The lowdown on eCom lately
How to Create a Timeless Brand
You know what's a real bummer? It's when brands invest a lot of time, money, and effort into pulling together their brand strategy and identity, only for it to feel outdated in ~2 years. Now they're stuck between investing another 5k+ into a rebrand or continuing on with something that feels out of alignment. What went wrong here? Typically, this is caused by a brand solely focusing on what’s trendy at the moment, without any real substance behind the design decisions that they made. This is NOT to say that all trends are bad and you need to steer clear of them. Quite the opposite, actually—if you do it smartly! So, how can you build a brand that stands the test of time and evolves as the years go on? Take a close look at today's trends In order to make an informed decision on the trends you're going to draw from, it's important to conduct the necessary research in order to understand the landscape of your industry and what's hot right now. Some questions to ask yourself include: What design styles and elements are you noticing a lot of? What were these inspired by? Can you make a guess at why they may be popular at the moment? What type of audience is each trend attracting? Thoroughly looking at the trends that are hot right now will help you strategically leverage them rather than blindly follow them. Draw inspiration from the past You don't necessarily need to design your logo on a typewriter for your brand identity to use inspiration from the past. There are a lot of ways to mix the old with the new in a modern and innovative way. In addition to looking at classical typography and layouts (I’m a sucker for vintage Parisian invites!), you can also find timeless inspiration in a variety of mediums such as: Architecture Fashion Magazines Furniture Event + Concert Posters Let’s say you found a current trend that you absolutely love and after researching, feels right for your business. Try mixing an element from the trend with an element inspired from the past. This is going to help you attract a relevant audience while also grounding it in what we know works time and time again. Build a flexible foundation In order to design a brand that stands the test of time without feeling stuffy and dated, it’s important to consider how it might change in the future as trends evolve. Basically, how can we create this brand so that it can be evolved in the future while keeping its core identity? To do this, you’ll want to consider which parts of the brand are flexible vs. inflexible. Some brand elements that you’ll want to keep the same over time (and therefore are inflexible) are your logos, typography, and color palette (although color palettes can sometimes strategically be expanded on). These core elements help your audience recognize you in the sea of brands that are out there. Changing them up willy-nilly as trends come and go will lead to confusion and less brand equity. Brand elements that may have the flexibility to change in the future are the “peripheral” pieces of the brand, such as illustrations, patterns, layouts, and print materials. You can experiment with these and fit them to today’s trends without losing as much brand recognition. A word to the wise, though—go slow with the changes! Overhauling these elements all at the same time might cause your brand to become unrecognizable. It's better to update slowly so not to alienate your audience (we don't want that!). So, how can we ensure that our brand foundation is built to be flexible? A good idea is to keep your inflexible elements on the more classic + minimal side so that you can complement these with trendier flexible elements. For example, In the late 90’s, funky shapes and patterns were everywhere. In the 2010s, watercolor was all the rage. Now, neon Y2K vibes are everywhere. If we keep our logos + typography on the classic side, we're able to update our backdrop brand elements to fit the times. Consider your audience One of the biggest mistakes you can make that leads to creating a brand that feels shallow is designing your identity without any consideration for your audience or the problem you solve for them. This fatal mistake leads you to design your brand with only trends in mind. Additionally, because you’re not quite sure of who exactly you’re serving, it’s easy to fall into the trap of following in your competitor’s footsteps and not coming up with anything new or innovative. Getting a strong understanding of your audience also helps understand what types of trends and design cues they will respond to. For example, in today’s market, if you wanted to attract 40-something working moms, you likely wouldn’t be using the Y2K-esque style mentioned above. By not thoroughly analyzing who you’re trying to target, you run the risk of attracting the wrong audience that won’t actually connect with your product or service. Conclusion All in all, crafting a timeless brand is all about balance and a deep understanding of design conventions + trends. When in doubt, it’s ideal to err to the classic side of things, unless you’re fine with forking out the big bucks for a rebrand a few years down the line. That being said, you don’t want to seem so traditional and stuffy that you don’t make waves in your market. One more thing to note—these are just general suggestions, and they may not apply to every single brand. Do you feel like one of today’s trends TOTALLY encapsulates your brand’s energy and target market, and you’re just so excited to share it with your audience? Go for it, girl. Are you an absolute sucker for old-style script fonts and feel like you were born in the wrong era as a vintage bookstore owner? Why not go for that completely vintage-inspired look. So, if you feel really passionate about leaning one way or the other (and have the data about your target market to back it up), you don’t necessarily need to fall right in the middle of the spectrum between trendy and timeless. Working with a brand strategist can help you clarify where along this line you should aim for in order to craft the best-fitting (and best-performing) brand identity possible. Looking for help creating a timeless brand? Get in touch here about a project together.
How to Create a Timeless Brand
You know what's a real bummer? It's when brands invest a lot of time, money, and effort into pulling together their brand strategy and identity, only for it to feel outdated in ~2 years. Now they're stuck between investing another 5k+ into a rebrand or continuing on with something that feels out of alignment. What went wrong here? Typically, this is caused by a brand solely focusing on what’s trendy at the moment, without any real substance behind the design decisions that they made. This is NOT to say that all trends are bad and you need to steer clear of them. Quite the opposite, actually—if you do it smartly! So, how can you build a brand that stands the test of time and evolves as the years go on? Take a close look at today's trends In order to make an informed decision on the trends you're going to draw from, it's important to conduct the necessary research in order to understand the landscape of your industry and what's hot right now. Some questions to ask yourself include: What design styles and elements are you noticing a lot of? What were these inspired by? Can you make a guess at why they may be popular at the moment? What type of audience is each trend attracting? Thoroughly looking at the trends that are hot right now will help you strategically leverage them rather than blindly follow them. Draw inspiration from the past You don't necessarily need to design your logo on a typewriter for your brand identity to use inspiration from the past. There are a lot of ways to mix the old with the new in a modern and innovative way. In addition to looking at classical typography and layouts (I’m a sucker for vintage Parisian invites!), you can also find timeless inspiration in a variety of mediums such as: Architecture Fashion Magazines Furniture Event + Concert Posters Let’s say you found a current trend that you absolutely love and after researching, feels right for your business. Try mixing an element from the trend with an element inspired from the past. This is going to help you attract a relevant audience while also grounding it in what we know works time and time again. Build a flexible foundation In order to design a brand that stands the test of time without feeling stuffy and dated, it’s important to consider how it might change in the future as trends evolve. Basically, how can we create this brand so that it can be evolved in the future while keeping its core identity? To do this, you’ll want to consider which parts of the brand are flexible vs. inflexible. Some brand elements that you’ll want to keep the same over time (and therefore are inflexible) are your logos, typography, and color palette (although color palettes can sometimes strategically be expanded on). These core elements help your audience recognize you in the sea of brands that are out there. Changing them up willy-nilly as trends come and go will lead to confusion and less brand equity. Brand elements that may have the flexibility to change in the future are the “peripheral” pieces of the brand, such as illustrations, patterns, layouts, and print materials. You can experiment with these and fit them to today’s trends without losing as much brand recognition. A word to the wise, though—go slow with the changes! Overhauling these elements all at the same time might cause your brand to become unrecognizable. It's better to update slowly so not to alienate your audience (we don't want that!). So, how can we ensure that our brand foundation is built to be flexible? A good idea is to keep your inflexible elements on the more classic + minimal side so that you can complement these with trendier flexible elements. For example, In the late 90’s, funky shapes and patterns were everywhere. In the 2010s, watercolor was all the rage. Now, neon Y2K vibes are everywhere. If we keep our logos + typography on the classic side, we're able to update our backdrop brand elements to fit the times. Consider your audience One of the biggest mistakes you can make that leads to creating a brand that feels shallow is designing your identity without any consideration for your audience or the problem you solve for them. This fatal mistake leads you to design your brand with only trends in mind. Additionally, because you’re not quite sure of who exactly you’re serving, it’s easy to fall into the trap of following in your competitor’s footsteps and not coming up with anything new or innovative. Getting a strong understanding of your audience also helps understand what types of trends and design cues they will respond to. For example, in today’s market, if you wanted to attract 40-something working moms, you likely wouldn’t be using the Y2K-esque style mentioned above. By not thoroughly analyzing who you’re trying to target, you run the risk of attracting the wrong audience that won’t actually connect with your product or service. Conclusion All in all, crafting a timeless brand is all about balance and a deep understanding of design conventions + trends. When in doubt, it’s ideal to err to the classic side of things, unless you’re fine with forking out the big bucks for a rebrand a few years down the line. That being said, you don’t want to seem so traditional and stuffy that you don’t make waves in your market. One more thing to note—these are just general suggestions, and they may not apply to every single brand. Do you feel like one of today’s trends TOTALLY encapsulates your brand’s energy and target market, and you’re just so excited to share it with your audience? Go for it, girl. Are you an absolute sucker for old-style script fonts and feel like you were born in the wrong era as a vintage bookstore owner? Why not go for that completely vintage-inspired look. So, if you feel really passionate about leaning one way or the other (and have the data about your target market to back it up), you don’t necessarily need to fall right in the middle of the spectrum between trendy and timeless. Working with a brand strategist can help you clarify where along this line you should aim for in order to craft the best-fitting (and best-performing) brand identity possible. Looking for help creating a timeless brand? Get in touch here about a project together.
