The problem, first
Themes are built to look good in a demo store with twelve perfect products. Real catalogues have long product names, uneven photography, variants that do not fit the swatch layout, and shipping rules that the theme never anticipated. The result is a store that works but leaks orders at every one of those seams.
What a business website is actually for
A website has one commercial job: turn a stranger who is already interested into an enquiry. Everything else — the design language, the photography, the copy — either serves that job or gets in its way.
The parts that decide the outcome are unglamorous. How fast the page becomes usable on a phone on mobile data. Whether the next step is obvious without scrolling. Whether the form asks for two fields or seven. Whether the thing a cautious buyer needs to see — proof of past work, licensing, pricing — is above the fold or three screens down.
Why it matters, in plain terms
Every other channel you pay for empties into this page. Ads, search, referrals, the number on your van — they all end here. A site that converts at 1% instead of 3% does not cost you a third of your leads; it makes every other marketing dollar you spend worth a third as much.
That is why we treat the build as infrastructure rather than decoration, and why the site is written in clean code you can move, extend or hand to somebody else — not locked inside a proprietary page builder.
What we do about it
- Custom theme work where the template gives up. We write the Liquid and CSS to fix layout breakage, variant handling and collection filtering rather than working around it.
- A checkout path with nothing optional in it. Every extra field, upsell and interstitial between cart and confirmation costs orders. We strip the path back and measure what changes.
- Migration that keeps your rankings. Moving from Wix, Square or an older platform, every URL is mapped and redirected before launch, not after someone notices the traffic drop.
Who you are actually working with
The reason this stays practical rather than theoretical is that the strategy and the code come from the same place. Ten years running brands, a Master’s in marketing, and enough frontend work to know what a recommendation costs to implement. You talk to that person directly, every time — not to a salesperson who disappears after the contract is signed.
Full scope and pricing sit on our web design page.
Frequently asked questions
A straightforward site is typically two to four weeks from kickoff to launch; a larger build with custom functionality or a migration runs four to eight. Most of the elapsed time is content and feedback rather than development, so projects move faster when copy and images are ready at the start.
If the structure is sound and the problems are speed, mobile layout and content, improving it is faster and cheaper. If it predates mobile-first indexing, or it is locked inside a page builder you cannot export from, a rebuild usually costs less across two years. Either way the URLs get mapped and redirected so existing rankings carry over.