Scaling equestrian: the State Line Tack Shopify story
A equestrian brand in United States. Full-stack Shopify engagement covering analytics and attribution rebuild, technical seo and structured data, content and merchandising and ongoing optimisation.
How it started
Growth had stalled at State Line Tack. Ad costs were climbing, the equestrian category was getting more competitive, and every extra pound of traffic was landing on pages that had never been built to convert.
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 State Line Tack
State Line Tack is a equestrian retailer trading from United States at www.statelinetack.com. The brand has been selling since 2020 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 | 0.72% | 1.27% | +77% |
| Mobile LCP | 5.3s | 1.2s | -77% |
| Average order value | $155 | $210 | +35% |
| Cart abandonment | 71% | 58% | -13 pts |
| Organic sessions / mo | 21,500 | 52,000 | +142% |
| Blended ROAS | 1.2x | 2.1x | +70% |
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.
- Analytics half-configured , revenue attribution could not be trusted
- Search and filtering that returned irrelevant results on large collections
- Collection structure that buried best sellers three clicks deep
- Paid traffic pointed at the homepage instead of intent-matched landing pages
- Slow LCP driven by unoptimised hero imagery and third-party embeds
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
Analytics and attribution rebuild
GA4, server-side events and Shopify's own reporting were reconciled so every conversion is counted once. Dashboards were built around revenue per session, not vanity traffic.
- 02
Technical SEO and structured data
Canonicals, sitemaps, internal linking and metadata were corrected across templates, and Product, Breadcrumb, FAQ and Organization schema were added so search engines and AI assistants can read the catalogue accurately.
- 03
Content and merchandising
Titles, descriptions and buying guides were rewritten for both shoppers and search. Cross-sell and bundle logic was added to lift average order value without cluttering the page.
- 04
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.
- 05
Technical audit and baseline
Before touching a single template I benchmarked the store: Core Web Vitals, crawl health, funnel drop-off by device, app-script weight and revenue per session. Everything that followed was measured against that baseline.
- 06
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.
- 07
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.
- 08
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.
- 09
Theme rebuild on a clean foundation
The theme was rebuilt around a lean section architecture. Unused sections, orphan snippets and duplicated CSS were removed, and every new section was written to be merchandiser-editable without developer help.
- 10
App stack rationalisation
Overlapping apps were removed and their functionality moved into native theme code where it made sense , lighter pages, lower monthly spend and fewer conflicts after Shopify updates.
- 11
Checkout and payments optimisation
Shipping rules were simplified and surfaced earlier, express wallets were enabled, and the checkout was stripped of every field that was not strictly required. Fewer surprises, fewer drop-offs.
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
Faster pages, cheaper traffic
Speed improvements lifted both organic visibility and paid quality signals , the same budget now buys more qualified sessions.
Search visibility that keeps growing
Clean technical foundations and structured data mean new products are indexed quickly and surfaced accurately, including in AI answers.
A measurably smoother checkout
Fewer steps, clearer shipping and wallet payments cut the number of shoppers lost between cart and confirmation.
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.
“The audit paid for itself before the rebuild was even finished.”
The takeaway
State Line Tack 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.