How to Build a $100k/Year Shopify Store
✍ Written by Julia Dennis, Shopify Expert⏱ 9 min read Key Takeaways At a $75 AOV and 3% conversion rate, a Shopify store needs only ~3,700 monthly visitors to hit $100K/year. Hitting $100K puts you in the top 10% of all Shopify stores, where the average earns just $67K/year. Design that lifts your conversion rate from 1.5% to 3% literally halves the traffic you need to reach six figures. The five highest-impact design decisions involve your home page, product pages, mobile experience, brand consistency, and trust signals. Pairing strong store design with email marketing and customer retention creates a growth engine that sustains $100K and beyond. A $100k Shopify store sounds like a milestone reserved for a lucky few. The average store generates about $67,000/year, so hitting $100K puts you well above the median and into the top 10% of all Shopify merchants (Folio3, Charle Agency). But having designed and rebuilt over a hundred Shopify stores, I can tell you the difference between a store that stalls at $30K and one that clears six figures is rarely about the product, the niche, or even the ad budget. It almost always comes down to math, design, and systems. This article breaks down all three. I'll show you the exact traffic and conversion numbers required, why design is the most overlooked revenue tool for most store owners, and what to build once the design is solid. If you've been getting traffic but no sales, this framework will show you where the gap is. The Math Behind a $100K Shopify Store Before talking about strategy, you need to understand the formula. Every $100k Shopify store runs on three variables: traffic, conversion rate (CR), and average order value (AOV). The equation is simple: Monthly Visitors × Conversion Rate × AOV × 12 = Annual Revenue What makes this equation powerful is how much each variable affects the others. A small improvement in conversion rate can cut your traffic requirement in half. Here's what the numbers look like across different scenarios: AOV Conversion Rate Monthly Visitors Needed Annual Visitors Needed $50 2% 8,333 100,000 $75 2% 5,556 66,667 $75 3% 3,704 44,444 $100 2% 4,167 50,000 $100 3% 2,778 33,333 $150 2% 2,778 33,333 $150 3% 1,852 22,222 Look at the $75 AOV row. Going from a 2% to a 3% conversion rate drops your monthly traffic requirement from 5,556 to 3,704. That's 1,852 fewer visitors you need to find, pay for, or earn every single month. Over a year, that's more than 22,000 fewer visitors, which translates directly into lower ad spend and less pressure on your content strategy. 3,704 Monthly visitors to hit $100KAt a $75 AOV and 3% conversion rate, that's all it takes. Most stores are closer to this number than they think. The average Shopify store generates about $67,000 per year, roughly $5,583 per month (Folio3, Charle Agency). The top 10% earn around $10,866 per month, or about $130K annually. The difference between those two groups isn't usually traffic volume. It's conversion efficiency. Why Most Shopify Stores Never Get There Most Shopify stores never get close to six figures. The average store earns roughly $5,583/month, and 60% of stores under 12 months old earn less than $1,000/month (Oyova). Meanwhile, 90% of ecommerce startups fail within their first 120 days (GlobalWorkDigital). Having worked with stores at every stage, I see the same patterns behind these failures. They tend to fall into a few categories: Conversion neglect: The average Shopify conversion rate sits between 1.4% and 1.8% (Shopify, BlendCommerce). That means for every 100 visitors, 98 leave without buying. Most store owners try to fix this by spending more on ads, which only amplifies the underlying problem. Template dependence: Many founders launch with a free or basic theme, make minimal customizations, and wonder why their Shopify store looks like everyone else's. If your store is visually indistinguishable from your competitors, you're competing on price alone. No retention strategy: Acquiring a customer costs five to seven times more than retaining one. Stores that rely entirely on new customer acquisition hit a ceiling fast. Skipping the fundamentals: If you're still planning your launch, understanding what to know before starting your Shopify store can save months of costly trial and error. Many of these are common Shopify mistakes that compound over time. The good part is that each one is fixable, and fixing even one of them can move your revenue needle significantly. Design Is a Revenue Lever, Not a Line Item Most store owners think of design as a one-time expense: pick a theme, add your logo, upload some photos, and move on. That mindset is costing them money every single day their store is live. Consider what the research tells us about how customers interact with your store: 94% of first impressions are design-related (Stanford Web Credibility Research) 75% of consumers judge a brand's credibility based on website design (Stanford) Users form an opinion about your site in 0.05 seconds (Lindgaard et al., 2006) 88% of online shoppers won't return after a bad user experience (Readz) 200% Potential conversion increase from strong UI/UXAccording to Groove Commerce, thoughtful user interface and experience design can increase conversions by up to 200%. Now map those numbers onto the revenue math from the previous section. If better design lifts your conversion rate from 1.5% to 3%, you've doubled your revenue without spending a single extra dollar on traffic. For a store doing $50K/year at a 1.5% CR, that design improvement alone could push revenue past the $100K mark. Every visitor who lands on a well-designed store is more likely to trust you, browse longer, add to cart, and complete checkout. Every dollar you spend on ads, SEO, or social media works harder because your store converts at a higher rate. The mobile gap makes this even more urgent. Mobile devices account for 78% of Shopify traffic and 70% of all orders (Envive), yet mobile conversion rates average just 1.8% compared to 3.9% on desktop (BlendCommerce). That gap represents thousands of dollars in lost revenue every month for stores that haven't prioritized mobile UX. Choosing the right foundation matters: choosing the right Shopify theme is one of the first design decisions that can either support or undermine your conversion rate. The Five Design Decisions That Actually Move Revenue Not every design change is worth your time. After building and auditing hundreds of Shopify stores, I've narrowed it down to five decisions that consistently produce measurable revenue improvements. 1. Your Home Page Structure Your home page has one job: route visitors to the right product as fast as possible. That means a single hero image with one clear CTA above the fold (not a carousel), your best-selling collection within the first scroll, and social proof visible before anyone has to hunt for it. I've seen stores increase home page click-through rates by 15-20% just by replacing a three-slide carousel with a static hero and a direct "Shop Now" button. For a full breakdown, here's my guide to high-converting home page essentials. 2. Your Product Page Layout Put your strongest review quote and a shipping timeline directly below the Add to Cart button. I've tested this on 30+ stores, and it consistently lifts CR by 0.3-0.5 percentage points. That sounds small until you run it through the revenue formula: on a store doing 5,000 monthly visitors at $75 AOV, a 0.4-point CR increase adds about $18,000 in annual revenue. My full guide on designing product pages that convert covers the specific layout and placement strategies. 3. Brand Consistency Across Every Page Pick one heading font, one body font, and three brand colors, then use them everywhere. Inconsistent typography or color between your home page, product pages, and checkout creates friction visitors feel but can't articulate. One store I redesigned had four different button styles across five pages. Standardizing to one increased their add-to-cart rate by 12% in the first month. Many store owners unknowingly make branding mistakes that cost them money through exactly this kind of visual inconsistency. 4. Mobile-First Design With 78% of traffic on mobile, design for the small screen first. Specifically: make your Add to Cart button at least 48px tall and full-width on mobile, keep product images swipeable (not pinch-to-zoom), and ensure your entire checkout flow works with one thumb. The stores I see reaching $100K design their mobile experience first, then expand for desktop. 💡 Tip Buy something from your own store on your phone right now. Time how many taps it takes from landing to order confirmation. If it's more than three taps from product page to checkout, simplify. 5. Trust Signals Near the Buy Button Place a shipping timeline ("Ships in 1-2 business days"), return policy snippet ("30-day hassle-free returns"), and 1-2 review thumbnails within 200px of your Add to Cart button. This addresses purchase anxiety at the exact moment it peaks. I've seen this single change increase add-to-cart rates by 8-15% across multiple stores. You don't need a developer to implement these changes. The Section Studio includes sections built specifically for these use cases: product benefit blocks, testimonial layouts, and trust signal strips that drop into any Shopify theme and handle the conversion-tested placement for you. Beyond Design: The Growth Engine That Sustains $100K Strong design gets your conversion rate up. But sustaining $100K/year requires a growth engine that brings customers back and increases their lifetime value. Here are the three pillars that work alongside great design: Email Marketing Email accounts for roughly 25% of ecommerce revenue and converts at 4.24%, compared to 2.49% for search and 0.59% for social (Omnisend). The three flows that produce the most impact: a welcome sequence (320% more revenue per email than promotional sends), an abandoned cart series, and a post-purchase follow-up. Set up those three before anything else. 📊 Practical benchmark: Automated email flows generate 37% of total email revenue (Omnisend). If you're sending newsletters but haven't built your automations, you're doing the harder work and leaving the easier money behind. Customer Retention Repeat customers represent 44% of revenue from just 21% of the customer base (Venn Apps). They spend 67% more per order than first-time buyers, and a 5% increase in retention can boost profits by 25-95% (Bain & Company, Harvard Business Review). Building repeat purchase loops through loyalty programs, reorder reminders, and personalized recommendations is one of the fastest paths to sustainable six-figure revenue. Platform and Channel Strategy If you're currently selling on a marketplace like Etsy, you're sharing your customer data and paying listing fees on every sale. Moving to Shopify gives you full ownership of your customer relationships, which makes everything above possible. I've covered the full comparison in my article on why Shopify over Etsy for store owners ready to scale. Each of these pillars amplifies the others. Great design increases your conversion rate, email marketing brings customers back, and retention strategies increase their lifetime value. Together, they create a compounding growth loop that sustains and grows beyond $100K. Your $100K Roadmap: What to Do Right Now If you're ready to build toward a $100k Shopify store, here's where to start. These steps are ordered by impact, so work through them in sequence: Know Your Numbers Calculate your current AOV, conversion rate, and monthly traffic. Plug them into the revenue formula and identify which variable has the most room for improvement. Audit Your Store Design Walk through your store as a first-time visitor on a mobile device. Note every moment of confusion, friction, or missing trust signals. These are your highest-priority fixes. Fix Your Product