Smyle

“Our revenue grew by 60% in one year, and I can spend my time on growth again.”

Smyle started in 2020 with a mission to make oral care better, healthier and more enjoyable. Today, Smyle sells toothbrushes, toothpaste tablets and toothpastes through its own online store and more than 3,000 retailers, including AH, Jumbo and EkoPlaza. Co-founder Roger Nefkens: “E-commerce is our backbone; the online store accounts for 80% of our business.” When that store started holding back growth in 2024, it was high time for a clean-up.

“One day, we found that our expensive traffic from Meta wasn’t converting properly.”

Outgrowing WooCommerce

At the time, Smyle was using WooCommerce, Roger explains: “We also sell our products by subscription, and in 2020 that was still difficult to do with Shopify. That’s why we chose WooCommerce at the time, also because we wanted to offer iDEAL in the Netherlands. As a startup, we had a small budget and chose to have everything developed remotely.”

Unfortunately, in 2024 Smyle saw the online store become unstable, standing in the way of further growth. Roger: “We invest heavily in Meta ads and get a lot of traffic from them. Every day, we check for instability in different parts of our funnel, and one day we found that this expensive traffic wasn’t converting properly; the add-to-cart rate was 50% lower than normal. Our developer couldn’t find an error, but it was clear that many of our customers were being affected by an online store that wasn’t functioning properly.”

Just before Black Friday

A good solution was urgent for Smyle, because Black Friday was just around the corner. Roger: “We ultimately asked four specialists to review our online store, and Cristian Kiesling clearly came up with the best approach. He started with a quick scan, provided professional feedback and presented a detailed but focused action plan to resolve the instability and save our campaign.”

“The online store was becoming increasingly unstable, and that was taking up a lot of time.”

New success with Shopify

After the strong initial connection and Kiesling Digital’s candid advice to rebuild the online store from scratch, Smyle decided to continue the partnership. “After five years of building on WooCommerce, the online store was becoming increasingly unstable, and that was taking up a lot of time. We needed a new, stable online store,” Roger says.

In 2025, Kiesling Digital developed the new Smyle online store, which went live in March. Roger: “I’ve been through quite a few website launches, and it’s always complex. Among other things, we carried out subscription, SEO and domain migrations from .nl to .com and .de, added three languages and repopulated the online store. It was a demanding project, and it helps to have a partner that communicates clearly and directly and is pleasant to work with.”

“With a stable site in place, conversion was stable too.”

Impressive results

Since launching the new online store, Smyle has had its best year ever, Roger says: “Our revenue grew by 60% in one year. And perhaps even more importantly, instead of wasting my time putting out fires, I can now spend that time on strategy and growth. That also makes my work much more enjoyable. For example, we can experiment more and add new products. We can see that reflected in a 30% increase in average order value.”

In 2024, the Black Friday campaign was only just saved; in 2025, the campaign was rock-solid. Roger: “With a stable site in place, conversion was stable too. Both AOV (average order value) and CR (conversion rate) were higher.”

Why Kiesling Digital

Kiesling Digital specialises in developing, evolving and optimising Shopify e-commerce. It does so with a lean team for a limited number of clients, giving Smyle all the benefits of that approach: “We are very impressed by Kiesling Digital’s speed, professionalism and expertise. We have direct contact with Cristian, which makes working together fast and pleasant. He’s also willing to push back and uses data to convince us, with clear, illuminating advice. Kiesling Digital looks beyond where others stop. They do thorough research and work according to a clear plan.”

Smiling into the future

With the new store, Smyle is ready for further growth, Roger says: “We can now test, update and optimise faster. We used to need someone else to do that; now we can do it ourselves. That gives us much more flexibility. We can look ahead again. We can focus more easily on strategy and scaling internationally, partly because we manage everything on one website. For example, we no longer need to update banners three times; one update covers every country.”

That’s good news for Smyle, because its growth ambitions are substantial: “We have major growth plans. In addition to the Netherlands and Germany, we also want to focus on the UK, and we’re looking across the Atlantic as well. Everything online is ready to scale, from languages to payments and fulfilment,” says Roger.

“We can look ahead again and plan for the coming year!”

Shopify with Kiesling Digital

Smyle looks back and ahead at its partnership with Kiesling Digital with a smile. “We really like working directly with Cristian; it also reduces noise and unnecessary overhead. He has 95% of the answers ready for you straight away. He provides clarity and, in a good way, forces us to plan ahead. What am I most proud of? Our growth. This year we’ve grown significantly as a brand, added distinctive new products and now work with a future-proof platform that allows us to add other countries quickly. We can look ahead again and plan for the coming year, which makes it even better!” Roger concludes.