Rebuilding a DTC funnel around contribution margin

The challenge

Verdant was growing revenue and losing money. Their platform-reported return on ad spend looked healthy, but the bank account disagreed — conversions were being double-counted across channels, and a 6-second mobile storefront was quietly killing the traffic they paid for.

What we did

• 01Rebuilt the storefront headless on Next.js, cutting largest contentful paint from 6.1s to 1.2s on mid-range Android.
• 02Implemented server-side conversion tracking with deduplication, then rebuilt reporting on contribution margin rather than platform-attributed revenue.
• 03Restructured paid accounts around product margin tiers so budget followed profit instead of top-line revenue.
• 04Shipped a creative testing cadence of twelve new concepts a month, with losers cut at a fixed threshold.

The result

Blended return on ad spend settled at 3.4× against a 1.9× starting point, on 40% more spend. More importantly, the number in the dashboard now matches the number in the accounts.