Pages First Product pages are where revenue is won or lost. Improve your photography, rewrite descriptions to focus on benefits, and add trust signals near the add-to-cart button. Upgrade Your Sections Replace generic theme sections with conversion-tested designs. The Section Studio offers professionally designed, drop-in sections built specifically for Shopify stores focused on growth. Build Your Email Engine Set up at minimum a welcome sequence, abandoned cart flow, and post-purchase follow-up. These three automated flows alone can add 10-20% to your monthly revenue. Focus on Retention Once your store converts well and your email flows are live, invest in keeping customers coming back. Loyalty programs, reorder reminders, and personalized outreach all increase lifetime value. Building a six-figure Shopify store is achievable, and the math backs it up. The stores in the top 10% treat design as a revenue strategy, not a cosmetic afterthought. FAQ How much traffic do I need to make $100K on Shopify? It depends on your average order value and conversion rate. At a $75 AOV and 3% conversion rate, you need roughly 3,700 monthly visitors. At a $50 AOV and 2% conversion rate, you'd need about 8,333 monthly visitors. Improving your conversion rate through better design dramatically reduces how much traffic you need. What percentage of Shopify stores actually make $100K per year? Reaching $100K/year puts a Shopify store in roughly the top 10% of all merchants. The average store generates about $67,000 annually, while the top 10% earn around $130,000 per year (Folio3, Charle Agency). The gap between average and top performers usually comes down to conversion rate, not traffic volume. How long does it take to build a six-figure Shopify store? Most stores that reach $100K/year do so within 12-24 months of consistent effort. However, 90% of ecommerce startups fail within their first 120 days, often because they underinvest in store design, conversion fundamentals, and customer retention. Building a strong foundation first shortens the timeline significantly. Does website design really affect Shopify sales? Yes. Research from Stanford shows that 94% of first impressions relate to web design, and 75% of consumers judge a brand's credibility based on its website. Strong UI/UX can increase conversions by up to 200%, and 88% of visitors won't return after a bad user experience. Design is one of the highest-impact revenue tools available to Shopify store owners. What conversion rate do I need to hit $100K on Shopify? The conversion rate you need depends on your traffic and average order value. The average Shopify store converts at 1.4-1.8%, but the top 20% exceed 3.2%. A store with a $75 AOV at 3% conversion needs far less traffic than one converting at 1.5%. Aiming for 2.5-3%+ puts you in a strong position to reach six figures. What's more important: more traffic or better conversion? Better conversion almost always delivers more ROI per dollar spent. Doubling your conversion rate from 1.5% to 3% has the same revenue impact as doubling your traffic, but costs significantly less. Once your store converts well, every dollar you spend on traffic works harder. Focus on conversion first, then scale traffic. How important is mobile design for Shopify revenue? Mobile design is critical. Mobile accounts for 78% of Shopify traffic and 70% of all orders, yet mobile conversion rates average just 1.8% compared to 3.9% on desktop. That gap represents a massive revenue opportunity. Stores that close this gap through thoughtful mobile UX can see significant revenue increases without adding a single new visitor. Should I invest in custom Shopify design or use a template? For most stores aiming at $100K, a well-chosen premium theme customized with professional sections is the best balance of cost and performance. Fully custom builds are expensive and often unnecessary at this stage. Tools like The Section Studio give you conversion-tested, professionally designed sections you can add to any Shopify theme without hiring a developer. Get The Section Studio → Explore Shopify Design Services →
How to Build a $100k/Year Shopify Store
✍ Written by Julia Dennis, Shopify Expert⏱ 9 min read Key Takeaways At a $75 AOV and 3% conversion rate, a Shopify store needs only ~3,700 monthly visitors to hit $100K/year. Hitting $100K puts you in the top 10% of all Shopify stores, where the average earns just $67K/year. Design that lifts your conversion rate from 1.5% to 3% literally halves the traffic you need to reach six figures. The five highest-impact design decisions involve your home page, product pages, mobile experience, brand consistency, and trust signals. Pairing strong store design with email marketing and customer retention creates a growth engine that sustains $100K and beyond. A $100k Shopify store sounds like a milestone reserved for a lucky few. The average store generates about $67,000/year, so hitting $100K puts you well above the median and into the top 10% of all Shopify merchants (Folio3, Charle Agency). But having designed and rebuilt over a hundred Shopify stores, I can tell you the difference between a store that stalls at $30K and one that clears six figures is rarely about the product, the niche, or even the ad budget. It almost always comes down to math, design, and systems. This article breaks down all three. I'll show you the exact traffic and conversion numbers required, why design is the most overlooked revenue tool for most store owners, and what to build once the design is solid. If you've been getting traffic but no sales, this framework will show you where the gap is. The Math Behind a $100K Shopify Store Before talking about strategy, you need to understand the formula. Every $100k Shopify store runs on three variables: traffic, conversion rate (CR), and average order value (AOV). The equation is simple: Monthly Visitors × Conversion Rate × AOV × 12 = Annual Revenue What makes this equation powerful is how much each variable affects the others. A small improvement in conversion rate can cut your traffic requirement in half. Here's what the numbers look like across different scenarios: AOV Conversion Rate Monthly Visitors Needed Annual Visitors Needed $50 2% 8,333 100,000 $75 2% 5,556 66,667 $75 3% 3,704 44,444 $100 2% 4,167 50,000 $100 3% 2,778 33,333 $150 2% 2,778 33,333 $150 3% 1,852 22,222 Look at the $75 AOV row. Going from a 2% to a 3% conversion rate drops your monthly traffic requirement from 5,556 to 3,704. That's 1,852 fewer visitors you need to find, pay for, or earn every single month. Over a year, that's more than 22,000 fewer visitors, which translates directly into lower ad spend and less pressure on your content strategy. 3,704 Monthly visitors to hit $100KAt a $75 AOV and 3% conversion rate, that's all it takes. Most stores are closer to this number than they think. The average Shopify store generates about $67,000 per year, roughly $5,583 per month (Folio3, Charle Agency). The top 10% earn around $10,866 per month, or about $130K annually. The difference between those two groups isn't usually traffic volume. It's conversion efficiency. Why Most Shopify Stores Never Get There Most Shopify stores never get close to six figures. The average store earns roughly $5,583/month, and 60% of stores under 12 months old earn less than $1,000/month (Oyova). Meanwhile, 90% of ecommerce startups fail within their first 120 days (GlobalWorkDigital). Having worked with stores at every stage, I see the same patterns behind these failures. They tend to fall into a few categories: Conversion neglect: The average Shopify conversion rate sits between 1.4% and 1.8% (Shopify, BlendCommerce). That means for every 100 visitors, 98 leave without buying. Most store owners try to fix this by spending more on ads, which only amplifies the underlying problem. Template dependence: Many founders launch with a free or basic theme, make minimal customizations, and wonder why their Shopify store looks like everyone else's. If your store is visually indistinguishable from your competitors, you're competing on price alone. No retention strategy: Acquiring a customer costs five to seven times more than retaining one. Stores that rely entirely on new customer acquisition hit a ceiling fast. Skipping the fundamentals: If you're still planning your launch, understanding what to know before starting your Shopify store can save months of costly trial and error. Many of these are common Shopify mistakes that compound over time. The good part is that each one is fixable, and fixing even one of them can move your revenue needle significantly. Design Is a Revenue Lever, Not a Line Item Most store owners think of design as a one-time expense: pick a theme, add your logo, upload some photos, and move on. That mindset is costing them money every single day their store is live. Consider what the research tells us about how customers interact with your store: 94% of first impressions are design-related (Stanford Web Credibility Research) 75% of consumers judge a brand's credibility based on website design (Stanford) Users form an opinion about your site in 0.05 seconds (Lindgaard et al., 2006) 88% of online shoppers won't return after a bad user experience (Readz) 200% Potential conversion increase from strong UI/UXAccording to Groove Commerce, thoughtful user interface and experience design can increase conversions by up to 200%. Now map those numbers onto the revenue math from the previous section. If better design lifts your conversion rate from 1.5% to 3%, you've doubled your revenue without spending a single extra dollar on traffic. For a store doing $50K/year at a 1.5% CR, that design improvement alone could push revenue past the $100K mark. Every visitor who lands on a well-designed store is more likely to trust you, browse longer, add to cart, and complete checkout. Every dollar you spend on ads, SEO, or social media works harder because your store converts at a higher rate. The mobile gap makes this even more urgent. Mobile devices account for 78% of Shopify traffic and 70% of all orders (Envive), yet mobile conversion rates average just 1.8% compared to 3.9% on desktop (BlendCommerce). That gap represents thousands of dollars in lost revenue every month for stores that haven't prioritized mobile UX. Choosing the right foundation matters: choosing the right Shopify theme is one of the first design decisions that can either support or undermine your conversion rate. The Five Design Decisions That Actually Move Revenue Not every design change is worth your time. After building and auditing hundreds of Shopify stores, I've narrowed it down to five decisions that consistently produce measurable revenue improvements. 1. Your Home Page Structure Your home page has one job: route visitors to the right product as fast as possible. That means a single hero image with one clear CTA above the fold (not a carousel), your best-selling collection within the first scroll, and social proof visible before anyone has to hunt for it. I've seen stores increase home page click-through rates by 15-20% just by replacing a three-slide carousel with a static hero and a direct "Shop Now" button. For a full breakdown, here's my guide to high-converting home page essentials. 2. Your Product Page Layout Put your strongest review quote and a shipping timeline directly below the Add to Cart button. I've tested this on 30+ stores, and it consistently lifts CR by 0.3-0.5 percentage points. That sounds small until you run it through the revenue formula: on a store doing 5,000 monthly visitors at $75 AOV, a 0.4-point CR increase adds about $18,000 in annual revenue. My full guide on designing product pages that convert covers the specific layout and placement strategies. 