How to Design a Pre-Purchase Experience People Can’t Stop Talking About #606

Most ecommerce brands think sales happen at the end of the journey: checkout, payments, abandoned carts. But by the time a customer gets there, the decision is already made.

The brands generating real word of mouth aren’t the ones with the slickest checkout. They’re the ones that made the journey to checkout feel like something. Something personal. Something memorable. Something worth telling a friend about.

That’s exactly what Maheer Shah, founder of Dr. Grillz, has built. What looks like friction (consultations, fittings, wait times) has become his biggest marketing advantage.

In today's Playbook:

• How Dr. Grillz turns customer fittings into content and word-of-mouth moments
• Why pre-purchase experience matters more than checkout optimisation
• How “positive friction” can actually increase trust and conversions
• Why making it harder to buy can turn purchases into stories customers share
• How brands recreate in-store experiences to drive confidence and conversion

Connect with Dr. Maheer Shah
Explore Dr. Grillz
Dt. Grillz' episode
Preezie's episode
Culture Kings' episode
Try With Mirra's episode

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Marketplaces in Australia aren't just emerging or a nice side piece to D2C anymore. They're established, they're complex, and they are moving fast. Amazon continues to accelerate, TikTok shop is looming, and for most brands, managing a marketplace properly has become a full-time job. Forecasting, content, ads, logistics, compliance, it's a lot. And it requires specialist knowledge. That's where Pattern can help. Patent don't just advise on marketplaces, they actually buy your product and then sell it on global marketplaces as your partner. That means they have real skin in the game. They only win if you win. Simple as that. Through their marketplace accelerator model, Patent handles everything from inventory forecasting and listing creation through to advertising, fulfillment, and international expansion. So if marketplaces feel overwhelming, or you know you should be doing more, but you just don't have the time, the team, or the energy, contact Patten to help you make the most of the marketplace opportunity. Learn more at au.patten.com. What if I told you that you're probably focusing your optimization at the wrong moment in the customer journey? We have an industry obsession with checkout conversion, abandoned cart flows, and payment options, where we often assume that is where the battle is won or lost in the checkout. But the truth is, by the time someone gets to the ad to cart, the real work is probably already done and the decision is made. And when we think about the next level of that around word of mouth, the things that actually get people to talk about your brand isn't about the journey to checkout. It's about how you made them feel something, something personal, something memorable, something that's actually worth telling a friend about. Because when people recommend a brand, they rarely say the checkout was really smooth, or you can't believe the shipping notifications that I got, or they had a brilliant abandoned cart email. Because here in Australia, where trust in online retail is still being earned, the brands that win are the ones that help customers feel informed and confident before they buy, which means that the pre-purchase experience isn't just a nice to have. It is one of the biggest competitive advantages that you can have in e-commerce. So today we are looking at operating who figured that out early, starting with Mahir Shah from Dr. Grills, who turned a custom fitting experience into a content engine. We'll then revisit some past guests, including Michael Tutec from Preezy, who discovered that actually slowing down a guided selling tool actually increased conversions. Simon Beer from Culture Kings, who built product drops that customers literally fought to access. And finally, Pete Kerradig Evans from Try With Mirror, who flipped the payment model to make sure that customers can bring the fitting room home with them before even buying. But first, let's hear it from the man himself, Dr.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Grills. And that's why I'm trying to do as much in-house as I can. So when they have their fitting, the day of their fitting, we try to make it an experience. Maybe whiten their teeth before they get their grills fit in. We take a bunch of pictures. Like I want to make that a big deal because that's where all my best content will come from, which is my best marketing. And also it's the best part of the sales journey or their customer experiences. You know, their grills are so non-functional, right? So it's all about the emotion behind them and how it makes you feel and the build-up. And they've had to wait for a couple of weeks, whereas most other things, most other jewelry you just buy online or you buy the jewelry shop and you leave. This is some patience involved. So the build-up is really intense. That's the whole reason I would love to have a shop one day is to capture that, capture that moment. Because once the grills go in, you know, you want to see the transformation. That's kind of what it's about as well. It's about creating that transformation within someone of like a zero to hero where you put the gold teeth in and the way you feel, the way you feel about yourself really transforms.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

It must be hard because there'd be so much word of mouth and talkability when that moment comes. So if you've got a friend who rocks up and they've suddenly got grills, you're like, holy shit, that's really cool. Like, and you'd want to know the story of why and how and who did it. And all of that would happen a lot of the time without you even being part of the conversation, which makes it hard for you, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 4:18

It does, yeah. And now I'm finding work where, you know, my reputation's kind of getting out there and someone says, I heard about you. They book in straight away and then they're like, I just don't care how much I have to pay, I just want to get it done. Which is good as well, because I'm not having to be involved in the sales experience. But there's some moments like you mentioned where I you'd love to just capture what's going on there.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

So talk me through the process because from what I can see, and you mentioned there, you know, that really involved process. Your website is a WordPress website at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

