Global Golf Brand, Independent Operations

As the global golf division of one of the world's most recognizable athletic brands, Cobra Puma Golf operates with a unique challenge for its ecommerce operations: functioning as an independent North American business, but under the umbrella of the larger global organization. For over a decade, both golf brands (Cobra Golf and PUMA Golf) have run their own tech stacks, separate from puma.com, directing customers to their dedicated site for golf-specific products and marketing storytelling.

This independence comes with both opportunities and constraints. Unlike typical e-commerce brands, Cobra Puma Golf plays in an omni-channel sales environment, where a large majority of revenue comes from its wholesale channels, and the DTC is complimentary to that. This DTC side of the business has seen continued growth in recent years as consumers continue to shift from retail to online. But with such a heavy focus on wholesale, this structure imposed strict limitations on promotions and competitive pricing, making significant direct-to-consumer (DTC) growth particularly challenging.

The Legacy Platform Bottleneck

For over a decade, Cobra Puma Golf's e-commerce operations ran on Magento, managed primarily by external third parties, while their parent company, Puma, ran on Salesforce. Ian Barrett, who oversees e-commerce and brand marketing, explained the fundamental limitation: "It was very codebase heavy and many of the marketing pages and experiences we built - they took a long time to develop." The platform limited their ability to move fast and be efficient in improving the online experience.

The team was stuck. With only two people managing e-commerce operations and every modification requiring external development resources, they couldn't move at the speed necessary to optimize their customer experience. Testing ideas took forever to implement, and data-driven decisions were more aspiration than reality.

The Shopify Migration and Team Evolution

In October 2022, Cobra Puma Golf made a strategic move to Shopify Plus. The migration wasn't just about changing platforms; it was about gaining the flexibility to integrate various plug-and-play apps and enhance their e-commerce capabilities.

Previously, their e-commerce operations were managed by an external agency. When Cobra Puma Golf brought operations in-house with the Shopify migration, they transitioned to a lean model of 3 full time employees, with a development agency on retainer for specialist Shopify support. 

This structure was a significant efficiency gain, thanks to the Shopify migration. Rather than requiring team expansion, the new platform enabled them to do more with less, replacing an entire external agency with minimal internal resources. Team members became generalists within their roles to prevent single points of failure, with each person trained across multiple functions.

This small team now manages significant business volume across multiple channels, including Paid Search, SEO. Google ads, email/retention marketing merchandising, and conversion optimization. But they needed something more to truly capitalize on their new platform flexibility.

The A/B Testing Imperative

Moving to Shopify opened doors, but it also highlighted a critical need: the ability to validate ideas with data rather than assumptions. Ian Barrett emphasized this shift: "We really needed to be making data-driven decisions. We have to make these decisions based on what we know versus what we think we should do – or what others within our organization think we should do.”

The challenge was finding a solution that could work with their lean team structure while delivering enterprise-level capabilities. They needed to balance two competing priorities:

• Marketing needs: Telling compelling brand stories and showcasing product features
• Commerce goals: Converting visitors efficiently and driving sales

Traditional A/B testing tools typically require dedicated resources, lengthy setup processes, and technical expertise that small teams can't always provide.

Shoplift's Game-Changing Simplicity

When Cobra Puma Golf discovered Shoplift through their agency, Wick Creative, everything changed. The platform's seamless integration with Shopify meant the team could set up and run tests in seconds rather than days.

Ian Barrett praised the transformation: "Shoplift has been very easy to use, very easy to integrate with our business in terms of our stores, and very easy to spin up a test very quickly."

One test perfectly illustrates the platform's ROI potential. Cobra Puma Golf was planning to implement a series of animated, rotating golf club animations on their site. The graphics were to be created by a company that does modern, 3D merchandising solutions and would have come at significant cost given the quantity required for each product.  Before committing to the expense, Ian decided to use Shoplift to test whether the animation would actually increase sales compared to a static image.

The results were eye-opening: the expensive animations had almost no effect on conversion rate. Even worse, the animation proved resource-intensive, slowing down site load times. Armed with this data, the team made an easy decision to scrap the animation and redirect that budget toward marketing initiatives that were proven to drive sales and improve site conversion metrics.

Lightning-Fast Test Setup

The speed improvement was dramatic. What previously took 2-3 days to set up with their old process could now be accomplished in literally seconds. This velocity unlocked something powerful: the ability to test ideas as quickly as they emerged.

