Twitter might call this ~funnel hacking~. 

In reality, there’s no better way to study a brand or a business than to behave like a customer. 

With that, let’s funnel hack our little hearts out! Doré, I’ve been obsessed with French beauty for a long time and I have so much to learn. Plus, I’ve been hunting for a new Micellaire water and La Micellaire looks tout à fait exact (that’s my last Google Translate of the day, I promise). 

STEP 1: WORD OF MOUTH

For Doré, I actually heard of the brand for the 1st time not by searching for it – but because I was told about it. That happens a lot. Your group chat lights up with a recommendation, you see someone post something online, or you go to a friend’s house and see them use it even (I’m a copy cat – so whenever I stay with someone I can be heard saying “LINK ME” every time I use something I like that I didn’t know about lol). 

For Doré, I was told about the brand. So then I did what I do every single time I hear of something that I might need to one day buy lol – I went to IG and looked up the brand. 

We are off to an INCREDIBLE start. Here’s why:

1️⃣. 230K followers. Call me vain, but that tells me other people like this brand. This isn’t a baby brand. When I buy something, I’ll be honest with you, I prefer to let other people do the vetting for me. Do I assume that all 230K followers have purchased? No. 

Do I feel better knowing that a quarter of a million people are “fans” of the brand? Yes. 

2️⃣. French Skincare. I’m already a fan. European Pharmacy skincare is already something I covet. I already know that when I’m in Europe, I’m going to stock up on Nivea (La Mer dupe, BTW!)

I’ve already found European Pharmacy (what we in the US call “drugstore beauty”) to be SUPERIOR, CHEAPER, AND CLEANER. 

Anywho, where was I. Ahh, yes. The bio. Do I wish that there was a bit more flare in this bio? Sure. We say DORÉ, French Skincare right at the top. Fab.

So, maybe our tagline of French skincare, reimagined could be moved elsewhere. Instead, you know what I’d LOVE to see? 

That line replaced, so that this reads: 

DORÉ, French Skincare

By, @garancedore

Made in 🇫🇷, shipping worldwide

Available @credobeauty + @cultbeauty

LINKINBIO

WHAT I CHANGED ^ : 

1️⃣. On the homepage of the site, there’s a module that says “Meet Garance”. In that section, the first line says: “Our founder, Garance Doré, embodies French beauty for women all over the world.”

^ that is so powerful. AND, BETTER YET, Garance Doré IS FAMOUS! She has 682K instagram followers! We, as the brand account, should use her power and make it our power. In the current state of the bio, our beautiful founder isn’t mentioned. 

The shopper won’t get lost if they click into Garance’s IG – they’ll be more inspired.

2️⃣. Currently, the IG bio says: Shipping woldwide 🌎. That’s important, but that emoji doesn’t hit on what we are. WE ARE FRENCH! And, not just French by association, we are MADE IN FRANCE (per the footer of the website). So, I changed it to:

Made in 🇫🇷, shipping worldwide

If we are going to own an emoji, PLEASE let it be FRENCH! 

I’m almost done with the IG part of this funnel hack, I swear. 

But, 2 MORE INCREDIBLE THINGS THAT DORÉ has going for it: That we’re shoppable at CREDO, and that we’re followed by Kelly Wearstler. I’ll explain.

CREDO: Credo is THE destination for clean beauty. Credo has STRICT standards. If you’re carried at CREDO, you are a different level of clean beauty. This is a huge win. 

KELLY WEARSTLER: When I checked the IG, I saw that Kelly Wearstler was following. I AM SUCH A FAN. She is the interior designer of my dreams.

So, if I see that she follows (therefore, supports the brand), I feel better. I feel great. GOOD ENOUGH FOR KELLY, GOOD ENOUGH FOR ARI!

STEP 2: CLICK THROUGH TO THE BRAND’S WEBSITE

Okay, usually I put a lot of other steps here that I’ll quickly run through:

1️⃣. Also make sure that before you hit the site you go to FB Ads Library and look up the paid ads their running – excellent market research and a great place for ad inspo. Here’s Doré’s. 

