The situation

A mid-market homeware brand had been running the same Shopify theme for two years. Conversion rate sat at 1.6%. Their in-house team had made various incremental changes — new images, reordered sections, minor copy tweaks — with no sustained movement.

The brand's instinct was to redesign the entire site. Our recommendation was to audit before spending on a redesign.

What the audit found

We spent the first week in the data: Google Analytics 4, Hotjar session recordings, heatmaps, and on-device testing. We identified five issues worth acting on. The rest we called noise.

1. Product page information hierarchy

The most important information for homeware buyers — dimensions, materials, lead times — was below the fold on mobile, behind an accordion. Customers who needed to know if a sofa would fit through their door before buying were having to dig for it. We saw repeated rage-clicks on the accordion toggle. The information was there; the architecture was hiding it.

2. Room dimension visualiser — completely invisible

The brand had a third-party room visualiser app installed. It appeared as a tiny text link at the bottom of the product description. In six months of session recordings, we saw exactly three users click it. The feature worked — customers who used it converted at 3.8× the average. Zero discoverability.

3. Delivery dates shown too late

Delivery date estimates appeared only in the cart, after customers had already decided to buy. For a homeware brand where lead time is often the deciding factor — particularly for sofas and large furniture — this information needed to be on the product page. Competitors showed it prominently.

4. Search zero-results rate: 31%

Nearly a third of searches returned no results. The brand sold "cushion covers" but the search index didn't surface them when customers typed "cushion case" or "pillow cover". Fifteen popular search terms were returning empty pages. Each one was a potential customer bouncing.

5. Mobile checkout: express options buried

Apple Pay and Google Pay were available but positioned below the standard checkout button, requiring a deliberate scroll on mobile. Industry benchmarks consistently show express checkout conversion lift; making customers find it was leaving that lift unclaimed.

The approach

We prioritised the five issues by estimated revenue impact and implementation effort, then worked through them in order. No A/B testing on all five simultaneously — the interaction effects are impossible to unpick and the sample sizes required would have taken months.

PDPs: information above the fold. Moved dimensions, materials, and lead time into a scannable spec table immediately below the product title — visible without scrolling on mobile. The accordion remained for full detail; we just pulled the key data out of it.

Room visualiser: proper placement. Moved the visualiser button to a visually distinct placement at the price level, with an image treatment that made it obvious what it did. Added a "See it in your room" label.

Delivery dates on PDPs. Pulled the delivery estimate logic out of the cart and surfaced it on product pages, dynamically based on the customer's postcode prefix (collected via a simple prompt).

Search synonym configuration. Mapped the top 40 zero-result terms against the actual catalogue. Added synonyms for common variants (UK/US spelling, common shorthand, alternative product names).

Express checkout prominence. Moved Apple Pay and Google Pay buttons to primary position on mobile product pages (above the standard "Add to cart" in the express checkout block).

The outcome

Revenue per session increased by 22% over the eight weeks of the programme. Conversion rate moved from 1.6% to 1.9% — a 19% relative improvement. Average order value also lifted slightly (4%) which we attribute to the room visualiser driving consideration of higher-priced hero products.

The search fix alone was measurable within two weeks: zero-results rate dropped from 31% to 6%, and search-initiated session revenue increased by 38%.

The delivery date change had a detectable impact on furniture category add-to-carts within the first week. Customers who saw the delivery date on the PDP converted at a higher rate than those who had to find it in the cart.

What didn't work

The express checkout repositioning had a smaller effect on desktop than on mobile. On desktop, the standard checkout flow was already converting well and the change barely moved the metric. On mobile the effect was clearer — about 8% lift on mobile-initiated sessions. We'd have scoped the change as mobile-only if we were running it again.

Tech stack

Shopify, native search (synonym configuration), existing third-party room visualiser (repositioned, not replaced), Klaviyo, GA4.