Recent work
Early results
Case study | Ecommerce paid media, checkout and conversion optimization
How We Helped a Premium Oil Brand Stop Paying to Acquire Orders That Never Shipped
A fast-growing DTC food brand in India was adding orders but not revenue. Corelead traced the gap to cash-on-delivery losses, rebuilt the checkout, cleaned up the data feeding Google and Meta, and now scales spend only on signals it can trust.
At a glance
- Industry
- Premium cold-pressed oils, DTC on Shopify, India
- Stage
- Early-stage brand growing from a standing start
- Channels
- Meta Ads, Google Ads, email, organic search
- Services
- Paid media, conversion tracking and reporting, checkout and COD optimization, conversion rate optimization, SEO content
Early results
Based on the first 13 days of the new checkout, with some orders still in transit.
36% vs 92%+
share of full cash-on-delivery orders delivered over one quarter, compared with prepaid orders. This gap was the key finding.
32 orders
in the first 13 days of the new checkout: 27 prepaid and 5 with a flat deposit, none full COD. 15 delivered and 14 in transit, none canceled or failed in delivery so far.
~2.2 a day
delivered orders per day in the first 13 days if in-transit orders arrive, near the prior month's 2.4 a day, even though orders placed fell by about half.
Clean signal
Google and Meta now learn only from paid or deposit-backed orders.
The challenge
The brand was investing in paid media across Meta and Google, and Shopify showed steady orders. But the revenue the business actually collected told a different story. Almost half of all orders were full cash on delivery, and over one quarter only 36% of those were delivered (73 of 201). In the most recent month before the change, it fell to 13%. Most of the rest were never shipped, because they sat in a pending status while the team tried to confirm them. Prepaid orders, by contrast, were delivered 92 to 96% of the time over the same quarter.
That created three problems at once. Reported sales overstated real revenue. Ad platforms were learning from purchases that never completed, so their optimization drifted toward shoppers who place orders but do not follow through. And the checkout added friction in the wrong place: a mandatory phone verification step lost more than half of shoppers before they saw a price.
The brand also sells in a regulated category, so every page, ad and email had to stay within what a food oil can claim.
Our approach
- 1
Measure honored sales and find the leak
We rebuilt reporting around what the business actually keeps: orders shipped and accepted by the customer. Weekly and monthly views show blended ROAS against real ad spend, delivery outcomes by payment type and by state, and the Meta and Google funnels side by side. Order-level data also exposed a process gap. Paid orders were waiting on an approval tag the new system no longer applied, so we flagged each stuck order to the team.
- 2
Rebuild the checkout around commitment
We replaced two separate COD apps with a single COD-deposit system. Full cash on delivery was removed. COD shoppers now pay a flat, non-refundable fee up front, and prepaid shoppers get 5% off. When logs showed the phone verification step was losing most shoppers before they saw a price, we switched it off as a controlled test, since the deposit itself confirms intent.
- 3
Protect the signal ad platforms learn from
Meta had been optimizing on COD purchases that never shipped. We cut Meta spend while it relearns from paid and deposit orders, moved budget to higher-intent Google campaigns, and set scale-up rules before any spend goes back up: add-to-cart rate recovering toward 5%, Meta visitors reaching checkout again, and an acceptable cost per paid order.
- 4
Conversion rate optimization and a new storefront theme
A new Shopify theme is rolling out. Before launch we record baseline conversion, add-to-cart and checkout rates for all traffic and for Meta and Google separately. Launch day includes a test order through the new checkout, a check that every tracking event still fires, and a mobile pass. Everything else stays fixed for a week afterward, so any change in results can be tied to the theme. Collection pages carry a featured-product spotlight, and product pages have clearer usage guidance and FAQs.
- 5
Compliance-safe content and email
Food oils cannot make health claims, so we built content that educates without overpromising: long-form guides on traditional oils and how to use them, written in "traditionally used for" language with usage cautions, plus an internal linking plan with neutral anchor text. Newsletters run on authenticated sending and are moving from one-off promotions to story-led, how-to emails sent first to engaged subscribers.
- 6
Launch in sequence, with agreed success metrics
Several checkout changes shipped close together, which made results harder to read. We now keep a dated change log, change one thing at a time, and gate each new launch on agreed metrics. That includes the theme, the next Meta scale-up and regional-language ads, which are built, reviewed by native speakers and ready to run as a capped test once the funnel data is clean.
The results so far
In the first 13 days of the new checkout, the brand received 32 orders: 27 prepaid and 5 with the deposit, with no full COD. Of these, 15 have been delivered and 14 are in transit, with none canceled and none failed in delivery so far.
Orders placed fell by about half, from roughly 5 a day in the prior month to about 2.5 a day in the first 13 days, but most of the volume that disappeared was COD orders that never shipped. Delivered orders per day are tracking near the prior month's level. The brand now has what it lacked before: honest reporting, a clean baseline and a signal worth scaling.
The new storefront theme is still rolling out, so no results are claimed for it yet.
Key takeaways
- 1
Measure what the business keeps
Orders shipped and accepted matter more than orders placed.
- 2
Cash on delivery is a signal problem as well as a logistics problem
Ad platforms learn from whatever you feed them.
- 3
Fix friction before buying more traffic
A checkout step that loses half your shoppers cannot be solved with budget.
- 4
Change one thing at a time
A dated change log and agreed success metrics make every result readable.
- 5
In regulated categories, build compliance in from day one
It protects the brand and keeps content publishable.
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