3. Brand Consistency Across Every Page Pick one heading font, one body font, and three brand colors, then use them everywhere. Inconsistent typography or color between your home page, product pages, and checkout creates friction visitors feel but can't articulate. One store I redesigned had four different button styles across five pages. Standardizing to one increased their add-to-cart rate by 12% in the first month. Many store owners unknowingly make branding mistakes that cost them money through exactly this kind of visual inconsistency. 4. Mobile-First Design With 78% of traffic on mobile, design for the small screen first. Specifically: make your Add to Cart button at least 48px tall and full-width on mobile, keep product images swipeable (not pinch-to-zoom), and ensure your entire checkout flow works with one thumb. The stores I see reaching $100K design their mobile experience first, then expand for desktop. 💡 Tip Buy something from your own store on your phone right now. Time how many taps it takes from landing to order confirmation. If it's more than three taps from product page to checkout, simplify. 5. Trust Signals Near the Buy Button Place a shipping timeline ("Ships in 1-2 business days"), return policy snippet ("30-day hassle-free returns"), and 1-2 review thumbnails within 200px of your Add to Cart button. This addresses purchase anxiety at the exact moment it peaks. I've seen this single change increase add-to-cart rates by 8-15% across multiple stores. You don't need a developer to implement these changes. The Section Studio includes sections built specifically for these use cases: product benefit blocks, testimonial layouts, and trust signal strips that drop into any Shopify theme and handle the conversion-tested placement for you. Beyond Design: The Growth Engine That Sustains $100K Strong design gets your conversion rate up. But sustaining $100K/year requires a growth engine that brings customers back and increases their lifetime value. Here are the three pillars that work alongside great design: Email Marketing Email accounts for roughly 25% of ecommerce revenue and converts at 4.24%, compared to 2.49% for search and 0.59% for social (Omnisend). The three flows that produce the most impact: a welcome sequence (320% more revenue per email than promotional sends), an abandoned cart series, and a post-purchase follow-up. Set up those three before anything else. 📊 Practical benchmark: Automated email flows generate 37% of total email revenue (Omnisend). If you're sending newsletters but haven't built your automations, you're doing the harder work and leaving the easier money behind. Customer Retention Repeat customers represent 44% of revenue from just 21% of the customer base (Venn Apps). They spend 67% more per order than first-time buyers, and a 5% increase in retention can boost profits by 25-95% (Bain & Company, Harvard Business Review). Building repeat purchase loops through loyalty programs, reorder reminders, and personalized recommendations is one of the fastest paths to sustainable six-figure revenue. Platform and Channel Strategy If you're currently selling on a marketplace like Etsy, you're sharing your customer data and paying listing fees on every sale. Moving to Shopify gives you full ownership of your customer relationships, which makes everything above possible. I've covered the full comparison in my article on why Shopify over Etsy for store owners ready to scale. Each of these pillars amplifies the others. Great design increases your conversion rate, email marketing brings customers back, and retention strategies increase their lifetime value. Together, they create a compounding growth loop that sustains and grows beyond $100K. Your $100K Roadmap: What to Do Right Now If you're ready to build toward a $100k Shopify store, here's where to start. These steps are ordered by impact, so work through them in sequence: Know Your Numbers Calculate your current AOV, conversion rate, and monthly traffic. Plug them into the revenue formula and identify which variable has the most room for improvement. Audit Your Store Design Walk through your store as a first-time visitor on a mobile device. Note every moment of confusion, friction, or missing trust signals. These are your highest-priority fixes. Fix Your Product Pages First Product pages are where revenue is won or lost. Improve your photography, rewrite descriptions to focus on benefits, and add trust signals near the add-to-cart button. Upgrade Your Sections Replace generic theme sections with conversion-tested designs. The Section Studio offers professionally designed, drop-in sections built specifically for Shopify stores focused on growth. Build Your Email Engine Set up at minimum a welcome sequence, abandoned cart flow, and post-purchase follow-up. These three automated flows alone can add 10-20% to your monthly revenue. Focus on Retention Once your store converts well and your email flows are live, invest in keeping customers coming back. Loyalty programs, reorder reminders, and personalized outreach all increase lifetime value. Building a six-figure Shopify store is achievable, and the math backs it up. The stores in the top 10% treat design as a revenue strategy, not a cosmetic afterthought. FAQ How much traffic do I need to make $100K on Shopify? It depends on your average order value and conversion rate. At a $75 AOV and 3% conversion rate, you need roughly 3,700 monthly visitors. At a $50 AOV and 2% conversion rate, you'd need about 8,333 monthly visitors. Improving your conversion rate through better design dramatically reduces how much traffic you need. What percentage of Shopify stores actually make $100K per year? Reaching $100K/year puts a Shopify store in roughly the top 10% of all merchants. The average store generates about $67,000 annually, while the top 10% earn around $130,000 per year (Folio3, Charle Agency). The gap between average and top performers usually comes down to conversion rate, not traffic volume. How long does it take to build a six-figure Shopify store? Most stores that reach $100K/year do so within 12-24 months of consistent effort. However, 90% of ecommerce startups fail within their first 120 days, often because they underinvest in store design, conversion fundamentals, and customer retention. Building a strong foundation first shortens the timeline significantly. Does website design really affect Shopify sales? Yes. Research from Stanford shows that 94% of first impressions relate to web design, and 75% of consumers judge a brand's credibility based on its website. Strong UI/UX can increase conversions by up to 200%, and 88% of visitors won't return after a bad user experience. Design is one of the highest-impact revenue tools available to Shopify store owners. What conversion rate do I need to hit $100K on Shopify? The conversion rate you need depends on your traffic and average order value. The average Shopify store converts at 1.4-1.8%, but the top 20% exceed 3.2%. A store with a $75 AOV at 3% conversion needs far less traffic than one converting at 1.5%. Aiming for 2.5-3%+ puts you in a strong position to reach six figures. What's more important: more traffic or better conversion? Better conversion almost always delivers more ROI per dollar spent. Doubling your conversion rate from 1.5% to 3% has the same revenue impact as doubling your traffic, but costs significantly less. Once your store converts well, every dollar you spend on traffic works harder. Focus on conversion first, then scale traffic. How important is mobile design for Shopify revenue? Mobile design is critical. Mobile accounts for 78% of Shopify traffic and 70% of all orders, yet mobile conversion rates average just 1.8% compared to 3.9% on desktop. That gap represents a massive revenue opportunity. Stores that close this gap through thoughtful mobile UX can see significant revenue increases without adding a single new visitor. Should I invest in custom Shopify design or use a template? For most stores aiming at $100K, a well-chosen premium theme customized with professional sections is the best balance of cost and performance. Fully custom builds are expensive and often unnecessary at this stage. Tools like The Section Studio give you conversion-tested, professionally designed sections you can add to any Shopify theme without hiring a developer. Get The Section Studio → Explore Shopify Design Services →
How to Sell Digital Products on Shopify
Are you looking to kick back and relax while passive income rolls in? It's time to consider selling your digital products on Shopify. Whether you're moving your store over from Etsy or starting from scratch, we have a few key steps that you won't want to forget when starting your digital download empire. Below are the steps you'll need to take in order to get your digital shop up and running: Prep your digital product for sale The first thing you'll want to do after finishing your product is figure out where to host it. Depending on what your product is/its file type, it can be hosted on any number of services—such as Google Drive, Dropbox, WeTransfer, Kajabi, you name it! Beyond just the digital product itself, you'll likely want to create a simple PDF page that links through to a URL where your customers can access their content. This is what you'll upload to your store via a digital downloads app (which we will cover below!). These "welcome" PDFs typically include something like: Your logo A welcome/thank you line or two Link to the Google Drive/Dropbox/WeTransfer etc. folder where your digital product lives A copyright notice/line explaining this digital product shouldn't be shared Link to your website + socials VIP promo/discount code for any other products you may offer Sign up for Shopify The next order of business is to sign up for a Shopify plan so that you can get working on your store. If you're just getting started, you'll probably be just fine with Shopify's Basic plan—a handful of the benefits you get when you upgrade plans actually pertain to physical shipping, which you won't be doing. Looking for more general tips on getting set up in Shopify? Check out our XX things to know before starting your Shopify store. Build your Store Now's the fun part—building your store! I recommend taking a close look at the theme you're going to go with before installing it. The theme you choose can make or break your store depending on what you're looking to build. Keep in mind—when looking at theme previews, focus on the layout and functionality rather than the general design, because you can always change fonts and colors easily but not so much the "bones" that your theme offers. Looking for more in-depth help getting your Shopify store set up? Learn more about how our Shopify Sprints can help you get your site up and running in just a week. Upload your products Shopify doesn't natively allow for digital products to be sold, meaning that you'll need to use an app in order to do so. Shopify offers a free digital products app, but you may want to consider using a paid version such as SendOwl or Easy Digital Products because of the extra features they offer, such as: PDF stamping Automatic download button License keys Optional delayed delivery Automatic refunds Once you've installed a digital downloads app onto your store, follow its specific instructions to upload and set up your products' settings. Promote your products So now that your store + digital products are all set up, what's next? It's time to get promoting! Some effective ways you can consider getting your digital products out into the world include: Promoting it on Pinterest - Pinterest visitors are SO much more engaged and ready to buy compared to casual Instagram + Tik Tok scrollers. Facebook Ads - FB ads allow you to get super granular about who you're targeting, meaning that you can really hone in on traffic that will be interested in what you have to offer. Additionally, if you have a Facebook Pixel installed on your store, you can retarget people that have previously visited. Focus on abandoned checkouts - Shopify makes it easy to automatically email visitors that add products to their cart and then abandon their checkout. They've even optimized the intervals of time to wait before sending an email based on what they find converts the highest. And there you have it, a high-level overview of how to begin selling digital downloads on Shopify! Have any questions about getting things set up? Shoot me a DM on Instagram and I'd be happy to help 🖤
