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Many e-commerce brands unknowingly lose sales not because of their product, but because of unclear branding. This case study explores the 5 most common branding mistakes in e-commerce and how we helped Lure Essentials fix them with strategy, product clarity, and content that actually sells.

Lure Essentials Case Study: 5 Branding Mistakes in E-Commerce (and How We Fixed Them)

Health & wellness

Problem #1: It’s not the product — it’s the brand
Problem #2: Unvalidated assumptions
Problem #3: Product ≠ message
Problem #4: Cluttered offer
Problem #5: Generic branding
Guides
Takeaways

We see that a lot

E-commerce brands, especially those who do really well and sell thousands of pieces through Amazon or their own website, feel bland, forgettable and very often — not being visually or copy-wise in line with their target audience at all.

As a customer, you probably first landed on this brand because you casually noticed their product on your coworker’s table, or a friend mentioned getting it last week. Or you landed on the influencer’s post on Instagram and made a direct purchase within the platform. This way you don’t visit the company’s outdated website, you don’t see their messy copy that doesn’t explain the product value and visuals that don’t match your customer persona.

And for business, it can work for a period of time, but for a business ready to scale, it becomes a real problem. Paradoxically, the better they do in sales and the more sales channels they have, the more messy their branding is.

It doesn’t matter much which niche this business is in — lifestyle products, apparel, cosmetics, food — we see this pattern across many companies. They push more budget into paid ads, influencer collabs, and changing the main website banner. While actually what they struggle with is answering clearly these three questions:
“Who do you sell your product to?”
“Who are the people that actually buy from you?”
“Why do the people buy your products?”

Lure Essentials was exactly this type of company. With their example, we’d like to investigate the most common branding mistakes in e-commerce and the solutions that we suggested after executing an audit and developing a brand guide for Lure.

1

Brands don’t know that the problem is their branding

Problem #1 in branding for e-commerce

Lure Essentials is a US-based product brand specializing in massage and therapeutic cupping tools for home and professional use.
On the surface, everything looked “fine.” Amazon brought stable revenue, the socials were running, the website worked. They had stable monthly increase in sales but they wanted to unlock some greater scaling opportunities and attract more clients through their social media.

They came to Brand Doula looking for help with producing content for social. But it quickly became clear there was a bigger issue: they weren’t sure who their ideal customers really were, lacking clarity around their audience and brand positioning.

We stumbled upon this problem while trying to understand what kind of content we’ll need to create. There were simply too many products for distant groups of users, with different demographics, it was not quite clear which of them were in the company’s focus. It would be rather easy to generate a lot of various content but instead, we stepped out and suggested the owner to run a brand audit and get a clear understanding of what their brand exists for and for whom.

If you're struggling too, it’s probably a sign that your branding lacks clarity and it's worth investing time into sorting that out. A simple brand audit can diagnose the main areas with problems.

“Who do you sell your product to?”
“Who are the people that actually buy from you?”
“Why do people buy your products?”

Use the elevator speech technique to answer each of these questions in under 10 words:

Brand Doula recommendations

2

Brands think they know what their brand is about, but they don’t validate this knowledge

Problem #2 in branding for e-commerce

From everyone to someone: clarifying the real customer.
Very often — especially when the brand owner is also the original ideator — they carry an idea of the brand inside themselves. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s accurate, or that it translates externally.

In the case of Lure, the product had simply outgrown the brand. Lure started with three types of massage cups, mostly for home use focused on weight loss and muscle soreness. Over time, they expanded their catalogue dramatically, even creating a separate sub-brand for sports and gym enthusiasts.

They ended up offering over 30 products: for weight loss, back pain, heel pain, face lifting, anti-aging, workout recovery, and more. Cups for gliding technique, for suction, for facial contouring… the list goes on.

Lure’s positioning at this point could be summed up as:
“Massage cups and accessories for men and women between 18 and 75 who want to be healthy using at-home tools.”
Which, in practice, meant: for no one.

We looked into their website and social media analytics to understand who actually made up their real customer base.

We then helped them identify three specific, living client avatars — each with real-life context, motivations, needs, and buying behavior. Next, we matched those avatars to specific Lure products, channels, and messaging. This allowed the brand to move from “generally useful” to clearly relevant.

  • Then adjust your messaging, product highlights, and sales channels to speak directly to them, not everyone.

  • Use that insight to build clear, detailed client avatars.

  • Look at who’s converting on your site, who’s engaging with your content, and who’s coming back.

  • Don’t rely on assumptions — validate your ideas of who buys from you with actual data.