2️⃣. Always, when funnel hacking, search for the brand on GOOGLE and click through – so that you get hit with lots and lots of the brand’s ads in your own feeds. 

Now, the website! 

Here we’ve got: 

📧: Klaviyo as our ESP. Have you downloaded the guide yet? 

🤪: Crazy Egg for heatmapping and website recording (I prefer Microsoft Clarity and it’s free – but this works!) 

🛍: Shopify as our website frontend and backend 

💘: Gorgias for CX tickets

🤓: Wordpress for the blog redirect 

I’d love to see the brand add Accessibe to this site as well! 

Etc Etc so on and so forth! 

P.S. I’m looking at all of this with my beloved Built With! 

STEP 3: ENTER YOUR EMAIL

1st of all, I LOVE the placement of our badges here. EWG VERIFIED and PLASTIC NEUTRAL? Truly incredible and as you’ll see later, I complete my order and checkout at full price. 🙂 

In the footer (Which is where I screenshotted), I, from GOOGLE CHROME on my iPhone, auto-filled my email address. In doing so, I broke the submit form a little bit. Not functionality wise, but when you auto-fill as I did, the form text box turns white. So, the Submit button (on the right side) and the Enter your email command (above the email address field) becomes hard to read. 

I still entered my email, so no big deal but worth checking.  

STEP 4: SHOP AROUND

The moment I’ve been waiting for! Time to shop.  

There’s a lot I love about this website: 

1️⃣. The copy, in particular. Read this line from homepage module 2:

“Life is not meant to be spent in front of a mirror.
Doré is foundational beauty that sets you free.”

!!!!!! THAT IS INCREDIBLE COPY. I want to be free! 

2️⃣. The hover state on the product cards on module 3. The product photography is so crisp. 

3️⃣. The promobar as a carousel with 3 fields. WE HAVE A LOT TO SAY. This gives us room to say it. 

4️⃣. The way we merchandise our products, down to the product names. I very much appreciate a brand with a theme. Naming your set Le Set is much better than The Set. 

There’s a few things I would change about this website (don’t worry, I’m still shopping it which you’ll see – I’M A FAN). Remember, Kelly Wearstler said I should, so I will. 

1️⃣. The mega-nav on desktop isn’t hover-state intuitive. I fully thought that by hovering over the words Shop, About, etc – that they would open into the bigger mega-nav. They don’t, but they should. An easy fix! 

2️⃣. The brand is FRENCH, as we know. I think wherever we can, we should lean into the dream of being and feeling more French – that’s what we’re selling! More UGC that feels Parisian. More images from dreamy Antibes. I want to live that dream. On IG, the brand does this well – not often, but well. Like here. 

3️⃣. I have a controversial opinion on press bars. I think that they’ve reached the point of saturation – where every brand has logos that they can reach and pull in but that if every brand has been in every publisher, then we aren’t saying much to our customer. Instead of a Featured In section on homepage, I prefer in general, take the biggest publication you’ve ever been featured in – and pull the most compelling quote. For example, instead of a VOGUE logo, a quote from the beauty editor saying she has never found a brand she believes in more. 

Here, instead of this section all together, I’d rather us pull in our EWG certification and explain the rigor of what it takes to be EWG verified. It’s nuts. It’s so hard to be compliant to EWG’s standards, and most brands fail their tests. So, for Doré, this is a huge, POSITIVE, point of differentiation and we have to tell our customers ALL ABOUT IT! 

4️⃣. My #1 biggest tip here for this website is that we only are playing with 2 colors. A white HEX and a STUNNING turquoise. That is beautiful, but a problem for our CTAs. 

I would LOVE to have the brand split-test this site and change nothing except for adding in an additional HEX color that is used strictly for our Calls To Action. I fear that they blend in a little bit, and I would bet $ that if we add another color, things get better for our conversion rate. 

I know that’s a big ask – and a departure – but think there’s an on-brand way to do almost anything. 

STEP 5: CHECK OUT 

I went for La Micellaire and Le Baume (going to use this as a chapstick). I’m so excited for it to arrive. I almost rush shipped it to myself, but decided I need to calm down and that patience is a virtue.

Merci, Doré!