Strong brand perception builds customer confidence and makes your message resonate more deeply.
3. Test offers, pathways, and user experiences: Smart testing validates strategies, preventing wasted effort on changes that don’t drive growth.
4. Treat brand as a conversion lever, not a barrier: Integrating brand into CRO ensures long-term equity while still boosting short-term results.
5. Apply the 3P’s methodology continuously: A cyclical approach compounds improvements over time, driving consistent revenue and customer loyalty.

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by SplitBase.

At SplitBase, we design, test, and manage high-converting landing pages and on-site experiences for fashion, luxury, and lifestyle ecommerce brands. Our optimization program pinpoints exactly where your store is losing money most, and then we help you fix that.

The result? Increased conversions and profits for our clients.

With our team of conversion optimization specialists, performance marketers, and conversion-focused designers, we've got your back when it comes to testing and optimization.

Request a proposal on SplitBase.com today, and learn how we can help you get the most out of your marketing spend.

You can find us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Don’t miss out on our exclusive podcasts at Minds of Ecommerce.

Episode Transcript

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  0:06  

Welcome to the Minds of Ecommerce podcast where you'll learn one key strategy that made leading ecommerce companies grow exponentially. We cut the bullshit and keep the meat in a 15-minute episode. Founders and executives take us through a deep dive of a strategy, so you'll get to learn and grow your online sales. I'm about to tell you something that goes against most conversion optimization advice out there, and it might be exactly what your eight or nine-figure brand needs to hear. Now if you're a brand owner or director of marketing or a VP of Ecommerce, and you've ever looked at CRO recommendations and thought, You know what? This just doesn't feel right for my brand. If you've ever cringed at suggestions for countdown timers, fake scarcity pop-ups, and aggressive tactics that feel like they cheapen your brand, or maybe if you felt like you had to choose between growing conversions and protecting your brand equity, well, you're not alone, and there is a very specific reason for that. Now, before I get into why most CRO advice is actually destroying brand value. Let me just tell you first why. Maybe Listen to me in the first place. For over five years, we were behind Dr. Squatch's conversion optimization program, a brand that scaled precisely because of their strong brand value, not despite it, we've also optimized for brands like Hyperice with their sleek and premium appeal. Hair care brand Amika, with their particular brand aesthetic that can't be compromised. And even beauty behemoths like Kiehl's, NYX Cosmetics, and YSL Beauty brands with incredibly strict brand standards that absolutely cannot be cheapened by typical CRO tactics. So if we can grow conversions for brands with these kinds of standards, there's clearly a different way to approach conversion optimization and well, the results also speak for themselves, right? $800,000 in additional revenue generated. 78x ROI, 28 plus conversion lifts. Those are just some of the results we've had recently, all while strengthening not weakening, brand equity. So here's the real issue. Most conversion optimization content focuses on tactics that work for any businesses, regardless of brand positioning. Traditional CRO treats every brand like it's selling commodities, and then what happens is VPs of ecommerce get stuck between performance pressure and well, brand integrity, and that's where best practices, you know, often hurt premium brands. And we've been sold this myth that brand and performance are opposing forces, but they're truly not. So we're gonna dive into this in depth. But first, here's the uncomfortable truth, marketers and conversion optimization people and even CMOs and CEOs, to some extent, are obsessed with what can be tracked quantitatively, right? We love our dashboards, our clear KPIs, our attribution models, but brand perception, right? Brand equity, brand positioning, these are measured emotionally, almost