Brand Doula recommendations

3

Brands think their product speaks for itself

Problem #3 in branding for e-commerce

What we suggested wasn’t making another tagline. It was clarity through brand architecture — messaging, visuals, structure — to highlight what made Lure different before the product was even touched.

But the problem was, Lure’s benefits were not articulated well enough. We ran a competitive analysis. We looked at what other cupping and wellness brands were saying, how they positioned themselves, how similar everything looked. And what we discovered was that Lure was getting lost in a sea of sameness.

Lure had a strong product advantage: they designed and manufactured their own cupping tools. These weren’t repackaged mass-market goods, they were high-quality, original designs with specific health benefits and a clear reason for their price point.

  • Recommendations for improvements on the website

  • Where Lure’s real advantage was hidden

  • What pain points their competitors ignored

  • How they showed up on Amazon, Instagram, and their site - to see if visuals, texts and overall feel are aligned (they were not).

  • What Lure was actually known for (vs. what they said) through reviews on Amazon and comments on social media

In the case of Lure, we mapped:

Your product is not your message. Show your edge early — in visuals, in tone, in hierarchy. Customers make decisions in seconds. Make sure they understand what’s unique about your product before they click “Buy.”

Brand Doula recommendations

4

Too many products, too little clarity

Problem #4 in branding for e-commerce

Lure had over 30 SKUs. Cups by shape. By use case. By body part. By technique.
Although products were nominally grouped by use and persona, from a branding standpoint there was no intuitive logic in how they were categorized or named. Similar items had slight differences, but no explanation. The sets felt arbitrary. Navigation was clunky. Even the founder admitted they no longer knew what some product combinations were for.

This is common for Amazon-native brands that scale by expanding their catalog — nothing wrong with that. But once they move toward a DTC model, this breadth quickly becomes a liability.

Aligning the website (or the sales platform) and branding is a unique challenge for e-commerce businesses. When we work with such brands at Brand Doula, we always look at how the website and the brand interact, even if the company came to us for only one particular service out of Brand Doula’s solutions for e-commerce businesses.

  • Aligned visual language and product names for clarity

  • Recommended killing poor performers to focus attention

  • Standardized set logic (by size, by concern, by technique)

  • Created a clear hierarchy from entry-level to advanced

  • Grouped products by actual customer need (pain relief, anti-aging, lymphatic drainage)

We ran an audit for all Lure’s product lines in the same way we did it for the entire brand:

Build a product line that mirrors how people actually shop — and how they define their own needs. A clear structure with 3–4 focused product groups tied to specific customer goals will convert better than a vague “something for everyone” approach.

A messy store is a broken funnel. Don’t expect users to do the sorting. If you offer multiple products, your catalog must not only be grouped logically. It also needs clear customer personas and positioning behind each.

Brand Doula recommendations

5

brands look and sound too generic

Problem #5 in branding for e-commerce

They targeted too many customer personas, produced too many content styles, and got lost in the abundance. What they lacked was a unified brand voice and a consistent visual language that could tie everything together and build recognition.

The copy leaned heavily on vague phrases like “rooted in wisdom” or “holistic healing tools” — poetic, but empty. Instagram featured real customer photos, but the feed lacked consistency and polish. The website relied on technical language that didn’t connect with their casual, health-curious audience.

Lure’s content looked pretty good. They had strong collaborations with bloggers and magazines, a mix of user-generated content, and their own visual production. But it didn’t convert the way it should.

  • Cut fluff, amplified clarity

  • Unified tone across website, social media, and packaging

  • Used storytelling anchored in customer avatars

  • Explained product benefits in plain English

For Lure, we reworked their content strategy from the ground up:

Nice isn’t enough. If your content doesn’t sell, it’s broken. Shift from decoration to communication. Make every word count. Clarity converts.

Brand Doula recommendations

Selected slides from the customer guide

Selected slides from the brand guide

The Lure Essentials case shows a pattern we see in many growing e-commerce businesses: strong product, weak communication. The branding isn’t broken because it looks bad — it’s broken because it doesn’t convert.

Here’s what any e-commerce brand can take away:

  • Your brand is not your logo or your product. It’s how clearly and consistently you help the right customer understand: “This is for me.”
  • More products mean more confusion — unless you guide the shopper. Build your catalog around real customer needs, not internal categories.
  • Your content is not to decorate, it’s to communicate. Ditch vague phrases. Explain what your product solves in plain language.
  • If you’re unsure who your customer is, your content will be too. Use data to clarify, then structure everything (messaging, visuals, offers) around them.

Most importantly, stop trying to be for everyone. Precision sells. And if you struggle to clarify parts of your brand (or entire idea of it), Brand Doula is here to help.

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