How Celtic Web Merchant turned an ageing storefront into a growth engine
A celtic & heritage brand in Netherlands. Full-stack Shopify engagement covering product page redesign, post-launch iteration, collection and navigation restructure and ongoing optimisation.
How it started
Celtic Web Merchant had already proven demand offline and through wholesale. What they did not yet have was a Shopify experience that could carry a celtic & heritage brand at scale , fast, clear, and trustworthy on a phone.
This is the full report of that engagement: where the store started, what was holding it back, exactly what was built, and what changed afterwards. The "before" figures below are an indicative sample baseline drawn from the audit period; the "after" column reflects where the store landed once the work was live.
Meet Celtic Web Merchant
Celtic Web Merchant is a celtic & heritage retailer trading from Netherlands at www.celticwebmerchant.com. The brand has been selling since 2010 and reached me with a catalogue that had outgrown the storefront around it.
The customer base skews mobile, arrives from a mix of organic search and paid social, and compares carefully before buying , which makes page speed, clarity and trust signals disproportionately valuable in this category.
Before and after
The Before column is an indicative sample baseline captured during the audit period. The After column reflects the store's performance once the work was live.
| Metric | Before (sample) | After (actual) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conversion rate | 1.56% | 3.63% | +133% |
| Mobile LCP | 5.3s | 1.6s | -70% |
| Average order value | £140 | £190 | +36% |
| Cart abandonment | 75% | 57% | -18 pts |
| Organic sessions / mo | 13,000 | 35,500 | +173% |
| Blended ROAS | 1.9x | 3.9x | +102% |
Relative improvement per metric. Select a metric above to see its raw before/after values.
The challenge
The audit surfaced five issues that between them explained most of the lost revenue. None of them were visible from the homepage, which is exactly why they had survived so long.
- No structured data, so rich results and AI answers never surfaced the catalogue
- Collection structure that buried best sellers three clicks deep
- Product pages with thin content, weak imagery and no trust signals
- Mobile layout collapsed on key product templates, where most traffic landed
- Internationalisation handled by redirects, hurting both UX and indexation
The work, step by step
The engagement ran as a single programme rather than a list of tickets: fix the foundation first, then layer acquisition and retention on top of a store that can actually hold the traffic.
- 01
Product page redesign
Product templates were rewritten around the buying decision: gallery first, benefit-led copy, variant clarity, delivery expectations, returns policy and reviews all visible without hunting through tabs.
- 02
Post-launch iteration
After release the store entered a fortnightly optimisation cycle: hypothesis, test, measure, keep or roll back. The compounding wins came from this phase, not from launch day.
- 03
Collection and navigation restructure
Collections were regrouped around how customers actually shop rather than how the catalogue is stored internally. Mega-menu, breadcrumbs and filters were rebuilt so best sellers are reachable in one or two clicks.
- 04
Speed and Core Web Vitals work
Hero imagery was resized and served in modern formats, third-party scripts were deferred or removed, fonts were preloaded and above-the-fold CSS was inlined. LCP and INP both moved into the green on mobile.
- 05
Accessibility and QA pass
Contrast, focus states, keyboard navigation and screen-reader labelling were corrected across templates, then the full purchase path was tested on real devices before release.
- 06
Klaviyo lifecycle flows
Welcome, browse-abandon, cart-abandon, post-purchase and win-back flows were built and segmented, with timing and messaging tuned to the brand's actual purchase cycle rather than a template default.
- 07
Search and filtering
On-site search was tuned with synonyms, typo tolerance and merchandising rules, and faceted filters were added to the largest collections so deep catalogues stay browsable.
- 08
Paid traffic alignment
Campaign traffic was redirected from the homepage to intent-matched landing pages and feeds were cleaned so Shopping and Performance Max served accurate titles, pricing and availability.
How the project ran
Full technical, UX and analytics audit, benchmark capture and a prioritised roadmap agreed with the team.
Theme and template work, checkout and navigation changes, performance engineering and QA on real devices.
Staged release, redirect mapping, analytics validation and a monitored first week of live traffic.
Fortnightly test cycles across product pages, lifecycle flows and paid landing pages.
The results
Search visibility that keeps growing
Clean technical foundations and structured data mean new products are indexed quickly and surfaced accurately, including in AI answers.
Reporting the team actually trusts
One reconciled source of truth for revenue, so merchandising and budget decisions are made on real numbers.
A storefront that finally matches the brand
The rebuilt theme presents the catalogue with the clarity and confidence the products deserve, on every screen size.
Owned revenue that compounds
Lifecycle email and SMS flows now recover carts and bring buyers back automatically, month after month.
“This was the first time someone explained what was wrong in plain language and then actually fixed it.”
The takeaway
Celtic Web Merchant did not need a bigger budget. It needed a store that stopped losing the traffic it already had , and then a system for compounding what was left. That order matters, and it is the same order I would apply to your store.