subconsciously. It's a bit of a gut feeling thing, which is a bit counterintuitive, because when it comes to CRO we've also said that we want to get rid of that gut feel and use the data. But the reality is, there's no brand perception conversion rate metric in your Shopify analytics. So then what happens is, we ignore it, we act like it doesn't matter, because we can't put it in a spreadsheet. It does a couple things, which is mostly a false belief that you have to choose performance or brand. You know your brand should look premium. It should look sexy. You know perception matters. You know positioning drives purchase decisions, but when your CAC is rising and conversions are flat, well that's when those soft brand considerations get thrown out the window. Yeah, and at the end of the day, the reality is it's not just because something can't be quantified in a dashboard, it doesn't mean you should run over it, and just because brand impact is harder to measure doesn't mean it's not driving revenue. So conversion optimization should be about your entire business, not just you exchanges layout tests or copy variations. When you optimize brand perception alongside traditional conversion metrics, they actually amplify each other. You don't have to sacrifice brand equity for performance, and you can have both now. This is where our 3Ps methodology comes in. This is how you can get both performance and brand results, which ultimately leads to revenue growth. This process, our three Ps methodology, is a circular process that puts brand at the center of a conversion optimization methodology, not an afterthought. So now is the time for us to go through it. The first step is all about the patterns. The patterns are really your foundation. So what I'm talking about here are three specific types of patterns. The first one is the behavioral patterns. This is how customers actually navigate your website. We first need to understand what people are clicking on, what they're doing. It's not how you think they should navigate your website, but actually how they navigate this is the Analytics, Google Analytics, Shopify analytics, the heat mapping, all of that, the quantitative behavioral patterns where people spend time and also where they don't right. Once we have that clear picture of where people go when they buy, where people tend to go when they don't buy, then well, we have a bit of an idea of what might be happening, but we don't yet know why. The why people are behaving in a certain way is often discovered when we actually talk with our customers, and that can be done through voice the voice patterns is really what Surveys, Polls, customer, interviews, review, mining, all that qualitative data reveals what your analytics can't it's really your customers telling you what they're thinking, what their objections are, what drives them to buy or what stops them from buying? Right? So that is the purpose of identifying voice patterns. We're trying to find the triggers that leads to purchase, the triggers that leads to abandonment, but slightly more from an emotional level and from a qualitative level. Once we've got that, we know what is generally happening on the website, why it's happening, but now there could be other ways, all other issues along the way, and we need to find if there are any patterns of resistance. So resistance is the third pattern that we need to identify. Resistance can be identified through behaviors and voice, but sometimes those can be technical, they can be strategic, they can be emotional. So we need to identify what those patterns are that leads to conversion resistance, and if you don't identify them, well, they're going to keep costing you money. Now, understanding these three types of patterns isn't just interesting data, it enables smarter strategy and better prioritization. For example, when we understood Dr. Squatch, customer voice patterns, it revealed a strategy that led to a PDP test generating six figures in monthly revenue. We weren't just guessing anymore. We had a clear path to tests and a strategy that led to more revenue. Now let's look at the entire 3Ps method once more. First, we have patterns which we just identified and talked about. Once we've done that, we have to move to perception.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  9:58  