How to Sell Digital Products on Shopify
Are you looking to kick back and relax while passive income rolls in? It's time to consider selling your digital products on Shopify. Whether you're moving your store over from Etsy or starting from scratch, we have a few key steps that you won't want to forget when starting your digital download empire. Below are the steps you'll need to take in order to get your digital shop up and running: Prep your digital product for sale The first thing you'll want to do after finishing your product is figure out where to host it. Depending on what your product is/its file type, it can be hosted on any number of services—such as Google Drive, Dropbox, WeTransfer, Kajabi, you name it! Beyond just the digital product itself, you'll likely want to create a simple PDF page that links through to a URL where your customers can access their content. This is what you'll upload to your store via a digital downloads app (which we will cover below!). These "welcome" PDFs typically include something like: Your logo A welcome/thank you line or two Link to the Google Drive/Dropbox/WeTransfer etc. folder where your digital product lives A copyright notice/line explaining this digital product shouldn't be shared Link to your website + socials VIP promo/discount code for any other products you may offer Sign up for Shopify The next order of business is to sign up for a Shopify plan so that you can get working on your store. If you're just getting started, you'll probably be just fine with Shopify's Basic plan—a handful of the benefits you get when you upgrade plans actually pertain to physical shipping, which you won't be doing. Looking for more general tips on getting set up in Shopify? Check out our XX things to know before starting your Shopify store. Build your Store Now's the fun part—building your store! I recommend taking a close look at the theme you're going to go with before installing it. The theme you choose can make or break your store depending on what you're looking to build. Keep in mind—when looking at theme previews, focus on the layout and functionality rather than the general design, because you can always change fonts and colors easily but not so much the "bones" that your theme offers. Looking for more in-depth help getting your Shopify store set up? Learn more about how our Shopify Sprints can help you get your site up and running in just a week. Upload your products Shopify doesn't natively allow for digital products to be sold, meaning that you'll need to use an app in order to do so. Shopify offers a free digital products app, but you may want to consider using a paid version such as SendOwl or Easy Digital Products because of the extra features they offer, such as: PDF stamping Automatic download button License keys Optional delayed delivery Automatic refunds Once you've installed a digital downloads app onto your store, follow its specific instructions to upload and set up your products' settings. Promote your products So now that your store + digital products are all set up, what's next? It's time to get promoting! Some effective ways you can consider getting your digital products out into the world include: Promoting it on Pinterest - Pinterest visitors are SO much more engaged and ready to buy compared to casual Instagram + Tik Tok scrollers. Facebook Ads - FB ads allow you to get super granular about who you're targeting, meaning that you can really hone in on traffic that will be interested in what you have to offer. Additionally, if you have a Facebook Pixel installed on your store, you can retarget people that have previously visited. Focus on abandoned checkouts - Shopify makes it easy to automatically email visitors that add products to their cart and then abandon their checkout. They've even optimized the intervals of time to wait before sending an email based on what they find converts the highest. And there you have it, a high-level overview of how to begin selling digital downloads on Shopify! Have any questions about getting things set up? Shoot me a DM on Instagram and I'd be happy to help 🖤
A Sneak Peek Inside My Client Process
Are you a total newbie to the branding process and wondering what it entails? Does the idea of an entire brand development project make you a little woozy? No worries—we've got your back. We know that as an entrepreneur, you have a thousand other plates to spin when launching a brand, which is why we offer condensed sprint-style project timelines and clear milestones. Want to leisurely email back and forth once a week for the better part of a year? We're probably not for you. Looking to get in, create an incredibly stunning and strategic brand, and then move on to other things? We'll get along fabulously. Check out our process below, broken down into steps: Inquiry First, you'll make an inquiry via our contact form here. This is pretty straightforward—but, do note that the more detail you include here, the more prepared we will be for our discovery call! Discovery Call After filling out the contact form, you'll receive an email from our team with a link to book a free 30-minute discovery call. This is where we'll learn all about your business, what you want to get out of this project, and your goals for the future. A few questions we'll ask on the call: What are some of your goals both short-term and long-term for your brand? What compelled you to start this business? What does success look like to you? We'll also chat about different budget options, project timelines, and deliverables to determine a solution that fits your needs. Proposal After our discovery call, we'll have a good understanding of all the details that are needed in order to send you a detailed proposal. This will outline specifics about your project such as the deliverables included, timeline, payment plans, and how your project will be run. With most of the proposals that we send, we include a couple of different package options outlining different ways to tackle your brand development at varying budgets and timelines. Note that these aren't set-in-stone—we are happy to fine-tune them as much as needed so that they fit exactly what you're looking for. Onboarding Alright—so, you've read through your proposal, selected packages that work for you, and you're ready to rumble. In order to book, you'll pay a 40% deposit to hold your spot in the timeline and review and sign a contract. Within about 2 business days after you book, you'll receive all of your welcome information via a centralized project dashboard that outlines everything you need to know—project milestones, a recap of your deliverables, how to submit your content, and quick links to important documents. You'll take some time to read through everything, and then there are two major tasks to complete: booking your brand strategy session + filling out a pre-session questionnaire. Brand Strategy The brand strategy session is where the magic happens. Before our session together, you'll fill out a quick questionnaire that will help us get on the same page before diving in together. It'll get the gears turning in your head when it comes to your brand and set the scene for what we'll be discovering on our call. On the day of the strategy session, we'll hop on a Zoom call for 1-2 hours and dive deep into aspects of your strategy such as your target audience, how to reach them, how to stand out from your competition, and what is the secret sauce behind your brand. We'll be taking organized notes the whole time and you'll have access to these in your final brand files for future reference. Now that we've chatted through all aspects of your brand, it's our turn to put our heads down for a week and get to researching + planning. At the end of this phase, we'll deliver to you an amazingly in-depth brand strategy guidebook that will be the North Star for the rest of your business' life. Whenever it's time to create a marketing campaign, hire a new employee, or develop a new product, you'll have this document to refer to in order to help decide the way forward and make sure you're making aligned decisions. During this phase, we also propose 2-3 strategy-informed visual solutions for the look and feel of your brand. We go beyond just basic moodboards for each of these, including typography inspiration, potential fonts that could be used, and a live website homepage mockup so that you can get a feel for how the brand actually might come to life. Identity Design Here comes the fun part! Now that you've chosen a visual direction and we've completed all the discovery, research, and planning behind your brand strategy, we can now move onto creating the visual identity of your brand. We believe in presenting brand concepts that are fully fleshed out. So, during the first step of this process you'll receive a presentation outlining not only all the logo variations, colors, and fonts included in your brand identity, but a handful of digital mockups that will help you actually envision how your brand will appear in real life. After you receive this presentation, you'll have two rounds of refinements to explore anything you think is necessary in order to convey your brand's message more effectively. Because of our in-depth strategy process that we complete beforehand, we find that the vast majority of our clients have barely any changes they'd like to see to the initial brand concept presentation. If you've selected a package that includes collateral (think business cards, social media templates, stickers etc.), we get to work on this in the week after your brand identity is finalized. At the end of this process, you'll receive all of your final brand files in a nicely packaged folder structure. We provide a clear set of brand guidelines (with examples of what and what NOT to do) so that it's easy for you to stay consistent with your brand in the future. Additionally, we provide a guide for understanding your file formats, color codes, and tips for making the most out of your new brand. Packaging Woohoo! Now that we're done with the brand development portion of the process, we are now able to move onto packaging (if it is included in your project). The secret sauce for making a packaging project run smoothly is: Being super organized with all of the bits and pieces that you need to supply (packaging copy, die lines, printing info, ingredients, barcodes, badges, net weight, disclaimers, nutrition facts—you name it!). Not beginning the packaging project/design until the above content is 90% there When we dive into this part of the project well-prepared with everything that needs to go on the packaging, we can focus more on the design and concept itself rather than updating and tweaking the necessary content. Packaging can be overwhelming if you've never done it before, which is why we provide a comprehensive checklist of everything that's needed on your end so that the process is a bit less daunting and more clear + easy for you. Like the brand identity, for packaging we provide an initial concept presentation fully fleshed out with mockups, and there are two opportunities for refinements to the design + content. Your final files are delivered so that they're print-ready according to your specifications and can be directly handed off to your printer. Production + Photography Something that a lot of people don't realize when starting a branding, packaging, + website project is that there needs to be roughly a 2-3 month gap in the middle of the timeline to 1. get your products printed + produced and 2. get your