Awe Inspired's BFCM Strategy: A Better Brand Experience
Awe Inspired
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eCommerce Strategy · CRO Audit & Conversion Strategy · Information Architecture · UX/UI Design · Design Systems
Behind the Brand
Gemologist Jill Johnson founded Awe Inspired in 2018, after surviving cancer for the third time. Along with her son Max, she built it into a modern house of mythology: goddess pendants, zodiac amulets, and lockets in 14k gold, vermeil, and sterling silver. And, twenty percent of proceeds go to charity partners.
The product is fine jewelry, priced accordingly. The photography was striking and the mythology gave every piece a reason to exist. What they needed was a site that converted that visionary spirit.
Why Did Awe Inspired's CRO Audit Uncover a Bigger Problem?
Awe Inspired came to Bear ahead of Black Friday Cyber Monday with a clear ask: audit the site and recommend the CRO improvements that would maximize revenue through the sale period. Sales had dipped, then flattened.
But, Bear’s audit found something deeper.
Opportunities for improvement:
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A perceived-value gap: The site design read as price- and promotion-driven, not as a trusted place to spend $300+.
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Navigation that hid the catalog: No route in for a shopper who knows the metal she wants or the budget she has.
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CTAs that went somewhere else: "Reclaim Medusa" could land on one pendant when ten necklaces carried her.
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Product data structured item by item: Chains were sometimes included and sometimes upsold, and a vermeil piece looked identical to a solid-gold one priced well above it.
Decision fatigue, at exactly the wrong price point. Shoppers ready to spend couldn't tell what was for sale, where a click would land, or why one necklace cost more than the next.
The Case for Material Change, Not Incremental Tweaks
Bear could have optimized element by element. Our recommendation was the opposite: material changes, not incremental ones, would produce the most velocity before the sale period.
That meant architecture first, then the pages that actually sell. The brand's own content stayed, it just stopped doing jobs it was never built for. And with an internal development team on the client side, every deliverable was designed to be built by someone else's hands.
A Site That Feels as Luxury as the Product
Project Highlights
Information architecture, rebuilt: categories grouped by theme, with shop-by-metal and shop-by-price routes for gifting.
A modular component system: hero, collection, and editorial blocks the internal team assembles into campaign landing pages.
"Included in This Look" on the PDP: every piece in a campaign photo, shoppable in place.
A 14k gold collection of its own: giving the higher price a visible reason.
A cart built for a complicated basket: shipping progress up top, gift messaging into checkout, express pay added, add-ons easy to decline.
A Storefront That Matches the Price Tag
YoY CVR lift during BFCM
Four Decisions That Made the Difference
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The audit was allowed to change the brief. Returning "your architecture is the problem" is a harder conversation than handing over a list of A/B tests. It's also the only one worth having.
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Architecture came before aesthetics. No amount of visual polish helps a shopper who can't find the ten Medusa necklaces.
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The client's content was the raw material. No rewrite, no new brand platform. The mythology moved into subheads and clear CTAs took over the routing.
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Bear designed for someone else's build. Component libraries and patterns an internal developer could implement without a translator.
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Running a CRO program on a site whose real problem is architecture? Let's talk about what an audit should actually tell you.
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