Now, perception. In is where we take that data and figure out how your brand is perceived, how you want to be perceived, and how you should be positioned. There are three aspects to perception that are very, very important to understand. The first one is positioning. Right positioning is about how should you be perceived versus your competitors based on what we've learned about your customers. This is not about just how you want to be perceived. It's a little bit that, but it's also how should you be perceived in order to drive conversions right? Because at the end of the day, if your positioning isn't any different than all of your competitors, you're not utilizing positioning at your competitive advantage. So in the three Ps methodology, positioning is about finding those competitive advantages when it comes to positioning, to give you an edge above the competition. The second part of perception is trust. What should your website single to first-time and returning visitors to build confidence? Right? Because trust isn't just testimonials, it's everything from your visuals to your tone to your user experience. The third part is narrative. And narrative is about the story you tell through your copy and your visuals. It's what ultimately resonates with your customer's identity and drives purchase intent, right? If your customers don't identify with your message, with your values, with who you are, as a brand, they're not going to buy, right? So is your narrative actually optimized to attract your ideal customer? Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. And at the end of the day, when we do conversion optimization. We need to make sure that whatever we do is aligned with the ideal narrative that will get your customers to convert. Now, when your story connects with how your customers see themselves, that's when the conversion becomes natural. So that is perception. It's not brand work, I would say, for the sake of looking pretty, it's really how to take data, how to take brand strategy, to directly impact conversions. And by doing this, we've seen those brand align strategies and test increase conversions by 46% or more, right? Our website is full of those case studies. Now, the third part is proof. Now, when we get to proof, well, we have to test everything, because at the end of the day, we can have a lot of data points. We can have a lot of you know, ideas and insights around brand and brand strategy, but we need to get validation that those strategies are the right strategies. So when it comes to testing, we want to stay away from just testing value propositions or copy or just layouts. We have to go beyond that, because a brand is more than its copy or more than its website. So first we have to look at bundles. Well, I should say offers as part of offers. We have to look at bundles, upsells, cross sells, subscriptions, value perception, value propositions, right? Which entry offers are you giving to different customer groups and different customer segments? Those are core levers for conversion optimizations that can for conversion optimization that can drive a lot of extreme revenue that a lot of brands are ignoring, right? It's just not part of their CRO playbook. It's not part of the best practices that's shared around. But when you optimize for offers, you're able to focus on increasing, you know, subscription rate, reduce churn, increase lifetime value, and, of course, increase AOV and conversion rate. So that's one very key aspect to optimize and to test for. So we have to test offers. The second thing we have to test are pathways, and that is your actual customer journey, right? Sometimes people only test product pages, home pages, but what about the landing pages? What about the journey? What about the message that customers got in the ads? That's also going to impact how they're going to convert on your website? So really looking at those, those pathways and how people navigate and and testing. Different path is ultimately a very strong lever for increasing your brand's conversions and revenue. And the third part of per of proof is testing the experience, and this is the part of conversion optimization that most people are familiar with, that's testing the UX that proves that your ideas, your perception and your patterns actually work, right? And here's the actual key, right, once you get results from your offer, test, from your Pathways, test and from different types of experiences, well, that feeds back into patterns. It's a circular process, right? What we learn from testing informs our understanding of customer behaviors, which refines our perception strategy, which also leads to better test and that's how we've seen pathway optimization leads to significant revenue increases. It's not just random testing, it's all strategic, but also aligned with your brand. Now let's actually look at the intersection, because the intersections of the methodology is where a lot of people go wrong. They have a lot of good pieces in place, but they have some core fundamentals missing, and this is it's really where it gets super interesting. Now look at this. If you have patterns and perception, but you're missing proof you get smart strategy, right? You're making data, informed brand decisions, which is way better than just following your gut, but you're still, you know, shooting in the dark and crossing fingers, hoping everything's gonna work. Industry stats show that only one in seven AB test win. It's a little higher when you work with a CRO agency, but in general, brands that do CRO internally will win one out of seven times. So you're deploying changes without knowing if they actually work. If you're not testing them right, this leads to obviously increased costs from implementing failed strategies and performance issues you can't diagnose. Now, if we move on, if you have perception and proof, but you're missing patterns, you get brand aligned testing, you're further along than most people who in your brand entirely, but you're wasting countless testing hours and even months on things that don't truly matter for your business, because without actually understanding the underlying patterns, you're just testing for the sake of testing, your test doesn't have that those data points that really supports their hypothesis, and you're not really doing conversion optimization, so it could take forever to get results in this type of situation. Now, if you have patterns and proof, but you're missing perception, you get conversion breakthroughs, right? You're making data-driven improvements that actually move the needle, but then you're neglecting brand equity and competitive positioning. So that means you might be optimizing for short-term conversions while competitors erode your market share through superior brand perception. You're racing to the bottom on brand value, and your immediate short-term wins may lead to a long-term demise. Now, what if you have all three? Well, if you have all three, you're following the three Ps methodology, and that's when you get exponential brand growth. Imagine patterns show you exactly what needs to be optimized. Perception gives you the strategic direction on how to optimize for it while respecting your brand. And then proof is the testing that ensures you only deploy what's truly working.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  19:15  