products professionally photographed. Your website design truly comes at the END of everything else—it's the last thing you focus on that leads right up to the brand's launch. It's important to have your photography (or at least a good chunk of it) finalized before diving into the site design because much like copy, your photos make a HUGE impact on the design of the site. For this reason, we highly recommend a couple-month long "break" between the packaging + web design phases of your project so that you can focus on getting your products produced + photographed. See below for an example of a project timeline laid out visually: Site Design We're in the home stretch! Now it's time to take allll that we've done so far and craft your brand's own corner of the internet. At the beginning of this phase of the project, your site's information, details, and copy are due from you. This will be clearly outlined in an easy-to-follow checklist that will help you stay organized and on track. If you want to outsource your site's copy (which is often the most daunting part of gathering what's needed for your site!), we offer this as an add-on to your project scope. When it comes to the site design itself, the structure of the project depends on which type of package you opted for: Template-Based Sites With a template-based site, we will work together to determine your site's needs and find a theme that works best for the functionalities and layout that you're looking for. From there, we will use your brand's colors, custom fonts, and custom CSS to stylize the site and make it your own. Just because it's template-based does NOT mean it's going to look DIY or like everyone else's site! The end result is a stunning and branded site that works for you and comes at a more affordable cost than custom development. Custom-Developed Sites Our custom development packages offer a higher level of flexibility when it comes to the design and functionality of your site. We start the process by mocking up how your site will look from scratch. This gives us a totally custom and differentiated feel and allows you to make design decisions that wouldn't necessarily be possible with a template-based site. After we finalize the site's design in the mockup stage, we then move onto the development phase of the project where your site is built and brought to life. After the site has been designed, the next steps for both package options above include optimizing the site for mobile, installing any necessary on-site apps, and running through a series of testing and pre-launch tasks. We recommend that before launching your site, you have about a week-long "soft launch" so that you're familiar and comfortable with your site's backend and ordering system before your real launch. It's important that you feel super comfortable and empowered to update your site as your brand evolves, so we also provide training videos to walk you through the backend of your site for future updates/promotions/product additions etc. Wrap up At the end of every project, we set you up with a handful of materials that ensure the success of your new brand. See below for the full list of deliverables that a typical brand development, packaging, and website project includes: Brand strategy session notes Brand strategy guidebook + competitive analysis Brand guidelines document Brand identity assets (logos, colors, font guidelines etc.) Any collateral pieces that were included in your project (business cards, social templates, stickers etc.) A series of digital mockups portraying your brand in real life Guide covering how to use your file formats, color codes, and how to get the most out of your brand Your print-ready packaging files A stunning, high-converting branded website with apps + functionalities Website training videos Backup of your site's custom CSS Future Support We want you to have a partner that you can rely on when it comes to any future branding, design, or website needs—which is why we don't say sayonara as soon as our project together has wrapped up! In order to support you in a convenient, flexible way, we offer one-day design sprints so that you can get the design help you're looking for whenever the need arises. Our past clients rave about these because they offer you a quick turnaround, live collaboration, and it's like having a full-time design employee but only when you need it (and without the commitment of a yearly salary). Plus, we get a lot done during these days! Learn more about how our post-project design days work here. In Conclusion We've put a lot of thought and trial + error into our process over the years. What we've landed on is streamlined, strategic, and, most importantly, produces the results and ROI that you're looking to get when launching your brand. Interested in learning more if we're the right fit for you + your brand's needs? Schedule a free 30-minute discovery call today. We'd be thrilled to get to know you!
A Sneak Peek Inside My Client Process
Are you a total newbie to the branding process and wondering what it entails? Does the idea of an entire brand development project make you a little woozy? No worries—we've got your back. We know that as an entrepreneur, you have a thousand other plates to spin when launching a brand, which is why we offer condensed sprint-style project timelines and clear milestones. Want to leisurely email back and forth once a week for the better part of a year? We're probably not for you. Looking to get in, create an incredibly stunning and strategic brand, and then move on to other things? We'll get along fabulously. Check out our process below, broken down into steps: Inquiry First, you'll make an inquiry via our contact form here. This is pretty straightforward—but, do note that the more detail you include here, the more prepared we will be for our discovery call! Discovery Call After filling out the contact form, you'll receive an email from our team with a link to book a free 30-minute discovery call. This is where we'll learn all about your business, what you want to get out of this project, and your goals for the future. A few questions we'll ask on the call: What are some of your goals both short-term and long-term for your brand? What compelled you to start this business? What does success look like to you? We'll also chat about different budget options, project timelines, and deliverables to determine a solution that fits your needs. Proposal After our discovery call, we'll have a good understanding of all the details that are needed in order to send you a detailed proposal. This will outline specifics about your project such as the deliverables included, timeline, payment plans, and how your project will be run. With most of the proposals that we send, we include a couple of different package options outlining different ways to tackle your brand development at varying budgets and timelines. Note that these aren't set-in-stone—we are happy to fine-tune them as much as needed so that they fit exactly what you're looking for. Onboarding Alright—so, you've read through your proposal, selected packages that work for you, and you're ready to rumble. In order to book, you'll pay a 40% deposit to hold your spot in the timeline and review and sign a contract. Within about 2 business days after you book, you'll receive all of your welcome information via a centralized project dashboard that outlines everything you need to know—project milestones, a recap of your deliverables, how to submit your content, and quick links to important documents. You'll take some time to read through everything, and then there are two major tasks to complete: booking your brand strategy session + filling out a pre-session questionnaire. Brand Strategy The brand strategy session is where the magic happens. Before our session together, you'll fill out a quick questionnaire that will help us get on the same page before diving in together. It'll get the gears turning in your head when it comes to your brand and set the scene for what we'll be discovering on our call. On the day of the strategy session, we'll hop on a Zoom call for 1-2 hours and dive deep into aspects of your strategy such as your target audience, how to reach them, how to stand out from your competition, and what is the secret sauce behind your brand. We'll be taking organized notes the whole time and you'll have access to these in your final brand files for future reference. Now that we've chatted through all aspects of your brand, it's our turn to put our heads down for a week and get to researching + planning. At the end of this phase, we'll deliver to you an amazingly in-depth brand strategy guidebook that will be the North Star for the rest of your business' life. Whenever it's time to create a marketing campaign, hire a new employee, or develop a new product, you'll have this document to refer to in order to help decide the way forward and make sure you're making aligned decisions. During this phase, we also propose 2-3 strategy-informed visual solutions for the look and feel of your brand. We go beyond just basic moodboards for each of these, including typography inspiration, potential fonts that could be used, and a live website homepage mockup so that you can get a feel for how the brand actually might come to life. Identity Design Here comes the fun part! Now that you've chosen a visual direction and we've completed all the discovery, research, and planning behind your brand strategy, we can now move onto creating the visual identity of your brand. We believe in presenting brand concepts that are fully fleshed out. So, during the first step of this process you'll receive a presentation outlining not only all the logo variations, colors, and fonts included in your brand identity, but a handful of digital mockups that will help you actually envision how your brand will appear in real life. After you receive this presentation, you'll have two rounds of refinements to explore anything you think is necessary in order to convey your brand's message more effectively. Because of our in-depth strategy process that we complete beforehand, we find that the vast majority of our clients have barely any changes they'd like to see to the initial brand concept presentation. If you've selected a package that includes collateral (think business cards, social media templates, stickers etc.), we get to work on this in the week after your brand identity is finalized. At the end of this process, you'll receive all of your final brand files in a nicely packaged folder structure. We provide a clear set of brand guidelines (with examples of what and what NOT to do) so that it's easy for you to stay consistent with your brand in the future. Additionally, we provide a guide for understanding your file formats, color codes, and tips for making the most out of your new brand. Packaging Woohoo! Now that we're done with the brand development portion of the process, we are now able to move onto packaging (if it is included in your project). The secret sauce for making a packaging project run smoothly is: Being super organized with all of the bits and pieces that you need to supply (packaging copy, die lines, printing info, ingredients, barcodes, badges, net weight, disclaimers, nutrition facts—you name it!). Not beginning the packaging project/design until the above content is 90% there When we dive into this part of the project well-prepared with everything that needs to go on the packaging, we can focus more on the design and concept itself rather than updating and tweaking the necessary content. Packaging can be overwhelming if you've never done it before, which is why we provide a comprehensive checklist of everything that's needed on your end so that the process is a bit less daunting and more clear + easy for you. Like the brand identity, for packaging we provide an initial concept presentation fully fleshed out with mockups, and there are