Back to case studies Case Study — High-Ticket Ecommerce

Selling £600+ pergolas
through Meta ads —
trust architecture at scale.

OutdoorHavens is a high-ticket outdoor living brand specialising in premium garden pergolas. Built from zero, with no existing audience, this case study is about one thing — engineering enough trust to convince a customer to spend £500+ with a brand they had never heard of, through a social media ad.

View the live store
£9.8k
Net Revenue
£527
Avg Order Value
7.98x
Peak ROAS
5.47%
Blended CTR
Brand
OutdoorHavens
Category
High-Ticket Outdoor Living — Pergolas £289–£1,999
Period
Feb 2026 — May 2026 (ongoing)
Starting Point
Zero — no audience, no reviews, no history
Status
Live & actively scaling
The Challenge

Getting strangers to spend £600+
with a brand they have never heard of.

High-ticket ecommerce is a fundamentally different problem to low-ticket DTC. When a customer spends £30 on an impulse purchase, the trust barrier is low. When they are being asked to spend £600 or more on a garden pergola from a brand with no reviews, no track record and no word-of-mouth — the trust barrier is enormous.

OutdoorHavens launched from zero. No existing audience, no Trustpilot reviews, no social following, no prior sales. The challenge was not acquiring traffic — it was converting that traffic into customers willing to make a considered, high-value purchase.

The product range runs from £289 entry-level structures to £1,999 premium pergola systems. The target customer is a homeowner wanting to improve their garden — a demographic that researches carefully, compares alternatives and needs to feel confident before committing.

"High-ticket ecommerce is not about persuasion. It is about trust architecture — every touchpoint from ad to checkout has to eliminate doubt, not just generate desire."
OutdoorHavens Shopify Analytics
The Trust System

Six layers of trust built
before a single sale was made.

Micro-Influencer Seeding
Before launch, 4–5 home and lifestyle micro-influencers with 10–15k followers were seeded with fire pit tables and egg chairs. Chosen specifically for engagement rate over follower count. Their real-use content became the social proof foundation — on the website, Instagram and Facebook — before the brand had a single paying customer.
Real-Use Video Throughout
Product pages featured real video of customers using the products at every stage — unboxing, assembly, finished installation in real gardens. Not studio footage. Not renders. Authentic video evidence that the product exists, works and looks exactly as advertised.
Trustpilot Reviews
Trustpilot was integrated and actively built from early customers. For a brand asking customers to spend £600+, third-party verified reviews carry significantly more weight than on-site testimonials. Reviews were featured prominently on product pages and in ad creative.
Klarna — Buy Now Pay Later
Klarna was implemented across all products. For a £600–£2,000 purchase, the ability to spread payments removes one of the biggest objections — the upfront cost. Klarna messaging was used in ad creative and product pages to lower the perceived financial barrier without discounting the product.
WhatsApp Helpline
A live WhatsApp helpline was offered to all prospective customers. For considered purchases, the ability to speak directly with a real person before buying is a powerful trust signal. It also allowed qualification of high-intent leads and direct conversion support for customers on the fence.
Premium Shopify Store
Built on the Prestige theme — the same theme used by established premium brands. A high-ticket purchase requires a high-trust environment. The store was designed to look and feel like an established retailer, not a new dropshipper. Design quality is itself a trust signal at this price point.
The Acquisition System

Meta ads, email and retention —
built around the buying journey.

Meta Campaign Structure — TOF, MOF, BOF
Full funnel architecture across 35 campaigns. Cold traffic (TOF) campaigns targeting homeowner audiences by interest and behaviour. Middle of funnel (MOF) trust and social proof campaigns. Bottom of funnel (BOF) retargeting hot audiences who had engaged with product pages. The solid roof pergola was the hero product — given the most budget and the most creative testing.
Static Creative Won at High Ticket
Unlike AeroBloc where UGC video dominated, OutdoorHavens found static image ads consistently outperformed video at the TOF level. High quality product photography in aspirational garden settings drove the highest CTR and lowest CPC. The 3-year warranty angle on the BOF campaign delivered a 7.98x ROAS — the highest in the account.
Klaviyo Email — £2.5k Attributed Revenue
Welcome series, abandoned cart and abandoned checkout flows were all live from early in the brand's life. A £100 off pop-up incentive built an email list of 400 subscribers. Klaviyo attributed £2.5k in revenue — significant for a brand with 19 total orders, indicating email was converting high-intent subscribers who had previously abandoned.
OutdoorHavens Meta Ads Manager
OutdoorHavens Meta Ads ROAS
The Numbers

Full performance breakdown —
Feb 2026 to May 2026.

