Skip to content

Your theme is costing you more than a rebuild

Every extra second of load time cuts conversions by roughly 7%. Most stores we audit take over six seconds on mobile — that's a permanent tax on every campaign you run.

What's different here

E-commerce web development has an unusually direct payback calculation, and almost nobody runs it. If your store converts at 1.4% and a rebuild takes you to 3%, you've doubled the value of every visitor from every channel forever — which usually pays back the build cost within a quarter at any meaningful traffic level. The reason stores don't rebuild isn't cost; it's that nobody has put the arithmetic in front of the decision-maker.

0.6sLargest contentful painte-commerce & dtc average

E-commerce & DTC clients

NorthwindLumen LabsHarborlineVerdantAtlas FoodsPoka HealthBrightsideCobalt BankMeridianArdentFoundryKestrel
Vertical-specific tactics

What web development looks like for e-commerce brands.

These are the plays that wouldn't appear on a generic web development page — they only make sense in e-commerce & dtc.

01

Headless only where it earns its complexity

A Next.js storefront on Shopify's Storefront API took one client from 6.2s to 0.6s LCP. But headless adds real operational cost, and for many stores a well-built theme is the right answer. We'll tell you which you are before you commit budget.

02

Product pages built around objections

We read support tickets, reviews, and return reasons to find what buyers are actually uncertain about — fit, materials, delivery timing — then design the page to resolve each one above the fold rather than in a tab nobody opens.

03

Checkout as a first-class surface

Delivery-date certainty, transparent total cost before the final step, and express payment placement. One client cut cart abandonment 22 points from delivery-date certainty alone.

04

Structured data that earns rich results

Product, Offer, AggregateRating and BreadcrumbList markup wired to real inventory and review data — which affects click-through at the same ranking position.

The constraints

What holds e-commerce brands back

01

Rising CAC is eating your margin

Meta CPMs climb every year. Without conversion rate and AOV improvements, your unit economics get worse even when campaigns 'perform'.

02

You're optimizing platform ROAS

A 3x ROAS on 30% gross margin loses money per order. Platform ROAS ignores COGS, shipping, returns, and discounts entirely.

03

One-and-done customers

If every order needs paid acquisition, you're renting customers. Repeat purchase rate is the strongest predictor of DTC profitability.

04

Your store converts below benchmark

The median Shopify store converts at 1.4%. Good ones run 3–4%. That gap is worth more than any targeting change you'll make.

What's included

The full scope.

Everything in a web development engagement, applied to e-commerce & dtc.

01

Conversion strategy & wireframes

Funnel mapping, message hierarchy, and low-fidelity wireframes approved before a single pixel is designed.

02

Custom UI design system

A full Figma design system — type scale, color tokens, components — so your brand stays consistent as you grow.

03

Next.js build

Server-rendered, statically optimized, deployed on edge infrastructure. Fast everywhere, for everyone.

04

Headless CMS

Sanity or Payload wired to every section so your team edits copy, images, and pages without touching code.

05

Technical SEO foundation

Semantic markup, schema.org, sitemaps, canonical logic, and Core Web Vitals tuned to green from day one.

06

Analytics & tracking

GA4, server-side conversion tracking, heatmaps, and a live dashboard showing which pages actually drive revenue.

07

Accessibility to WCAG 2.2 AA

Keyboard navigation, contrast, focus states, and screen-reader semantics — tested, not assumed.

08

30 days of post-launch support

We watch the analytics, fix what breaks, and ship the first round of conversion improvements on us.

The process

How this runs.

  1. Teardown & strategy

    Week 1

    We audit your current site, funnel math, competitors, and analytics — then present exactly where revenue is leaking and what we'd change.

  2. Wireframe & copy

    Week 1–2

    Message hierarchy and section-by-section wireframes. You approve the argument before we make it pretty.

  3. Design system & UI

    Week 2–3

    High-fidelity design across every breakpoint, built as a reusable component system in Figma.

  4. Build & integrate

    Week 3–5

    Next.js development, CMS wiring, CRM and analytics integration, QA across devices and browsers.

  5. Launch & optimize

    Week 6+

    Zero-downtime launch, redirect mapping, then live conversion monitoring and the first optimization round.

Investment

Scoped like the core service, no surcharge.

Every engagement is quoted from your actual brief. There's no vertical surcharge for this combination — request a quote and we'll scope it properly.

Launch

Startups and small teams needing a credible, fast site quickly.

Scoped to your brief

  • Up to 8 pages
  • Custom design system
  • Next.js + CMS
  • Technical SEO setup
  • GA4 + conversion tracking
  • 30-day support
Request a quote
Most popular

Growth

Companies where the website is the primary revenue channel.

Scoped to your brief

  • Up to 25 pages
  • Full conversion strategy + copywriting
  • Custom animation & motion design
  • Headless CMS with page builder
  • CRM + marketing automation integration
  • A/B testing infrastructure
  • 90-day optimization retainer
  • Programmatic SEO templates
Request a quote

Enterprise

Multi-region, multi-brand, or complex commerce platforms.

Scoped to your brief

  • Unlimited pages & locales
  • Multi-language / multi-region
  • Design system documentation site
  • Custom integrations & APIs
  • Dedicated squad + Slack channel
  • SLA-backed support
  • Quarterly CRO roadmap
Request a quote

All engagements start with a free audit. Prices exclude media spend, which you pay directly to the platforms on accounts you own.

Questions

E-commerce & DTC questions, answered straight.

Sometimes, and if so we'll say that rather than sell you a rebuild. A theme swap fixes render-blocking assets and bloated apps; it doesn't fix a data model that makes product pages slow or a checkout flow with structural friction. We run the payback arithmetic on your actual traffic and conversion rate first, and roughly a third of the time the honest answer is a theme optimization rather than a rebuild.

Web Development × E-commerce & DTC

Let's talk about your growth constraint.

Every extra second of load time cuts conversions by roughly 7%. Most stores we audit take over six seconds on mobile — that's a permanent tax on every campaign you run.

Our commitment: If your new site doesn't beat your old site's conversion rate within 90 days, we keep optimizing free until it does.