two opportunities for refinements to the design + content. Your final files are delivered so that they're print-ready according to your specifications and can be directly handed off to your printer. Production + Photography Something that a lot of people don't realize when starting a branding, packaging, + website project is that there needs to be roughly a 2-3 month gap in the middle of the timeline to 1. get your products printed + produced and 2. get your products professionally photographed. Your website design truly comes at the END of everything else—it's the last thing you focus on that leads right up to the brand's launch. It's important to have your photography (or at least a good chunk of it) finalized before diving into the site design because much like copy, your photos make a HUGE impact on the design of the site. For this reason, we highly recommend a couple-month long "break" between the packaging + web design phases of your project so that you can focus on getting your products produced + photographed. See below for an example of a project timeline laid out visually: Site Design We're in the home stretch! Now it's time to take allll that we've done so far and craft your brand's own corner of the internet. At the beginning of this phase of the project, your site's information, details, and copy are due from you. This will be clearly outlined in an easy-to-follow checklist that will help you stay organized and on track. If you want to outsource your site's copy (which is often the most daunting part of gathering what's needed for your site!), we offer this as an add-on to your project scope. When it comes to the site design itself, the structure of the project depends on which type of package you opted for: Template-Based Sites With a template-based site, we will work together to determine your site's needs and find a theme that works best for the functionalities and layout that you're looking for. From there, we will use your brand's colors, custom fonts, and custom CSS to stylize the site and make it your own. Just because it's template-based does NOT mean it's going to look DIY or like everyone else's site! The end result is a stunning and branded site that works for you and comes at a more affordable cost than custom development. Custom-Developed Sites Our custom development packages offer a higher level of flexibility when it comes to the design and functionality of your site. We start the process by mocking up how your site will look from scratch. This gives us a totally custom and differentiated feel and allows you to make design decisions that wouldn't necessarily be possible with a template-based site. After we finalize the site's design in the mockup stage, we then move onto the development phase of the project where your site is built and brought to life. After the site has been designed, the next steps for both package options above include optimizing the site for mobile, installing any necessary on-site apps, and running through a series of testing and pre-launch tasks. We recommend that before launching your site, you have about a week-long "soft launch" so that you're familiar and comfortable with your site's backend and ordering system before your real launch. It's important that you feel super comfortable and empowered to update your site as your brand evolves, so we also provide training videos to walk you through the backend of your site for future updates/promotions/product additions etc. Wrap up At the end of every project, we set you up with a handful of materials that ensure the success of your new brand. See below for the full list of deliverables that a typical brand development, packaging, and website project includes: Brand strategy session notes Brand strategy guidebook + competitive analysis Brand guidelines document Brand identity assets (logos, colors, font guidelines etc.) Any collateral pieces that were included in your project (business cards, social templates, stickers etc.) A series of digital mockups portraying your brand in real life Guide covering how to use your file formats, color codes, and how to get the most out of your brand Your print-ready packaging files A stunning, high-converting branded website with apps + functionalities Website training videos Backup of your site's custom CSS Future Support We want you to have a partner that you can rely on when it comes to any future branding, design, or website needs—which is why we don't say sayonara as soon as our project together has wrapped up! In order to support you in a convenient, flexible way, we offer one-day design sprints so that you can get the design help you're looking for whenever the need arises. Our past clients rave about these because they offer you a quick turnaround, live collaboration, and it's like having a full-time design employee but only when you need it (and without the commitment of a yearly salary). Plus, we get a lot done during these days! Learn more about how our post-project design days work here. In Conclusion We've put a lot of thought and trial + error into our process over the years. What we've landed on is streamlined, strategic, and, most importantly, produces the results and ROI that you're looking to get when launching your brand. Interested in learning more if we're the right fit for you + your brand's needs? Schedule a free 30-minute discovery call today. We'd be thrilled to get to know you!
My 7 Must-Read Branding + Business Books
Books 👏🏼 are 👏🏼 the 👏🏼 best 👏🏼. (And yes, although they're not my style, audiobooks DO count as reading!). Seriously. The depth of knowledge that a $10-$30 business book can get you (if it's not one of those repetitive, Apple-is everything, filled with fluff type ones) just doesn't compare to blog posts, podcasts, YouTube videos, you name it. As someone who reads for an average of 90 minutes a day, I can say wholeheartedly that reading has changed the course of my business FAST—here's a list of my favorite branding and business-related books: Building A Story Brand Starting off with a classic, this one is a must-read for not only brand designers but any entrepreneur, marketer, or product designer. The way to a human's heart (or level of deep understanding) is through stories. When you frame your product/business/brand through the lens of a story, all sorts of magic happens. This magic = the growing success of your brand (and revenue!). Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action If you're any sort of business owner, read this book. As a business, when you articulate WHY you do what you do before explaining WHAT you do and HOW you do it, people's ears perk up (as opposed to instinctively shutting you out, like the other 4,000 - 10,000 ads they see per day on average). Beyond just successfully marketing your brand, this book helps you find a greater purpose in the work that you do every day. Having a strong understanding of your "why" helps you more easily make decisions in your business, identify which opportunities are right for you, and attract clients/customers that could really be helped by what you offer. This book was truly one of my favorites, and I'd probably recommend starting with this one! The 12 Week Year This one is somewhat of a recent find for me and has been SUCH a game changer. If you're like me, you're a dreamer. You have all these big ideas that sound amazing. You have so much fun brainstorming and setting up a plan to implement these ideas. However, when it comes to actually implementing them...it never seems to pan out! How frustrating, right? This has been a big source of insecurity for me in my business lately. Cue The 12 Week Year, which breaks down how to ACTUALLY get stuff done by mapping it out clearly into a 12-week plan of attack that keeps you accountable day-by-day. Since reading this book and setting up a simple system in Notion for tracking these 12-week goals, I've gotten SO much back-burner stuff done in my biz. It makes my brain so happy to check things off each week (and even getting ahead of the weekly plan). And, it's not overwhelming to make this change, which means it'll actually be sustainable in the long run. The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself Although a tad bit outdated (I think I remember faxing being mentioned non-ironically at some point), this book still provided a relevant + valuable overview of how to market your business. The title is a bit misleading—this one covered way more than just how to build a referral program. It's more like "How to Build a Business That's So Awesome It'll Get a Ton of Referrals". The business world is really cool to me because when it comes down to it, it's all about people offering their unique skills, knowledge, and experience to help others...help others. This book covers in-depth the entire customer life cycle and how to show up in an authentic way that 1. keeps your customers hooked and 2. builds exponential business growth via organic referrals. Again, this one's not just for brand designers—any sort of entrepreneurial soul would find a lot of value in this one. Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth Yes, you created your business primarily to help others, but it's also true that a big part of being an entrepreneur centers around making that good good cash flow. You can't do your best at what you love to do (and hire other people to help you) if you're constantly stressing about the lack of invoices you're sending out next month, right? I loved this book because it outlines building wealth in such an easygoing, abundant way. It talks about a variety of principles and mindsets about money that successful people often share. It really gives you a magnifying glass that highlights where your beliefs are holding you back or helping you find success. It's an easy and insightful read (and gets you excited about the goodness that your future holds!). The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level This is another one that hit me like a brick wall (in the best of ways). My fellow design biz friend Emily from Salt and Soul Collective and I gushed over this one during a hangout in Sayulita together—it was the answer to a problem that she and I were both facing at the time. You know when everything's going REALLY well for you and you're like "holy cow, how did I get here? There's no way this is going to last!". This is actually a majorly limiting belief—this book talks about how a HUGE amount of people self-sabotage as soon as they hit a certain level of success. It teaches you how to raise your "upper limit" and become truly comfortable with the dream life that you're building. Another message from this book that I LOVED and think about all the time is the idea that you create your own time. I'm still working on fully soaking this mindset in, but it is so freeing to view things in the way that you "get" to do them, not "have" to do them. This is one that I can see re-reading every 2 years or so just to soak in the goodness of its message. The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes I am only about 50% done with the book (at the time of writing this post) and I. Am. Obsessed. Much like Donald Miller's Building a Story Brand mentioned above, this book looks at brands through the lens of storytelling. However, this one more specifically speaks about how successful brands are ones that fit into a series of "archetypes" that humans know and are familiar with (ex. the Hero, the Outlaw, and the Magician). Although this is a branding book, I think that even people that aren't necessarily in the branding world would enjoy this. Something about it just CLICKS and makes so much sense. I hope you find something in this list that changes the game for you—I've for sure found a gold mine in each of these. Curl up with a hot cup of tea, a cozy blanket, and get learning 🙂 Have any other book recs or want to chat about one of the above? Send me a DM on Instagram!
