Case study · Shopify · Content strategy

Giving Shopify a content-driven facelift

I led content strategy for the global redesign of Shopify.com: the messaging, the navigation, and the design library that helped teams across Shopify build new pages on their own.

The redesigned Shopify.com home page, “The global commerce platform”, shown on a laptop

My role

Senior Content Designer, content lead for the redesign

Timeline

Q4 2021 to Q1 2023, launched in stages

Scope

Home page, core product pages, global navigation, design library, 30+ locales

Tools

Figma, FigJam, Miro, Storybook, GitHub

On this page In short Context Process Before and after New pages Results

In short

Problem: Shopify’s brand and strategy had moved on, but Shopify.com, the site most merchants meet first, still told the old story.
What I did: researched where the site was failing visitors, built the audience messaging framework, rewrote the home page and core product pages, tested a new navigation, and wrote the content guidelines for a new design library.
Result: conversion up 3% across the global site, 6.47% across core product pages, and 24% on the free trial landing page.

Context

A new brand on an old site

Shopify is the world’s leading ecommerce platform, supporting millions of merchants from solo entrepreneurs to enterprise brands.

The project meant defining Shopify’s evolving brand identity, building new visual and content design strategies, and overhauling the core website and global navigation to match. Every page had to be localised and translated for more than 30 locales, and engineering migrated the new site to a better-optimised code base.

To keep the site consistent after launch, we built an atomic design library so design teams across the company could spin up new assets quickly, and an internal CMS tool for page updates.

What I owned

User research analysis
Content strategy
Messaging frameworks
Content guidelines for the design library
Terminology
Usability testing
Localisation

Process

From research to a system other teams could use

Research

Analysed user research to determine a content strategy that would serve all audience types across all locales.
Analysed visitor data and audience insights to pick the most engaged segments.

Strategy

Designed messaging frameworks to guide the story on Shopify’s core pages.
Set brand and design direction with senior stakeholders.

Design

Redesigned the core pages for the new brand.
Designed and tested a new information architecture for the global navigation menu.

Launch

Ran pre-launch QA for content accuracy and working pages.
Made sure every page was translated and localised for 30+ regions.

Scale

Built a design library so creative teams could make new pages that fit.
Designed a modular messaging framework to guide future content decisions without straying off-message.

Before and after