At the moment, we're doing a complete rebuild of the website, which has taken forever, but it's it's nearly ready. There's a lot more features we're adding to it. What are you moving to? So it's still going to be based on WordPress, but we're going to change our custom builder into a 3D custom builder with augmented reality as well. So it'll be a QR code, you scan the QR code, and then whatever you've designed will pop up on your teeth through like a selfie camera thing. So that's just part of the experience. But really, this is what I've had done wrong for so long I try to have all my options on the website, and there's so much customization and it was a bit overwhelming. Whereas really what I need to do is just get you in for a discovery call, find out your needs, and then start the process there, and then you'll end up whatever you wanted anyway. But it's much smoother journey for the customer, right? You just, well, you have step one, just get in touch, let's have a call, let's chat, let's figure out your budget, let's figure out what you'd like to wear, what options you're after, and then we craft it for you. I think that's the the secret source for me.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

So you've still got a custom website, and it sounds like it's still going to be fairly custom on WordPress with some cool features. And then are you getting customers that actually transact on the website, or is it all manual call and build?

SPEAKER_00 5:56

Yeah, so I'd say 50-50. So we do get uh quite a bit coming online. Now there's a lot more competitors over East. So I find my online sales might have come down a little bit, but my local sales are like tripled, maybe quadrupled. So I want to grow that online sales because obviously it's a lot easier, but it's nice where you just open your phone and orders come through. Person's gone through that journey like themselves, they know exactly what they want, they bought it, and then you just have to do it. But then also you'd lose the connection. And a lot of what I do is cosmetic dentistry, high-end dentistry, like aligners, veneers. So it'd be nice to offer those options as well and then tailor like a whole package. Let's get your whole mouth clean, let's get your whole mouth healthy, straighten your teeth if you want. Then the grills are like the little final touch, like sort of the cherry on top at the end. That's the way I see the like the ultimate customer journey for me. And with everything that I can offer and everything I've trained in, is how do we look after you as a person, not just make a quick grill and quick sale is actually get a lot more lifetime value out of each of our customers as well. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

And there's no point just putting grills over bad teeth because that's exactly cool.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

And yeah, exactly. Not cool, it doesn't last, and it goes against our one of our values, which is to be healthy. We work in healthy mouths, so the grills last.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Yeah. What a cool business, right? There was one main lesson that I took out of that snippet from that conversation with Dr. Grills, and that is that we want to create moments that people will talk about. His product takes weeks to make, and it requires a physical fitting. We won't all have that. Most e-commerce operators would see that as friction, that they don't want in their business. But Mahir saw that as storytelling. Every consultation becomes a moment of anticipation, and every fitting actually becomes content. The final reveal, the moment that the grills actually go on, becomes the transformation moment that customers want to share. So instead of trying to compress the buying journey to get through that checkout faster, Mahir stretched it because every step builds emotional investment. Customers don't want to just walk away with jewelry in their teeth. They want to walk away with a story. And stories travel much further and amplify much more than a single transaction ever will. To follow that up, I want to talk about positive friction building trust. Michael Truchek runs Prezi, which is a guided selling platform that helps brand recommend products through AI, quizzes, decision tools. Initially, the instinct was all about speed, get instant answers, instant recommendations. But something strange happened as they rolled it out. When results appeared too quickly, customers didn't trust them. So Michael introduced what he calls perceived effort, a short delay with a loading screen that shows the system analyzing inputs and building a recommendation. Engagement actually increased, click-through increased, conversions increased. The lesson isn't that slow experiences are better. We don't want slow websites. It's that customers need to feel that effort has been made on their behalf before they trust the outcome. If the recommendation arrives before the customer feels heard, it doesn't give trust a chance to form. Make the customer feel like you've worked for them and they'll work with you. To follow that up, we want to turn buying into a win. Simon Beard built Culture Kings on a principle that breaks most e-commerce rules. Sometimes the best way to sell something is to make it harder to buy. For major product drops, Culture King has hidden items behind secret PIN codes shared with their most engaged fans. The result actually wasn't frustration. It was frenzy. Some drops generated 10 times the sales of standard launches because the experience wasn't just a purchase anymore. It was actually a win. Customers didn't say, I bought a hoodie. They said, I got the drop. And that's the story they tell their friends. Scarcity, access, and the chase turned path to purchase into entertainment. And entertainment, those stories, they travel fast. The last example I want to leave you with today comes from Pete Kerradig Evans, who looked at the biggest anxiety in fashion e-commerce: buying something that you can't even touch. Instead of solving it with better product photos or sizing charts, he flipped the entire payment model and experience. With Try with Mirror, customers receive products at home before they're even charged. They try everything on, they keep what they want, and they return the rest. It doesn't get the sale straight away, but it recreates the fitting room experience that online retail lost. The real magic happens when brands pair the try-on with a concierge call, a real stylist helping the customer decide what works. Now the purchase decision isn't transactional, it's a styling session. And customers who experience that level of service talk about it. And they talk about it a lot. So, what's the common thread through all of these stories? Mahir Shah turned a consultation into a moment that customers want to share. Michael Tutec showed that slowing down a recommendation tool actually builds trust. Simon Beard turned product launches into events that customers compete to access. And Pete Carrater Gevens recreated the fitting room at home and added a human voice. The lesson here is pretty simple. Word of mouth rarely starts at checkout. It starts much earlier the moment that a customer feels like a brand actually cared before taking their money. Design that moment well, and the marketing will likely take care of itself.