And the circular effect means proof feeds back into patterns, creating continuous improvements, so that leads to more efficient customer acquisition strategies, a brand that your customers can relate with, and of course, increased conversions and increased growth. So it's strategic and it's efficient, and it compounds over time. So let me just give you a quick example as well of how this looks like in practice. You see, look at Hyperice if you're listening to this on the podcast, open up Hyperice's website. Now look at. Sophistication of their design. This is a premium brand. They're partnered with many of the major sports league and athletes. They have strong brand appeal and brand equity, and that they need to respect that right? They're not going to sacrifice any of that for performance. And yet, for almost four years, we tested almost everything you see on that website, from headlines to cross sells to collection pages to product pages to the home page to landing pages, and we were able to drive over $900,000 a month in additional revenue for this brand. We didn't use timers. We didn't use any of the tactics you probably see in those lists of best practices. Nothing was off the shelf. We built a custom program because first we needed to understand the patterns and how they were perceived, then we needed to understand their customers, and ultimately, well, you know, we built something that was relevant. Now this is also a brand with a lot of competitors, offering cheap knockoffs on Amazons. So we can't just lower ourselves to the level of those knockoffs or to their competitors, right? So we need to remain a cut above the rest. It's about keeping that brand appeal. It's about keeping that premium look. So in the designs that we created, in the copy that we wrote, In the test that we ran, everything was built around the brand value and their brand goals. And of course, I'm seeing this. And yes, our goal was still pretty simple or pretty singular. Her wish was to increase the brand's conversions and revenue so they could acquire customers more efficiently. And well, that's what we did, and yes, while respecting the brand. So this is solid proof that you don't have to sacrifice one for another. Both can be done if you have the right methodology. And in our case, well, the three Ps methodology is how we make it happen. So now let me ask you a couple of questions. Is your current CRO approach making you choose between brand and performance, are you getting tactical advice that doesn't fit your brand positioning? Are you actively serving your customers, talking with your customers, and actually using that data for AB testing and for website improvements? And do you feel like your brand equity isn't being leveraged for conversion optimization? If you answered yes to any of those, right? You need to audit your current approach through the three Ps lens. You also want to ask yourself when it comes to testing, are we just testing small things like button colors or layout changes, or are we really thinking about, you know, the different offers that our customers, our customers might want to get, are we really thinking about, you know, the marketing angles that we're providing on our landing pages, right? So here are some of the red flags that indicate you need this, which we call full business CRO. One of them would be that you're implementing best practices that feel wrong for your brand. Or you're looking at what your competitors are doing and then you're just copying them, and that's what you're testing. Or maybe your conversion optimization efforts just feel disconnected from your brand strategy. Or maybe you're even seeing competitors with inferior products outperform you, right? Or maybe your team is just constantly debating brand versus performance. So keep an eye out for those red flags, and keep in mind that when you're looking for a strategic partner for conversion optimization, don't just look for someone who can run tests. Look for someone who understands that your brand is a conversion lever, not an obstacle. Look for someone who can optimize your entire business, and not just entire or just individual pages, because your brand deserves conversion optimization that makes it stronger, not weaker, and your customers will deserve an experience that converts them, but that also respects your intelligence, right, an experience that feels good, that doesn't feel annoying when you know our website, when the experience we provide is aligned with what the customer wants and needs to. So that's when conversions happen. Now the three Ps, methodology, patterns, perception, and proof, working together in a continuous cycle, is how eight and nine-figure brands optimize for both performance and brand equity. So with all that said, if you're ready to stop choosing between brand and performance, if you're ready for a strategic approach to conversion optimization that puts your customers first and that strengthens your brand while driving revenue, well, then you need to get a strategic audit of your current approach. Now here's what I want you to do next, if this methodology makes sense to you, and if you're ready to stop choosing between brand and performance, and you want to see how this applies specifically to your business, go to splitbase.com/diagnostic and book your free one on one diagnostic call with our team, we'll take a deep dive into your current approach, into how you run test and evaluate, how you stand against the current three Ps methodology, and then we'll give you a clear roadmap with specific recommendations on how to drive Conversion growth, while, of course, keeping your brand the brand that it is, because, at the end of the day, brands that win long term are the ones that figure out how to do both. Thank you so much for watching this video. I'm Raphael Paulin-Daigle, founder of SplitBase. If you like this video, make sure to like and subscribe for more, and don't forget to go to SplitBase to claim your free one-on-one diagnostic session, where we'll figure out how your brand matches up to the three-piece methodology and how you can level up your conversion optimization performance. Thanks for watching.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  27:06  

All right. Well, that's it for today's episode, and thank you so much for tuning in now, if you like what you've heard and you don't want to miss any of the new episodes that are about to come out, make sure you subscribe to the podcast and well, bonus points, if you also leave a review in the iTunes Store or wherever you're listening to this. Now, if you're working on an ecommerce store that does over a million dollars in revenue, and you need help with conversion optimization or landing pages, well, I've got some good news, because there's a pretty good chance we can help with that. Go to splitbase.com to learn more, or even to request a proposal. If you have any guest requests, questions or comments, tweet me at Rpaulindaigle, and I'll be super happy to hear from you. Thanks again for listening. This is Minds of Ecommerce.

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