How Proven Winners Direct Turned Mobile Into a High-Performance Growth Channel Ahead of Peak Spring Season

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About Proven Winners Direct

Proven Winners Direct is one of the leading online destinations for plants, shrubs, perennials, and gardening supplies in the United States. With a massive catalog and a deeply engaged customer base, the brand has built its reputation around helping gardeners discover the right products for their spaces and growing conditions.

But as mobile traffic continued to rise, the team recognized that web alone was no longer enough, especially heading into their most important selling window of the year: spring.

For Proven Winners Direct, spring is not just another season. It is the period that drives the majority of annual demand. The team needed a faster, more engaging way to guide customers through product discovery, seasonal shopping, education, and repeat purchases during this high-intent window.

That led to a key realization: the brand needed a true native mobile experience.

Rather than launching a basic ecommerce app, Proven Winners Direct wanted to create a highly visual and intuitive gardening experience designed specifically for mobile users, many of whom fall within the brand’s core 55+ demographic.

To bring that vision to life, Proven Winners Direct partnered with Appbrew for their very first mobile app launch.

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The Challenge: Simplifying Discovery for a Massive Gardening Catalog

Before launching the app, Proven Winners Direct primarily relied on their website to drive sales and customer engagement. While the website performed well, the team saw an opportunity to create a more guided and immersive mobile experience that would better support discovery, retention, and seasonal engagement.

Navigating a large catalog was becoming harder on mobile

With thousands of products across categories, plant types, growing conditions, and seasonal collections, discovery could quickly become overwhelming, especially for mobile shoppers.

The team wanted a more intuitive and visual navigation system that simplified browsing and helped customers quickly find the right products.

Spring season required stronger retention and re-engagement

The spring kickoff period is the brand’s most critical revenue-driving season. Proven Winners Direct wanted a direct communication channel that could bring customers back consistently through push notifications, promotions, and seasonal reminders.

Educational content needed to play a larger role in the shopping journey

Gardening is highly educational by nature. Customers often need guidance around plant hardiness, climate suitability, care instructions, and planting recommendations before making a purchase.

The team wanted educational tools and articles to feel integrated into the shopping experience rather than separated from it.

Loyalty integration was non-negotiable

The Bond Loyalty integration was a must-have requirement for launch. The rewards experience needed to work seamlessly inside the app from day one to ensure continuity for existing customers.

Social proof was critical to conversion

Vitals Reviews played an important role in customer trust and purchase confidence. The brand prioritized deep integration with their reviews stack to preserve social proof across the mobile experience.

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The Solution: Building a Mobile Experience Designed Around Discovery, Education, and Retention

Appbrew worked closely with Proven Winners Direct to create a native mobile experience that simplified navigation, improved product discovery, and made educational content more accessible across the customer journey.

The goal was not just to launch an app before spring. It was to build a mobile experience customers would repeatedly return to throughout the gardening season.

A cleaner and more intuitive mobile shopping experience

Appbrew recreated the brand’s intuitive website-style discovery experience inside the app by organizing products into clear, visually guided sections like Shop by Category, Shop by Solution, Top Sellers, Trending Now, and New for 2026. This made it significantly easier for shoppers to navigate Proven Winners Direct’s large catalog without feeling overwhelmed.

Richer PDPs designed to educate and convert

Appbrew built product pages that balanced education, trust, and conversion for both new and experienced gardeners. PDPs included detailed plant care instructions, shipping guidance, usage recommendations, and long form product descriptions to help customers purchase with confidence.

Integrated reviews through Vitals added strong social proof, while “Pairs Well With” recommendations helped shoppers discover complementary products and increase cart value through natural cross sell journeys.

Educational content integrated directly into the app experience

Instead of separating content from commerce, Appbrew helped surface educational resources directly inside the app experience. 

Features like “Find Your Hardiness Zone,” grower tips, articles, and educational videos became part of the shopping journey itself, helping customers make more informed purchasing decisions.

Loyalty integration built for launch readiness

The Bond Loyalty integration was a critical requirement for Proven Winners Direct’s launch timeline.

Appbrew’s engineering team scoped and implemented the integration to ensure loyalty rewards were fully available inside the app from day one, allowing customers to continue engaging with the rewards ecosystem seamlessly.

Deep integrations to preserve trust and conversion

Appbrew also enabled deep integration with Vitals Reviews so product pages retained the social proof customers relied on when evaluating purchases. This ensured the mobile experience maintained the same trust signals that were already performing well on web.

“One of the standout features of this partnership is the quick turnaround for updates. Whether it was a minor tweak or a major feature rollout, the development team executed everything with speed and high quality. The collaboration and development process felt like a true extension of our own team, with Appbrew consistently bringing expertise and proactive solutions to the table.” - Nikki Kansier, Ecommerce Manager

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The Results: A Stronger Mobile Experience Built for Seasonal Growth

Once the app launched, Proven Winners Direct quickly saw mobile become a meaningful contributor to performance during their peak season.

1.7x higher conversion rates on app

The app converted significantly better than the website as simplified navigation, visual browsing, educational content, and faster discovery reduced friction across the shopping journey.

20% higher average order value

Customers spent more on app compared to web, driven by stronger merchandising, clearer product discovery, and more guided browsing experiences.

17% of DTC revenue now driven through the app

The app quickly became an important revenue channel for the business, helping Proven Winners Direct capture and retain high-intent seasonal demand more effectively.

What began as the brand’s first mobile app launch evolved into a high-performing channel built specifically around how gardening customers browse, discover, learn, and shop.

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Why Proven Winners Direct Chose Appbrew

Proven Winners Direct needed more than a standard ecommerce app. They needed a mobile experience capable of simplifying discovery across a massive catalog while supporting education, loyalty, and seasonal engagement.

Appbrew helped them achieve this by providing:

• A highly visual mobile experience designed for intuitive product discovery
• Structured homepage navigation that simplified browsing across thousands of products
• Educational tools and gardening content integrated directly into the customer journey
• A seamless Bond Loyalty integration available from launch day
• Deep review integrations that preserved trust and social proof
• A scalable mobile foundation built to support peak seasonal demand

Proven Winners Direct’s journey highlights how mobile apps can become especially powerful for brands with large catalogs, seasonal buying behavior, and highly educational purchase journeys.

When discovery, content, loyalty, and retention work together inside a native mobile experience, brands can create stronger engagement and significantly higher purchase intent.

If your brand is looking to turn mobile into a more meaningful growth and retention channel, Appbrew can help you build it.