Most sexual wellness DTC brands don’t have a product problem. They have a conversion problem. The issue isn’t quality. It’s that their stores were built to look credible, not to convert - and those are very different jobs.
When we audit sexual wellness brands, we see the same fixable mistakes repeating across brands in the £3m–£30m range. These are not obscure CRO tactics. They are fundamentals that get deprioritised during launch and never revisited. Each one costs real revenue.
Here are five fixes worth making this week.
Ratings and reviews above the fold
If customers have to scroll to find social proof, many won’t bother. Reviews aren’t a nice-to-have at the bottom of the product page; they are one of the most powerful conversion tools a sexual wellness brand has, and they need to be visible within the first screen. This matters more in this category than almost any other, because the purchase decision involves a degree of trust that standard consumer goods do not require. A star rating and review count directly beneath the product title costs nothing to implement and consistently lifts conversion.
One caveat: aggregated ratings only work if the reviews are genuine and specific. Vague five-star reviews with no detail don’t reassure anyone. Encourage post-purchase reviews that reference the product experience directly. That’s the content that earns its place above the fold.
Product titles that say what the product does
Sexual wellness product naming conventions lean heavily toward brand identity: evocative words, abstract references, names that work on packaging and in editorial. On a product page, that naming creates friction. The customer who lands from a search or a paid click wants to confirm quickly that they are in the right place. A title like "The Arc" tells them nothing. "The Arc - Couples Vibrator for Simultaneous Stimulation" confirms it immediately.
This doesn’t mean abandoning brand language. It means extending the title to include functional description. The SEO benefit is secondary; the primary benefit is reducing the cognitive work required to confirm purchase intent. Uncertain customers leave. Clear ones stay.
A checkout flow that has actually been tested
Most brands test their homepage. Almost none test their checkout. The assumption is that once someone has added to cart, the sale is made. It isn’t. Cart abandonment in sexual wellness is high for category-specific reasons: second-guessing at payment, anxiety about delivery and discretion, uncertainty around returns. Every one of those objections can be addressed in the checkout flow, and very few brands do it.
Test the checkout yourself, on mobile, as a first-time customer. Count the steps. Check where key information appears. Delivery and discretion details should be visible before the payment screen, not buried in the footer. Returns policy should be clear before commitment, not after. These aren’t design problems. They’re information problems. And they don’t require a budget to fix.
Discretion and delivery information placed where the decision happens
Customers buying sexual wellness products are almost always thinking about how the order arrives. Discreet packaging and plain billing descriptors are not afterthoughts; they are purchase-decision factors for a significant portion of your customer base. And yet, this information is usually buried in the FAQ or the footer. It should be on the product page, near the add-to-cart button, where the decision is actually being made.
A one-line reassurance -"Delivered in plain packaging, billed discreetly" -placed visibly on the page addresses an objection before it becomes a reason to leave. It takes ten minutes to implement. The conversion impact is measurable.
An email capture that gives a reason to sign up
Most sexual wellness brands have a pop-up offering a percentage discount in exchange for an email address. It works, to a point - but it attracts price-sensitive customers and trains them to wait for the next offer, erodeing margin and brand value over time.
The better offer is access to something genuinely useful: a guide, an education resource, early access to new products, or content that connects to the brand's broader positioning. Customers in this category are often in a research mindset when they first arrive. An email capture that acknowledges that mindset -"Get our guide to [category-specific topic]" -builds a list of people who are engaged with the subject, not just hunting for 10% off. That list converts at a higher rate and retains longer.
None of these changes are expensive. But together, they’re the difference between a store that leaks revenue and one that captures it.