Hero - Hub - Help - Hype: Reducing TTV with beautiful landings

Problem

Authentica supplies premium professional products to beauty salons. Many of those product lines aren't sold at retail, so salon owners had no way to physically try them before committing to a brand. That lack of hands-on experience was stretching out the sales cycle. My job was to shorten the distance between a salon owner's first contact with the company and their first purchase.

Research

Before committing to this direction, the team ran it through extensive Jobs-to-be-Done research. We explored the roles in a salon and what jobs they have to solve. A structured needs-research effort surfaced several possible directions for shortening time-to-value. Discovery Box was one hypothesis among them, not an isolated idea. TTV tends to respond to several reinforcing factors, not one silver bullet.

Hypothesis

The hypothesis behind Discovery Box was specific: if salon owners and their staff could directly experience curated product sets, they'd reach a faster, easier first contact with both the brand and the tangible value of its products — shortening time to first purchase.

Landing tests

Before building, I put together information architecture and prototyped landing pages for the boxes and tested them on real users. Feedback was measured across three dimensions: comprehension of what the box offered, brand impression, and perceived usefulness of the selection. Validation ran on two tracks — testing the core hypothesis itself, and separately testing the UX and information architecture of each box's landing page.

Final page structure

Each Discovery Box got its own dedicated landing page, accessible by direct link and built around strong visuals, since business clients consistently prioritized visual information over text. The page moved through a deliberate sequence: an introduction with the strongest product imagery, a breakdown of advantages for both salon owners and their staff, unboxing videos to convey genuine reactions, and an interactive product presentation. To close the loop and build purchase confidence, it ended with social proof from a recognized stylist, practical service and commercial details, links to related education content, and a simple step-by-step purchase guide.

Results

Over 20 limited-edition box sets sold out within the first year after launch. Salon owners' decision-making time dropped by up to 2 times, and overall time-to-value for brand contracts was shortened. The result validated the underlying bet: decision-makers benefit from a way to physically experience the product. This opportunity makes their job of choosing the brand faster and easier.