Forged in Trust: How The Fire Pit Company Increased Checkout Completions by 29.9% with FERO Smart Checkout
Handcrafted fire pits meet handcrafted experiences. For The Fire Pit Company, building trust online was just as important as building their iconic steel creations, and that meant rethinking checkout from the ground up.
“The team made it really easy, honest, straightforward, and genuinely risk free. We could test it without commitment, and within days we saw it working exactly as promised.”
Meet The Fire Pit Company
Founded in 2014 on a working farm in the United Kingdom, The Fire Pit Company began as a small family business that transformed craftsmanship and community spirit into functional art.
When the team launched their online store in 2017, sales started within hours, even for items priced above £1,000. But as the range expanded and the audience grew, they noticed a shift. Customers were browsing and engaging but not always completing their purchases.
“People love our products, but they don’t always buy on the first visit,” Jason explained. “They take time to think. So our job online is to build that confidence and make every interaction feel trustworthy and easy.”
The Turning Point
As sales grew, so did the challenge of earning trust from shoppers browsing high value items. Most buyers did not purchase on impulse. They researched, returned, and took their time to decide.
“For our pieces, people need to have faith in us as the maker,” Jason said. “They don’t always buy on the first visit, so we have to do everything possible to build that confidence and help them make the commitment.”
The business relied heavily on abandoned cart emails, which performed well, but only after a visitor entered their email address. What Jason could not see was the behaviour of shoppers who dropped off before that point.
“I wanted to understand what was happening before people abandoned the checkout page,” he said. “How they behaved, where they lost confidence, and what we could do to retain them”.
That insight led the team to realise that the checkout experience itself might be creating friction. They decided to test a simpler and smarter checkout that would build trust and reduce drop offs.
An adaptive checkout engine that uses predictive AI to automatically adjust, showing the right design, layout, or payment option based on the shopper's behaviour. It integrates easily with ecommerce platforms and can be deployed in under 10 minutes.
A Smart Checkout to the Rescue: 29.9% More Completed Checkouts in Just Two Weeks
When Jason’s team identified the biggest blind spot, the solution had to go beyond looks. It needed to provide visibility, strengthen trust, and make purchasing effortless. That is where FERO Smart Checkout came in.
“It was a no brainer,” Jason said. “The install took minutes, the test was safe, and we could see real data from day one.”
Together, the teams set up a two week A/B test comparing the existing WooCommerce checkout with a new, streamlined single page flow designed for speed and credibility.
Within days, the results were undeniable. The new checkout delivered a 29.9% uplift in completed checkouts, fewer drop offs before email entry, and smoother navigation that made the entire buying process feel effortless.
“I could literally see more people checking out through the new flow,” Jason said. “The smoothness of the interface was probably the biggest single difference.”
Why It Worked
FERO’s optimized checkout did not just look better, it worked better. The plugin simplified multiple steps, replaced redundant extensions, and provided insights The Fire Pit Company had never had access to before.
“To get the same information as before, we would have needed a plugin on top of a plugin on top of a plugin,” Jason joked. “This did it all in one.”
Beyond functionality, the change reflected the company’s ethos of being straightforward, transparent, and built to last.
Built for Craft, Backed by Data
Today, The Fire Pit Company continues to combine artisan production with digital efficiency. Their website now feels as handcrafted as their products, seamless, strong, and ready for growth.
And true to the data led approach, the improvement was not about guesswork, it was about proof: a 29.9% uplift in completed checkouts achieved in just two weeks.