Case Study: Official Ecom Sales Growth for a Global Pet Food Brand

As the Product Owner (PO), I led a revenue growth project for the Japan-focused official e-commerce site of an international premium pet food brand.

During a severe downturn, with sales down 30% and new customer acquisition down 70%, I planned and executed a growth strategy despite limited local authority and resources.

Within six months, the project improved monthly sales by 10-15%, increased new customer acquisition by 100%, and grew the loyal customer base by 6%, reversing a previous downward trend.

1. Project Overview

This project aimed to recover sales and maximize new and loyal customer acquisition for an international premium pet food brand's official D2C/e-commerce site in Japan.

As the Product Owner, I led the full execution cycle from business issue analysis, data analysis, and user research to growth strategy planning, initiative execution, and negotiations with the global development team.

2. Project Background and Scope

For the year before I took over, sales on the official e-commerce site had been declining continuously.

New customer acquisition and the number of loyal customers were also trending downward, creating a serious business slump.

Several internal and external factors overlapped during this period, including a full renewal to a global shared website, product price increases, and market changes after the end of COVID-driven demand.

This made it very difficult to identify the main driver behind the sales decline.

I joined the project as the e-commerce lead and Product Owner for the Japan business, leading the execution phase across data infrastructure improvement, growth initiative planning and validation, and stakeholder alignment with HQ and related local departments.

3. Business and Technical Challenges

To break down the complex set of issues, I organized the challenges into the following six areas and worked to identify the real bottlenecks.

1. Business Challenges

Sales on the official e-commerce site had fallen 30% from the peak.

New customer acquisition had also dropped sharply by 70%, and the loyal customer base, which represented high-value customers, had started to decline.

This posed a serious business risk because it could damage long-term Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

2. Website and UX Challenges

During the global migration to a shared system, customer review content that had supported purchase decisions was removed from the entire site.

In addition, roughly 80% of key product category pages were hidden, severely weakening search and navigation paths for new users trying to find relevant products.

Product detail pages also lacked enough product descriptions and images.

3. SEO Challenges

Because multiple websites were being operated under the same brand, including the corporate site and promotional microsites, search engine authority was fragmented.

Even for the most basic branded search query, the official e-commerce site ranked only second.

The large-scale reduction of category pages during the renewal also lowered organic search visibility and significantly reduced traffic from long-tail keywords.

4. Advertising and Acquisition Challenges

The media plan relied heavily on a narrow set of SEM keywords, leaving too few touchpoints for potential customers and dormant customers.

Targeting was also weighted toward new customer acquisition, while remarketing for existing customers and repeat buyers was underdeveloped.

As a result, CPA increased and ROAS deteriorated.

5. Data and Analytics Challenges

Google Analytics (GA) had several serious tracking bugs, so traffic sources and CVR were not being measured accurately.

Marketing ROI by activity was also not sufficiently visualized, making it impossible to quantify which channels were contributing to sales.

6. Price & Customer Insight Challenges

The team did not have clear data on why users abandoned their carts on the official e-commerce site.

There was also no firm evidence showing how much the price gap and distribution differences between the official site, competing e-commerce marketplaces, and retail stores were affecting purchase decisions.

4. Project Constraints

The biggest barrier to moving this project forward was the global headquarters' control over the e-commerce system.

The official e-commerce site was centrally managed by the global development team in Europe.

Even minor banner updates, text changes, and bug fixes could not be made directly by the Japan team.

Requests to HQ for specification changes or fixes typically required more than a month before release because of communication gaps and approval workflows.

The Japan business also had no dedicated local front-end engineers or designers, so initiatives had to be executed with limited internal resources.

This made it necessary to find flexible alternative approaches that the Japan team could implement quickly without waiting for HQ development, such as using third-party tools and manually preparing operational data.

5. Dual-Track Growth Strategy

To generate results quickly despite the constraints, I designed a dual-track growth strategy that combined short-term initiatives the Japan team could implement immediately with mid-to-long-term structural improvements requiring HQ collaboration.

[Short-Term Approach] High-impact UX/UI improvements controllable by the Japan team

Quickly rebuild the data foundation, identify drop-off factors through a large-scale user survey, and remove UX/UI friction by using third-party tools and manual operational workarounds that could be introduced and managed locally without relying on HQ development approvals.

In parallel, run seasonal campaigns every two months to recover short-term sales and improve new customer acquisition.

[Mid-to-Long-Term Approach] Infrastructure improvements through collaboration and negotiation with HQ

Restore the official e-commerce site's advantage in branded search by improving foundational SEO.

For deleted category pages, prioritize the pages with the highest SEO value and present supporting data to HQ to drive restoration and improvements.

Shift advertising logic from CPA-focused bidding to ROAS-focused automated bidding using machine learning, while working directly with the global data team to fix tracking tags at the source.

6. Executed Initiatives

Based on the strategy, I executed the following initiatives across six categories.

1. Data Analysis and Dashboard Setup

Identified and fixed Google Analytics (GA) and Google Tag Manager (GTM) tracking errors, then cleaned conversion and traffic source data.

I also built an automated reporting dashboard by integrating GA data, ad data, and e-commerce sales data into Google Sheets via APIs.

This enabled weekly visibility into campaign performance and KPI changes, creating a faster cycle for deciding the next improvement actions.

2. Customer Surveys and Purchase Barrier Identification

Ran a comprehensive web survey for both purchasers and users who left the site without purchasing, collecting roughly 7,000 feedback responses.

Through text mining and data analysis, I proved that dissatisfaction with price was the decisive factor behind cart abandonment: the same products were being sold 30-40% cheaper on other e-commerce marketplaces and in drugstores than on the official site.