The democratization of testing was equally important. As Ian Barrett explained: "Between myself, our merchandiser, our developer, our agency—anyone can set up a test right now. It's so easy to spin up and use. It just makes it a no-brainer to be able to go, let's test it."

Cost-Effective Operations

The financial impact was immediate and substantial. Cobra Puma Golf reduced their A/B testing costs by 65% when moving to Shoplift. This wasn't just about saving money; it was about operational expenditure (Opex) management that allowed the lean team to reinvest resources into growth initiatives.

Ian Barrett noted the strategic value: "One of the biggest things is always managing our operating costs, being efficient with them and making sure these tests are validated, and provide executional actions." He also highlighted the efficiency gains compared to traditional enterprise solutions: "There are other enterprise level opportunities out there but they come with $100,000 commitments and I don't think they're any better than what I've seen from Shoplift."

Measurable Impact Across Properties

The results speak for themselves across Cobra Puma Golf's ecosystem of ecommerce properties:

Cobra Golf Performance

From tests run throughout the year on cobragolf.com, the team achieved an average 10% lift in click-through rate by making adjustments based on test results. These improvements compounded across the site, creating meaningful traffic and engagement gains.

Puma Golf Transformation

On pumagolf.com, particularly for apparel products, A/B tests contributed to significant product landing page (PLP) and product detail page (PDP) redesigns. The goal was getting consumers to add to cart quicker, and the strategy worked.

Year-to-date, the add-to-cart rate increased by 72% versus the same period last year due to learnings and changes driven by their testing program.

Data-Driven Decision Making at Scale

What makes Cobra Puma Golf's story particularly compelling is how Shoplift enabled a cultural shift toward data-driven decisions within a lean team structure. Ian Barrett explained the broader impact: "We're a pretty lean team in terms of what we have here for the size of the business we generate—there are only 3.5 people working on it full time ... So it's pretty small in terms of the people. We don't have a deep bench when it comes to data science and analytics, so key resources like Shoplift make us smarter and more efficient every day. It is just simple and easy to use."

The platform doesn't just provide testing capabilities; it democratizes the ability to validate ideas across the organization. As Ian Barrett put it: "Some of it also comes down to proving out ideas and thoughts that come from other internal stakeholders. Effective testing allows us to validate if something is truly the best and have data tell us how we can actually improve the customer experience versus what someone may just think as opinion."

This approach proved especially valuable when navigating wholesale constraints. While promotional activity including discounting remains limited due to minimum advertised price (MAP) policies, the team could test various approaches to engage customers and drive conversions within those constraints.

Future-Proofing Through Agility

Looking ahead, Cobra Puma Golf sees significant opportunities in areas like product bundling to engage new audiences and exploring personalized shopping experiences. Ian Barrett explained one example: "We've never done bundles before. Think about it for a group of golfers, right? There are four men or women who go on a golf trip and they want four polos of the same color and they want matching logos. We could do that for them, we could sell four polos of four different sizes and provide that opportunity at a bundled price." He continued: “Not many really are able to do that today, but it is an option that we could try through testing to see if it works before we expand site wide and into new markets.”

The foundation Shoplift has provided, fast A/B testing, clear data, and team-wide accessibility, positions them to capitalize on these opportunities without requiring additional technical resources.

The Lean Team Advantage

Cobra Puma Golf's success demonstrates how the right A/B testing platform can amplify a lean team's effectiveness rather than burden it with complexity. By choosing a solution that integrates seamlessly with their existing Shopify infrastructure and requires minimal technical overhead, they've achieved enterprise-level optimization capabilities with startup-level agility.

The combination of 65% cost reduction, seconds-fast test setup, 10% average CTR improvements, and 72% add-to-cart growth shows what's possible when powerful testing capabilities meet efficient team structures.

For e-commerce teams operating under similar constraints—whether due to wholesale requirements, lean staffing, or complex brand relationships—Cobra Puma Golf's approach offers a blueprint for achieving significant performance improvements without sacrificing operational efficiency.

As Ian Barrett concluded: "The ability for small teams to be very effective, very efficient, and very nimble in decision-making and delivering that feedback and results is critical. That's the key reason why we do it: to validate proof of concept for site improvements, and also to help us convert more people and improve our average order values and customer retention."

Ready to see how your lean team can achieve similar results? Discover how Shoplift's Shopify-native A/B testing platform can transform your conversion optimization program without the complexity or cost of traditional solutions.

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