Conversion Rate Optimization
I recently had the chance to interview Nicole Compen, founder of raye the store—a travelling London-based concept store that helps brands shine through immersive pop-up experiences 🚀
Nicole supports them from A to Z: product selection, visual merchandising, event planning, customer feedback collection...
raye the store has become a powerful springboard for brands to get noticed, validate their offer, and build meaningful connections with future customers 💗
👀 Nail your packaging
Nicole is clear: “People buy with their eyes first.”
At raye, high standards don’t stop at the product—they start with how it’s presented.
📈 What she sees in top-performing brands:
- Visually strong, unique, well-packaged products
- Consistency between design, product promise and target audience
- A limited but crystal-clear assortment (3–5 hero products are enough to stand out)
💡 3 great resources to inspire your next packaging:
- Packaging of the World: curated selection of the most creative concepts
- Lovely Package: hundreds of packaging ideas by category
- Thingtesting: discover the latest trendy products and packaging directly in your Insta feed
🎙️ Don’t just rely on location—activate your community
Communicating at least 5 times about your pop-up can generate up to 30% more foot traffic 🔥
A great location means nothing if no one knows about it. Yet many brands stop at a single post.
Nicole’s recipe to make your pop-up shine:
- 📆 Build a 3-stage communication plan:
- Teasing (countdown, prep content)
- Live activation (stories, reels, mini-events)
- Post-show recap (behind the scenes, best-of, customer feedback)
🔎 How to find the right space?
Nicole recommends Appear Here or Storefront—you can filter by budget, dates, and target audience. And most importantly: visit the space in person to analyse footfall and surroundings!
🆕🎥 Unbottled - Managing 30,000 orders and 2,000+ retail points with just 2 people
- 🚚 Manage e-commerce, retail and B2B from a single platform
- 💻 Track operations in real-time
- 🌱 Align logistics performance with environmental values
- 🤝 And they do it all with just 2 people handling logistics!
🧪 Turn your pop-up into a live product lab
A great pop-up = a real-time testing ground.
Some brands use it as a strategic lever:
- Huel used their pop-up to give subscribers a first taste of new snack recipes 🍫
- Simply Roasted, a crisp brand, turned theirs into a data collection machine (tastes, preferences, geographic zones… 🥔)
Nicole’s tips to make the most of every visitor:
- 🌐 Place a QR code or tablet at the exit with 2–3 quick questions (favourite product, purchase intent...)
- 👾 Gamify the experience to boost answers—think prize wheels, discounts, giveaways
- 🔍 Watch reactions live (where people stop, what they say, what they snap photos of)
- 🙋 Have someone from your product or marketing team on-site to catch key verbatims
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I’m Evan. Before Bigblue, I built DOSE TUE: 244M organic views, 300K+ cans sold, 3K+ supermarkets, zero ad spend, all in one year. Now I break down what other great brands do so you can steal it, too.
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