I documented this analysis and presented it to the Japan brand managers and business teams with pricing authority, using it as important evidence to negotiate promotions and discount initiatives with other departments.

3. UX/UI and Content Improvements

Redesigned the homepage and product category page UX/UI to reduce new user drop-off and create a clearer path to the right products.

To avoid waiting for HQ's development cycle, I introduced an external page editing system that allowed the Japan team to update banners and introductory content on the same day.

To compensate for reviews lost during the renewal, I organized past data and manually restored roughly 1,000 high-quality reviews to product detail pages.

I also embedded videos on selected key product pages to make usage scenes and feeding methods easier to understand, improving product comprehension and purchase motivation.

4. SEO Improvements

Optimized on-page SEO across product and category pages, including meta titles, meta descriptions, and heading tags.

This restored the official e-commerce site's search engine position for branded searches from second place to first place.

I also clarified the SEO value of category pages that had been deleted during the renewal and persistently requested that the HQ development team add and restore page data.

Key category pages were restored in stages, increasing organic traffic from long-tail searches.

5. Advertising Operation Improvement

Reworked the limited advertising setup that had relied mainly on branded SEM and built a broader campaign structure combining awareness expansion for new potential customers with staged retargeting for past visitors and purchasers.

I tested placements such as Google Discovery Ads and Yahoo! Display Ads (YDA).

By improving tracking accuracy in collaboration with HQ's data team, I also shifted the Google Ads automated bidding algorithm from acquisition volume and CPA optimization to ROAS optimization, maximizing ad efficiency.

6. Campaign Initiatives

Planned a "500 yen off coupon available immediately after new member registration" to reduce the psychological barrier to first purchase.

I also ran limited novelty campaigns on a regular basis as an incentive for customers to purchase above a certain order amount.

In addition, I designed review promotion campaigns that offered coupons for future purchases after review submission, encouraging repeat purchases.

These campaigns were planned and executed roughly once every two months to lift sales performance.

7. Project Results

After six months of executing these short-term and mid-to-long-term initiatives, the project delivered the following quantitative results.

• Monthly Sales: Improved total monthly sales by approximately 10-15% within six months, stopping the decline and putting sales back on a recovery path.
• New Customer Acquisition: Increased new customer acquisition by 100% year over year through the 500 yen coupon, advertising improvements, and UX path optimization.
• Loyal Customer Base: Reversed the loyal customer trend from decline to growth, increasing the base by approximately 6% compared with the period before I took over and contributing to stronger LTV.
• Branded Search Ranking: Restored the official e-commerce site's branded search ranking from second place to first place, preventing search traffic from leaking to competitors and other channels.

8. Core Skills Demonstrated

Through this project, I demonstrated concrete impact and value as a Product Owner across the following areas.

• Product Ownership (PO): The ability to identify controllable approaches under the constraint that development authority sat with overseas HQ, set priorities, and deliver results with limited resources.
• Data-driven Problem Solving (Data Analysis and Customer Insights): From fixing GA/GTM tracking issues to analyzing approximately 7,000 qualitative and quantitative survey responses, I proved the real cause of cart abandonment, the price gap with competing channels, and used that evidence to build alignment with other departments.
• SEO and Acquisition Channel Optimization: Reclaimed the top branded search position through on-page SEO improvements, introduced new display advertising, and optimized ROAS-based automated bidding.
• CRM and Campaign Planning: Designed a sustainable CRM cycle from new customer acquisition to repeat purchases through coupons, novelty campaigns, and review campaigns.

9. Lessons Learned and Future Outlook

Rapid Execution Leveraging a Broad Digital Marketing Skillset

In this project, multiple challenges occurred simultaneously, including a slump in e-commerce sales, a drop in new customer acquisition, and a decline in loyal customers.

On the other hand, I had a high degree of autonomy and scope of responsibility. This environment allowed me to lead a wide range of areas myself, including data analysis, UX/UI improvements, SEO, ad operations, campaign planning, customer survey analysis, and internal coordination.

Therefore, despite limited resources, I leveraged my digital marketing knowledge, skillsets, data analysis capabilities, and experience in operational efficiency using AI and automation to execute a vast number of improvement initiatives in a short period.

As a result, being able to improve monthly sales, increase new customer acquisition, and recover the number of loyal customers was a major achievement of this project.

The Importance of Identifying the Core Issue from the Customer's Voice

On the other hand, a key lesson I learned from this project was the importance of identifying the core issue first, rather than focusing solely on execution speed.

From a user survey of approximately 7,000 respondents conducted in the latter half of the project, we discovered that the sales slump was significantly influenced by pricing issues—specifically, that the same products could be purchased cheaper on other retail channels—rather than simply being a matter of website usability or advertising efficiency.

This insight was difficult to see through quantitative data like Google Analytics alone; it was a challenge that only became clear by analyzing actual customer feedback.

Looking back, if we had combined quantitative and qualitative analysis at an earlier stage, we might have been able to focus on higher-priority initiatives sooner.

Future Outlook: Toward Marketing Integrated with Data Science

In this project, there was an environment that allowed for highly flexible data analysis, and I had the opportunity to collaborate with data-focused team members and highly specialized stakeholders.

Through that experience, I strongly felt the importance of incorporating data science and more advanced analytical methods into digital marketing.

Moving forward, instead of just executing many initiatives rapidly, I want to structure challenges based on data first, identify causes objectively, and then prioritize and execute from the most high-impact measures.

By combining digital marketing, data analysis, and operational efficiency through AI, I aim to practice marketing that can generate business impact with high reproducibility, even with limited resources.