What You'll Learn Today

In 5 minutes, you'll be learning about the following:

GrowthHit AI Lab: We’re Inventing the Future of Growth with AI
Our CRO Ops Just Got a New Tool - Built from Real Pain
The Sold-Out Playbook: How Our Brand (Neat) Sold-Out in 30 Days [PODCAST]
A Swipe File for High-Converting Landing Pages
Turn copy into videos with AI - no editors needed. [TOOL]

What did everyone enjoy last week?

The most clicked link was ... GrowthHit’s AI-Powered Shortcut for Competitor Ad Research

Cheers,

Jim Huffman, GrowthHit CEO
(Want a friend? Let's connect on Twitter or LinkedIn)

My Take of the Week
GrowthHit AI Lab: We’re Inventing the Future of Growth with AI (See how we’re doing it!)

We’ve been quietly building something big: a suite of AI-powered tools designed to supercharge how Shopify brands grow.

Now we’re pulling back the curtain.

In this special live session, we’re unveiling the GrowthHit AI Lab - a behind-the-scenes look at the AI experiments we’ve been prototyping across CRO, ads, creative, and competitive research.

📆 WHEN - May 28, 11:00AM Pacific Time

Sign Up For Free

Special Find: Team Pick

A Swipe File for High-Converting Landing Pages

Fermat released one of the most comprehensive landing page swipe files we’ve seen.

Hundreds of examples, all categorized by use case (gift guides, preorders, restocks, and more) with annotated breakdowns and insights.

Browse The Archive

Whether you’re looking for inspiration or proven layouts, this archive is a goldmine for high-converting landing pages.

Shoutout to Morgan Davison, our Sr. CRO Manager, for spotting this gem

In Partnership with 1440

News. Without Motives. That’s 1440

Over 4 million readers rely on our 5-minute newsletter for a clear, fact-based view of the world. We sift through 100+ sources to bring you unbiased news on politics, global events, business, and culture. Free of charge and free of bias.

Sign Up For Free!

Curated Growth Tips of the Week
2 Growth Tips to Grow Your Shopify Biz

Featuring growth tips and insights sourced from other publications.

1/ Our CRO Ops Just Got a New Tool — Built from Real Pain

Capturing clean, consistent screenshots for our CRO audit reports and presentations shouldn’t be this painful.

So our Chief AI Officer, Craig Swanson, built a tool to fix that.

Introducing ScreenBatch.com — a simple, free tool to capture clean, consistent screenshots for any website, across desktop and mobile.

Here’s how it works:

Enter any URL
Instantly grab full-page or above-the-fold screenshots
Get both desktop and mobile views
Download everything in one zip file
Perfect for CRO audits, sales decks, client reports

Try It Here

💡 Bonus: You can also generate markdown-based captures (yes, finally) for content teams and technical audits.

This is part of a growing suite of internal tools we’re building at GrowthHit - to move faster, test better, and help ecomm brands grow smarter.

🎉 Coming soon: The GrowthHit AI Lab - our new hub for the AI tools we’re building behind the scenes.

We’re also hosting a live event to walk you through how we use these tools in our growth process and give you a behind-the-scenes look at our pipeline. Sign Up Here

More soon — stay tuned.

2/ Use Stars Instead of Numbers for Ratings

📝 Intro

Ever wonder if you should show your product ratings using stars like ★★★★☆ or just say “4 out of 5”?

Well, new research shows that using symbols like stars is actually more effective than using numbers. It makes your product seem better - and more people will want to buy it.

📈 Recommendation

Use stars (or bars, dots, etc.) to show your product rating. Don’t just say “4/5”. When people see stars, they think the rating is higher - and are more likely to buy.

🎓 What the research found

In a bunch of tests (including some on Google Ads), here’s what happened:

A toothpaste with a 3.7 rating looked 25.7% better when shown as ★★★★☆ instead of “3.7/5”.
A phone charger with a 3.5 rating looked 23.9% better when shown in stars.
A speaker with a 3.8 rating got 10% more people saying they’d buy it when stars were used.
Google Ads with stars had a 52.6% higher click-through rate than ads using numbers.

🧠 Why this works

People focus on the first number they see. So if they see “3.7”, their brain says “3” - even if it’s closer to 4. That’s called “left-digit bias.”

But when we see stars (like ★★★★☆), there’s no number to misread. So we think the product is rated higher, even if it’s the same score.

And when we think a product is rated higher, we’re more likely to buy it.

🏢 Who’s doing this

Amazon: Shows number ratings first, then mixes in stars on product pages.
Google Maps: Uses both stars and numbers.
Yelp: Uses stars only.
Uber Eats, Facebook, TripAdvisor: Mostly use numbers.
Booking.com: Shows numbers on a 10-point scale (like 8.9), which people often round down to 8 in their heads.

⚡ How to use this

Show product ratings with stars, bars, or dots - not just numbers.
If you sell on a site that only uses numbers, add a star graphic to your product image or description.
Keep your ratings updated.
Highlight one helpful, positive review at the top of your product page.
If your country uses a scale where 1 is best, then use numbers (not stars).

Source - Use stars ★ not numbers for ratings

TOOL OF THE WEEK:
Turn Text into Viral Videos with AI

Pippit by CapCut helps you turn any text - like product descriptions, blog posts, or customer reviews - into scroll-stopping videos in seconds.

Just paste your content, and it auto-generates a video with visuals, captions, music, and animations. No editing skills needed.

For Shopify brands, this is a fast way to:

Turn product features into TikTok-style videos
Convert UGC or reviews into eye-catching content
Repurpose blog posts into Instagram Reels
Boost engagement with dynamic product explainers

CHECK OUT THE TOOL

PODCAST: IF I WAS STARTING TODAY

The Sold-Out Playbook: How Our Brand (Neat) Sold-Out in 30 Days

We didn’t mean to sell out — but we did.

Every. Last. Unit.

In this episode, I break down the exact strategy that took our Shopify brand from launch to “sold out” in 30 days — and how you can steal it for your own store.
This isn’t a flex. It’s a cautionary (and highly tactical) tale. After selling out of all inventory at our Shopify brand Neat Apparel in under a month, I walk through the step-by-step system that led to the spike, the problems it created, and the lessons learned in the chaos.

If you’re chasing sustainable demand - not just viral traffic - this episode unpacks the real playbook behind a Shopify growth moment.

TOPICS DISCUSSED IN TODAY’S EPISODE