How a cardiologist-founded food brand turned a CRO audit into $136k of new recurring revenue in three months.
Step One Foods had a strong product, a trusted founder, and a one-time-purchase funnel that leaked at the price step. Dayo ran a six-input conversion audit, scored 42 test opportunities, and built a twelve-test roadmap. The flagship — a Build-A-Bundle subscription page — answered the price objection and the missing recurring-revenue model in a single build.
Net-New Recurring Revenue
+$136k
Build-A-Bundle · first 3 months
Scored Opportunities
42
Consolidated from six audit inputs
Roadmap Tests
12
Six months · every funnel stage
UX Best Practices
250
Evaluated in the heuristic review
The brief
Trusted brand, leaky funnel. Price was the number-one reason people left.
Step One Foods sells cardiologist-developed foods clinically shown to lower LDL cholesterol. The founder is a preventive cardiologist, which gives the brand trust signals most DTC food brands cannot buy. The audience skews late 50s and 60s and reads carefully before it buys.
Two structural problems sat underneath the funnel. Every purchase was one-time — no subscription, so no predictable recurring revenue, and no mechanism for the repeat consumption the clinical effect depends on. And price was the dominant objection: half of all exit-survey feedback cited price or shipping, and the starter-pack landing page bounced 67% of its traffic.
Brand
Cardiologist-founded cholesterol-lowering food
United States · Direct-to-consumer
Starting Position
One-time purchase only
No subscription · price the top exit objection
Stack
Shopify · GA4 · Hotjar
Standard DTC instrumentation
Opportunity
Answer price, build recurring revenue
One move, two structural problems
The audit
Six inputs. 250 best practices. 42 scored opportunities.
The audit ran across six inputs, plus a competitor benchmark. Findings distilled into 42 scored test opportunities in a single database, ranked by impact, ease of build, and likelihood to move motivation. Twelve went onto a six-month roadmap.
50%
Price led every objection
Half of exit-survey responses cited price or shipping cost. User testing repeated it word for word — “price extremely high,” “shipping cost somewhat high.”
17%
The funnel leaked early
Only 17% of homepage visitors reached the “Get Started” block below the reviews. Most decisions were made — and lost — long before the offer.
0
No reason to come back
Nothing on the site turned a one-time buyer into a repeat one. For a product whose results depend on two servings a day, that is a structural gap, not a cosmetic one.
27/100
Speed taxed everything
The homepage scored 27 on performance — 22.3s time-to-interactive, with 5.98s of recoverable load from unused JavaScript alone.
The flagship — Build-A-Bundle
One build, two problems solved.
The audit pointed at one move that addressed both structural problems at once. A subscription bundle reframes price through a per-unit discount, and it builds the recurring revenue and repeat consumption the brand had no mechanism for.
The hypothesis:customers resisted the one-time price and had no path to repeat purchase. A self-built subscription bundle at a standing discount would lift average order value, lock in recurring revenue, and fit the product's daily-use protocol.
Shipped Flagship
Build-A-Bundle | Subscription Exclusive
What Was Built
- Plan Member model. Customers build their own recurring box and edit any part of the plan.
- Choose cadence. 30, 60, or 90 days between deliveries.
- Choose the mix. Any combination of bars, oatmeal, sprinkles, pancake and smoothie mixes.
- Standing 20% off retail on every item in the subscription.
- Full control. Edit products, change frequency, or cancel at any time.
Why It Worked
- Price — The 20% standing discount answers the top exit reason directly, at the point of decision.
- Repeat consumption — Cadence maps to the clinical protocol of two servings a day — bought the way it’s meant to be used.
- Recurring revenue — Every subscriber is predictable monthly revenue and a higher lifetime value than a one-time buyer.
+$136k
Net-new recurring revenue across the first three months. There was no prior subscription, so the entire figure is incremental.
The roadmap
Twelve tests, six months, every funnel stage.
Alongside the flagship, a twelve-test roadmap worked the funnel stage by stage. Each test was scored before it shipped and mapped to a primary metric.
Address the price objection on-site (save-cost framing)
Cart-contents pop-up modal for returning visitors
“Frequently bought with” upsell block
Convert inline “add to cart” text to a primary CTA
Make “continue shopping” stand out
Show estimated shipping time at checkout
Referral programme
Address the sugar and weight objection in the FAQ
One-click checkout from the PDP
Low-stock urgency counter
“Products you may also like” on the cart
Live chat support inside checkout
Twelve tests across six months, each scored on impact, ease, and motivation before it shipped — and each tied to a single primary metric so a read-out is unambiguous.
The results
What the programme delivered — led by the flagship, with the audit infrastructure underneath it:
Net-new recurring revenue from Build-A-Bundle. First 3 months, no prior subscription baseline.
Standing per-item discount on every plan. Answers the top exit objection at the point of decision.
Customer-selected delivery frequency. Maps to the daily-use clinical protocol.
Want one move that pays for the whole audit?
Talk to DayoClient
Step One Foods · DTC
Package
CRO Audit + Flagship Build
Market
United States
Flagship
Build-A-Bundle subscription
Result
+$136k / 3 mo