Streetwear Ambitions Meet Digital Reality

Founded in 2015, Gym King carved out its place in the competitive UK streetwear market by blending athletic performance with contemporary fashion. The Leeds-based brand had built a loyal following and achieved steady growth—but by 2024, their digital operations told a different story. Years of working with rotating agencies and accumulating third-party apps had created a complex web that was increasingly difficult to manage and optimize.

When Four Seconds Feels Like Forever

Adam Snape walked into an interesting situation when he joined Gym King as Shopify Developer in June 2024. The site's average load time exceeded four seconds—a lifetime in e-commerce. Third-party apps added layer upon layer of complexity and delay.

"The site had been handed from pillar to post between agencies," Adam recalled. The approach was all too familiar in the industry: see what competitors are doing, copy it, hope for the best. Install an app here, add a feature there. No one could explain why certain decisions had been made—they just accumulated over time like digital sediment.

The Weight of Opportunity

Adam felt the pressure immediately. Gym King had ambitions to become a household name, but their digital foundation wasn't built for that journey. He needed to act fast, but also carefully—the brand's loyal returning customers were their lifeline.

"I spent my first months just stripping everything back," Adam explained. "We had to get to a baseline before we could even think about optimization."

When it came time to implement proper testing, Adam evaluated the options. Legacy platforms meant months of setup and six-figure contracts. He needed something different.

"These enterprise tools would take four months just to test a button," Adam said. "We needed to start learning immediately."

That's when a fellow e-commerce founder mentioned Shoplift.

Everything Clicks Into Place

Adam approached Shoplift with healthy skepticism—he'd been burned by tool promises before. But within minutes of installation, something unexpected happened.

"Wait... did I really just launch a test?" He genuinely wondered if he'd missed a step. "Data started flowing immediately. Clicks, carts, orders—everything was suddenly visible. I felt like I was finally in control."

The seamless Shopify integration meant no lengthy onboarding, no complex configurations. Just immediate insights.

"It felt like a natural extension of Shopify. For the first time in months, I wasn't fighting against our tools."

Discovering Gym King's Hidden Truth

With testing velocity unlocked, Adam embarked on his philosophy: assume nothing, test everything. The results challenged conventional e-commerce wisdom.

"We tested adding star ratings to collection pages—standard practice, right?" Adam shook his head. "Revenue per visitor dropped 10%. We killed it after six days when we were £10,000 behind."

The revelation was profound. With only 60-70% of products having reviews, the empty spaces created doubt rather than confidence. But more importantly, it showed that Gym King's customers didn't behave like everyone else's.

"That test was worth its weight in gold—not for what it earned, but for what it taught us. Our customers are different. What works everywhere else might fail here."

The Incremental Revolution

Drawing on his retail background, Adam approached each test with surgical precision. He thought about eBay's famous transition from yellow to white backgrounds—so gradual over two years that nobody noticed.

"We have a lot of returning customers," Adam explained. "Major changes could alienate them. So we make small, careful moves."

Using Shoplift's JavaScript API, Adam could run sophisticated tests without disrupting the marketing team's daily operations:

• Streamlined the cart drawer: Removed wishlist functionality that nobody used
• Optimized product displays: Sized images to show two full items on mobile
• Validated size prominence: Customers needed that reassurance prominently displayed
• Discovered a surprise winner: Klarna messaging outperformed everything, including trust badges

"Klarna beat our 4.5-star Trustpilot rating. We're up to 45% of purchases using buy-now-pay-later. That one finding changed our entire checkout strategy."

The Perfect Experience for Every Segment

Shoplift's segmentation revealed a critical insight: new and returning visitors might as well be shopping on different websites.

"A test would win overall but devastate returning visitor conversion," Adam discovered. "That's when we realized we needed to think about these as completely different audiences."

This unlocked a powerful optimization strategy. Rather than settling for compromises that worked "okay" for everyone, Adam could now optimize each segment independently—implementing what worked best for new visitors while preserving what returning customers loved.

"We can actually implement different experiences based on the test results," Adam explained. "If new visitors respond better to the subtotal in the checkout button but returning visitors prefer it in the traditional spot, we can give each group what they want. It's about maximizing for each audience rather than finding a middling compromise."

By focusing initial tests on new mobile visitors—their key growth opportunity—Adam achieved cleaner data and faster results. But the real power came from being able to stack these wins: optimize for new visitors, then optimize for returning visitors, each building on the other without conflict.

"We stopped diluting our data with segments that weren't moving. Suddenly, everything became clearer—and we could move faster while still protecting our core customer experience."

More Than Just Software

The bi-weekly calls with Shoplift Customer Success Manager Jonathan Hafferkamp became Adam's secret weapon.

"Jonathan's seen hundreds of testing programs across the industry," Adam said. "I use him as a soundboard constantly. He'll share what's working elsewhere, validate my hypotheses, help me see angles I missed."

"Those calls alone are worth it. He jumps into the middle of our tests, we analyze what's happening, plan next moves. It's like having a CRO expert on the team."

The direct communication channel provided strategic advantages that extended far beyond typical software support. Having regular access to someone who understood both the technical platform and the broader ecommerce testing landscape meant Adam could validate approaches before investing time in execution. Instead of learning solely through trial and error, he could leverage pattern recognition from hundreds of other implementations across the Shopify ecosystem.

Numbers That Changed Everything

Adam's methodical approach delivered transformative results:

• 30% increase in overall conversion rate year-over-year (2.9% → 3.9%)
• 9% improvement in cart-to-checkout rate (56.7% → 61.7%)
• 55% boost in add-to-cart rate versus previous year
• 50% reduction in page load time (4 seconds → ~2 seconds)

"We're 30% up comparing to a full year that included Q4," Adam emphasized. "That improvement is real, sustainable growth."

The business impact extended far beyond the percentages. That 30% conversion lift translated directly to the bottom line; more revenue from the same traffic without increasing ad spend. For a brand competing in the crowded streetwear market, this efficiency gain meant Gym King could reinvest those savings into product development and brand building rather than just buying more clicks.

The Never-Ending Journey

Today, Adam maintains his test-everything mentality. Recent experiments explored dispatch timers ("a double-edged sword"), navigation structures for an upcoming kids' line, and increasingly sophisticated personalization.

"I don't like rigid roadmaps," Adam explained. "The data should drive decisions. If we find gold in one area, we pivot immediately."

"Every test teaches us something new. That knowledge compounds. We're not just optimizing—we're building a learning machine."

For Gym King, the transformation from gut-instinct decisions to data-driven growth continues. One careful test at a time, they're building the foundation to achieve their household-name ambitions.

"Shoplift gave us the ability to move fast without breaking things. In this market, that's the difference between growing and getting left behind."