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A magical Shopify transformation for
Soul Design

Shopify redesign project

Soul Design Website Designer

Since launching the new website at the beginning of 2023, online sales have increased by 63% in three months compared to the previous period and the conversion rate has jumped by 10%.

Soul Design is a beautiful women-owned business, inside and out.

Meaning is woven into everything they create. Each product has a story to tell of where it came from and why they made it. They work with artisans across Africa and here in South Africa they’ve built a team of women from their local community. 

They reached out to me in 2022, wanting to redesign their Shopify website to reflect their brand aesthetic and communicate their values. They also wanted to make sure they had a strong foundation before investing in more paid ads.

I recommended we start the process with a UX audit of their existing website. Audits are a great way to identify things that are working and those that aren’t, according to best practice UX guidelines.

Here are some of the issues I highlighted in the audit:

  1. The website didn’t have any customer reviews. Reviews are essential for building trust and getting people to buy.
  2. When a user added a product to cart, there was barely any indication that the product had actually been added. Something like this negatively impacts user experience because it frustrates people. It should be obvious that a product is added to cart. 
  3. The add to cart button on the product page was a muted colour that didn’t stand out. Many usability and A/B tests have shown that the call-to-action button (in this instance the add to cart button) should stand out on the page by being a colour that catches the eye and contrasts with the rest of the page.
  4. Only 1 payment gateway option (not a well known brand), which was more complicated to use than other popular payment gateways. This was potentially negatively affecting user experience and conversions.
  5. The website’s mailing list sign up form wasn’t connected to MailChimp and no welcome email sequence existed. This was a major lost opportunity to build subscribers and relationships. It meant people who subscribed weren’t being added to Soul Design’s mailing list!
  6. Brand story / values were hard to find / not communicated. 
  7. The old Shopify theme wasn’t compatible with Shopify 2.0. Shopify 2.0 makes it much easier for store owners to visually edit every page on their website using the drag and drop page builder. Soul Design’s old website was hard to edit and customise, which meant the team had to work with a developer every time they needed to make one small change.
  8. Too many (mostly unused) apps slowing down the website. This often happens over time – store owners add apps, stop using them, but then forget to uninstall.
  9. The main navigation menu felt overwhelming with too many links.

Clearly all the above usability issues needed to be fixed with the new website.

One of our goals with this project was to showcase Soul Design's beautiful product imagery.

Choosing a look and feel for the new website

Part of my Shopify consulting service includes helping brands identify the right-fit Shopify theme base to use for their project. I only use themes from the theme store – https://themes.shopify.com/themes.

As you can see, there are a many themes to choose from, which makes it confusing and sometimes overwhelming for store owners to know which one’s will work best for them.

My job is to make sure the theme ticks all the must-have boxes. I also test out the theme before purchasing by creating a simple homepage mockup design. Only once we’re all happy, we purchase the new theme.

I shortlisted two Shopify theme bases to use for Soul Design’s revamp:
–Broadcast by Invisible themes
–Lorenza by Fluorescent Design Inc

These are two of my favourite themes. We decided to go with Broadcast because of one stand-out feature – the lovely product upsell box on the product page that works so well for Soul Design’s niche.

Once the theme was installed, I redesigned all the main content pages, including the homepage, collection pages and product page templates. The website remained live and functional while I rebuilt everything on an unpublished version of the new theme. This is one thing I love about Shopify – you can completely redesign your website’s look and feel on the backend while your old design remains active! And store owners can preview and approve the new design via preview links.

Notable conversion-focused features

The new Soul Design website has the following features to improve user experience and drive sales:

  • An automated reviews system to collect customer reviews. 
  • Abandoned cart automation that I created in MailChimp. Learn more here.
  • A simpler navigation system with less links.
  • A newsletter signup that is connected to MailChimp. This includes a sign up incentive (10% off the customer’s first purchase) to incentivise sign-ups.
  • Free shipping progress bar in the slide-in cart. This shows users when they’re nearing the free shipping threshold and helps to boost average order values.
  • Clear indication that a product has been added to the cart – the beautiful slide-in cart menu pops out to show the product in the cart when a user clicks the add to cart button.
  • More saturated and noticeable add-to-cart button colour (it’s now a lovely gold – it was a pink colour that didn’t stand out).
  • Contact form on the contact page so people can easily contact the business (helps to buidl trust).
  • New Shopify 2.0 theme with sections everywhere, which means we can much more easily create more designer-feel content pages (and the store owner can easily edit these pages now).
  • Added a lovely product upsell feature.
  • Used Shopify metafields to create Bestseller labels for products (this improves the shopping experience).
  • Set up an additional payment gateway to give customers another payment option at checkout.
  • Designed a beautiful new homepage that encourages website visitors to scroll and view products and go further into the website.
  • Soul Design’s brand values are clearly communicated throughout the website.

Designed to convert

It’s hard for me to articulate in words exactly how I feel about this project, and even thinking about it tears me up. Soul Design’s old Shopify website didn’t reflect the heart and soul of their business. This one really does. And it’s truly been a joy to help the team create this new online space, that gives them confidence knowing their website has been designed with so much thought and consideration. Designed to convert.

We’re still tweaking and adding a few details, but you can take a look here:
Souldesign.co.za

Need help with your Shopify website? Learn more about my Shopify service here or go right ahead and book a free 30-minute consultation with me here.

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This website's mobile shopping experience is amazing.

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A boutique web design studio based in Fish Hoek, Cape Town, South Africa. Working with businesses around the world.

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