Revenue & Store Performance

£9,829
Net Revenue
£13,209 gross minus £2,529 discounts and £849 returns
19
Total Orders
17 fulfilled. High ticket — each order represents significant value
£527
Average Order Value
Significantly above the DTC ecommerce average of £40–£60
0.09%
Shopify Reported CVR
Normal for high-ticket considered purchases. Industry benchmark at this price point is 0.05–0.3%. 13,031 sessions — 13 completed checkouts via Shopify tracking.
£2,529
Discounts Given
Includes the £100 email pop-up welcome offer — used to build the 400-subscriber email list
£2.5k
Klaviyo Email Revenue
Attributed to email flows — abandoned checkout and cart recovery performing strongly

Meta Ads Performance

£4,327
Total Ad Spend
Across 35 campaigns — Feb to May 2026
465k
Total Impressions
176,246 unique accounts reached
5.47%
Blended CTR
Exceptional — industry benchmark is 1–2%. Indicates strong creative relevance and audience targeting
£0.17
Avg CPC
Remarkably low for a £600+ product category. Reflects quality of targeting and creative
393
Add to Carts
Strong consideration signal — 393 people added a £500+ item to cart
7.98x
Peak ROAS
HOT — Solid Roof Pergola BOF3 — 3 Year Warranty angle. Guarantee messaging proved highly effective at converting hot audiences
Campaign Breakdown

Top performing campaigns
and what drove results.

HOT — Solid Roof Pergola BOF3 — 3 Year Warranty (Best ROAS)
£175 spend · £0.26 CPC · 5.34% CTR · 33 add to carts — Warranty angle converting hot audiences at peak efficiency
7.98x
ROAS
HOT — Electric Louvered Pergola BOF (Highest CTR)
£178 spend · £0.06 CPC · 12.44% CTR · 23 add to carts — Exceptional engagement on the premium product line
3.93x
ROAS
Cold Campaign 2 — Solid Roof Pergola (TOF)
£198 spend · £0.13 CPC · 4.78% CTR · 21 add to carts — Strong cold traffic performance
3.27x
ROAS
HOT — Solid Roof Pergola BOF2 — Copy
£246 spend · £0.13 CPC · 6.07% CTR · 33 add to carts
2.64x
ROAS
Retarget HOT — Solid Roof Pergola (BOF)
£694 spend · £0.19 CPC · 5.01% CTR · 81 add to carts — Highest spend, strong retarget performance
2.81x
ROAS
Cold Campaign 1 — Solid Roof Pergola (TOF — Top Spend)
£786 spend · £0.14 CPC · 4.82% CTR · 70 add to carts — Primary cold acquisition campaign
2.48x
ROAS
"The 3-year warranty angle at 7.98x ROAS confirmed what the data showed throughout — at high ticket, removing risk is more powerful than increasing desire. Guarantee messaging outperformed lifestyle imagery at every stage of the funnel."
What Worked

The key decisions behind
a high-ticket acquisition system.

Static Over Video for High Ticket
The opposite of AeroBloc. For OutdoorHavens, high quality static product photography in aspirational garden settings consistently outperformed UGC video at the top of funnel. The product is visual and aspirational — a beautiful image of a pergola in a well-designed garden communicates the end state immediately. Video added complexity without adding conversion at this stage.
Micro-Influencers Over Macro
Seeding to 4–5 home influencers with 10–15k followers rather than larger accounts was deliberate. Engagement rate — not follower count — is what drives trust. A homeowner with 12k genuinely interested followers produces more commercially useful content than an account with 200k disengaged ones. The content produced became the social proof layer for ads, the website and organic social simultaneously.
Warranty and Guarantee Messaging
The highest ROAS campaign in the account — 7.98x — used a 3-year warranty angle. At high ticket, the customer's primary concern is not the product itself but the risk of the purchase going wrong. Addressing that risk directly — with a strong guarantee — proved more effective than any lifestyle or aspiration-led creative angle.
Klarna as a Conversion Tool
Klarna implementation reduced the perceived financial barrier without reducing price. Rather than discounting a £999 pergola to £799, Klarna allowed customers to see it as £83/month. The psychology of affordability is fundamentally different from the psychology of a discount — one maintains brand value, the other erodes it.
Email Recovery at High Ticket
£2.5k in Klaviyo attributed revenue from a list of 400 subscribers shows the outsized value of email recovery for high-ticket items. A customer who abandons a £600 checkout has very high intent — they just need one more reason to complete. The abandoned checkout flow, combined with the £100 welcome discount, proved highly effective at recovering those customers.
The Operator's View

What we are doing next
and what we would do differently.

OutdoorHavens is an ongoing brand — this case study reflects the first three months of a brand that is still actively scaling. The numbers are strong for the stage the brand is at. A 5.47% blended CTR and £0.17 CPC in a high-ticket category is exceptional by any benchmark.

Google Shopping is the next priority. A customer searching "solid roof pergola UK" is showing high commercial intent — far higher than a cold Meta audience. Capturing that intent with Google Shopping campaigns is the logical next scaling lever, particularly for a product with strong organic search demand.

Slower, more deliberate scaling. High-ticket ecommerce rewards patience. Scaling ad spend aggressively before the trust infrastructure is fully built risks wasted spend on audiences that are not yet ready to convert. The next phase focuses on strengthening the retargeting system and building more social proof before significantly increasing cold traffic budgets.

Conversion rate context. The 0.09% Shopify reported rate looks low in isolation — but for a brand selling £500+ garden structures to customers who research extensively before buying, it is within the expected range. As Trustpilot reviews accumulate and social proof deepens, conversion rate will improve organically.

"High-ticket ecommerce is a long game. The brands that win are the ones that invest in trust infrastructure before they invest in ad spend. OutdoorHavens is three months old and already demonstrating that the system works — the next phase is scaling what is proven."
Selling high-ticket products online?
Book a discovery call — we understand both the trust problem and the financial mechanics behind it.
Back to all case studies
Book a Discovery Call