My 7 Must-Read Branding + Business Books
Books 👏🏼 are 👏🏼 the 👏🏼 best 👏🏼. (And yes, although they're not my style, audiobooks DO count as reading!). Seriously. The depth of knowledge that a $10-$30 business book can get you (if it's not one of those repetitive, Apple-is everything, filled with fluff type ones) just doesn't compare to blog posts, podcasts, YouTube videos, you name it. As someone who reads for an average of 90 minutes a day, I can say wholeheartedly that reading has changed the course of my business FAST—here's a list of my favorite branding and business-related books: Building A Story Brand Starting off with a classic, this one is a must-read for not only brand designers but any entrepreneur, marketer, or product designer. The way to a human's heart (or level of deep understanding) is through stories. When you frame your product/business/brand through the lens of a story, all sorts of magic happens. This magic = the growing success of your brand (and revenue!). Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action If you're any sort of business owner, read this book. As a business, when you articulate WHY you do what you do before explaining WHAT you do and HOW you do it, people's ears perk up (as opposed to instinctively shutting you out, like the other 4,000 - 10,000 ads they see per day on average). Beyond just successfully marketing your brand, this book helps you find a greater purpose in the work that you do every day. Having a strong understanding of your "why" helps you more easily make decisions in your business, identify which opportunities are right for you, and attract clients/customers that could really be helped by what you offer. This book was truly one of my favorites, and I'd probably recommend starting with this one! The 12 Week Year This one is somewhat of a recent find for me and has been SUCH a game changer. If you're like me, you're a dreamer. You have all these big ideas that sound amazing. You have so much fun brainstorming and setting up a plan to implement these ideas. However, when it comes to actually implementing them...it never seems to pan out! How frustrating, right? This has been a big source of insecurity for me in my business lately. Cue The 12 Week Year, which breaks down how to ACTUALLY get stuff done by mapping it out clearly into a 12-week plan of attack that keeps you accountable day-by-day. Since reading this book and setting up a simple system in Notion for tracking these 12-week goals, I've gotten SO much back-burner stuff done in my biz. It makes my brain so happy to check things off each week (and even getting ahead of the weekly plan). And, it's not overwhelming to make this change, which means it'll actually be sustainable in the long run. The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself Although a tad bit outdated (I think I remember faxing being mentioned non-ironically at some point), this book still provided a relevant + valuable overview of how to market your business. The title is a bit misleading—this one covered way more than just how to build a referral program. It's more like "How to Build a Business That's So Awesome It'll Get a Ton of Referrals". The business world is really cool to me because when it comes down to it, it's all about people offering their unique skills, knowledge, and experience to help others...help others. This book covers in-depth the entire customer life cycle and how to show up in an authentic way that 1. keeps your customers hooked and 2. builds exponential business growth via organic referrals. Again, this one's not just for brand designers—any sort of entrepreneurial soul would find a lot of value in this one. Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth Yes, you created your business primarily to help others, but it's also true that a big part of being an entrepreneur centers around making that good good cash flow. You can't do your best at what you love to do (and hire other people to help you) if you're constantly stressing about the lack of invoices you're sending out next month, right? I loved this book because it outlines building wealth in such an easygoing, abundant way. It talks about a variety of principles and mindsets about money that successful people often share. It really gives you a magnifying glass that highlights where your beliefs are holding you back or helping you find success. It's an easy and insightful read (and gets you excited about the goodness that your future holds!). The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level This is another one that hit me like a brick wall (in the best of ways). My fellow design biz friend Emily from Salt and Soul Collective and I gushed over this one during a hangout in Sayulita together—it was the answer to a problem that she and I were both facing at the time. You know when everything's going REALLY well for you and you're like "holy cow, how did I get here? There's no way this is going to last!". This is actually a majorly limiting belief—this book talks about how a HUGE amount of people self-sabotage as soon as they hit a certain level of success. It teaches you how to raise your "upper limit" and become truly comfortable with the dream life that you're building. Another message from this book that I LOVED and think about all the time is the idea that you create your own time. I'm still working on fully soaking this mindset in, but it is so freeing to view things in the way that you "get" to do them, not "have" to do them. This is one that I can see re-reading every 2 years or so just to soak in the goodness of its message. The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes I am only about 50% done with the book (at the time of writing this post) and I. Am. Obsessed. Much like Donald Miller's Building a Story Brand mentioned above, this book looks at brands through the lens of storytelling. However, this one more specifically speaks about how successful brands are ones that fit into a series of "archetypes" that humans know and are familiar with (ex. the Hero, the Outlaw, and the Magician). Although this is a branding book, I think that even people that aren't necessarily in the branding world would enjoy this. Something about it just CLICKS and makes so much sense. I hope you find something in this list that changes the game for you—I've for sure found a gold mine in each of these. Curl up with a hot cup of tea, a cozy blanket, and get learning 🙂 Have any other book recs or want to chat about one of the above? Send me a DM on Instagram!
How to Become a Graphic Designer in College
If you’re looking to become a graphic designer as a college student but thinking “where do I start?”, you’re not alone. How am I supposed to find clients? How much should I charge? It can take a bit of testing the waters to truly figure it out. In celebration of graduating from university next week, I’ll pull together some insight into how I built a 800+ customer, five-figure graphic design business on the side over the past year while attending college full time. Tutorials, Tutorials, Tutorials! I’d say that 80% of my graphic design skills are self-taught with the remaining 20% coming from design school itself. The good news here? You don’t really need to go to design school to become a successful designer—it’s all about having the drive to learn and better your skills on your own time. Online tutorials are probably the #1 most powerful way to learn graphic design—the wealth of information at your fingertips online is astounding. Lynda.com, Skillshare, and Adobe are all wonderful resources that are great ways to learn the basics and get comfortable using a variety of graphic design tools and programs. Once you have those down, YouTube and Pinterest are amazing for finding more niche tutorials that will bring your design skills to the next level (and allow you to have fun while doing so). What Software Should I Use? My recommendation to someone looking to dive into graphic design would be the Adobe Suite all the way—specifically Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro (perhaps Lightroom too if you’re working heavily with photos). These are the pretty much the holy trinity of graphic design—learn the uses for each tool and when it’s appropriate to use them (ex. logo designs in Illustrator, magazine layouts in InDesign). Luckily, Adobe offers a pretty kickass student discount that makes it affordable and definitely worth a subscription. Beyond this, some of my top-used tools in my belt include: WeTransfer (sending large files to clients) Coolors.co (a seamless way to put together color palettes) Trello (for organizing and keeping track of client projects/other to-dos) Toggl (for keeping track of time spent on projects) AND CO (awesome invoicing, proposal/contract, and expense tracking tool) Hipsum (you’re going to want to show this to everyone you know) Where to Get Clients? I’ll let you in on a little secret—all of my clients so far have been inbound. That’s right, I haven’t once put out a sales pitch (yet—planning on it in the future!). So, how did I achieve a steady pipeline of clients as a total beginner without a degree or portfolio? My (not so) secret ingredient is—an Etsy shop! Here are a few magic things about Etsy that make it the perfect tool to jumpstart your graphic design career: It has so much traffic to offer. Get your keywords and search optimization right and you’ll have a much higher pipeline of people checking out your work compared to the traditional build-a-website and organically-grow-traffic route. It’ll be smart to build yourself a website down the line once you have a meatier portfolio, but Etsy will get you much more traffic at a much faster pace. The creative freedom that selling templates online gives you is powerful. When you’re creating templates to sell, you have no client to work for, therefore you can design products exactly how you want, which is a great exercise in helping you find your personal style (and keeping things interesting!). You have the chance to start building an email list way early on in your career as a graphic designer/creative. Some hints on how to do this—add a link to your email signup at the bottom of your email signature, offer a 10% discount off your products if customers sign up for your email list, add the signup into your thank you note that Etsy automatically sends out to your customers. It puts you in touch with a global network of clients, which is amazing networking-wise, but also fulfilling to know that you’re helping people out across the globe. In my first 1.5 years of selling on Etsy, I’ve completed custom client projects for businesses and individuals in over ten countries and sold templates to clients in over fourty. Don’t underestimate the power of a local network, but how cool is it to have that sort of reach right off the bat?! Once you’ve found your groove and put products up in your shop, the flood gates will open and you’ll start receiving inquiries for custom designs—it’s portfolio building time! Tips for Designers Selling on ETSY Templates, templates, templates! And no, I’m not talking about the awesome design templates that you’ll be selling. You’ll find that you’re going to receive the same questions over and over again once your shop starts getting noticed. Every time you answer a new question copy and paste your answer into an easy-to-access doc or notepad so that you can use it again later and streamline your question-answering process. Create an Etsy section titled “Custom Jobs” or the like and create listings for each of the common custom services you offer (example here!). This will let visitors know that you’re open to custom jobs, inform them more about budget and project specifics before they get in touch with you, and overall raise the quality of the inquiries you’ll get because they will (usually) have checked out the info on your custom services already. This puts your clients and yourself on the same page and sets reasonable expectations, making your job easier. Generally, charge for custom jobs through Etsy’s platform. The amount of fees taken out of the order may be higher than those of Paypal, however, your client will be able to leave you a sparkling review, the sale will count towards your overall order count, and you can consolidate all your earnings in one place. However, if it’s quite a large custom job, these benefits may not be worth it to you—it’s smart to judge this on a case-by-case basis. Recycle “custom job” listings to save a TON of time by eliminating the need to build an entire listing for each. I usually have three listings that are dedicated to custom job payments. Whenever there’s a payment for a project due, I reuse one of these listings that has already been paid by a previous client, adjust the title to be something like “Custom Listing for Julia - Logo Design”, and adjust the price accordingly. Send the link to your client and you’re good to go! So, do you think you’re leaning towards setting up shop and diving headfirst into the freelance world as a college student? Here are a few more points to consider when deciding if it’s right for you. Benefits of Freelance Designing in College You can set your own schedule (and work from your bed!) It looks great to future employers and shows your drive, initiative, and entrepreneurial spirit. Plus, by building a network of clients, this can open opportunities for you in the future when you’re on a post-grad job hunt (or decide to freelance full time)! You learn a lot beyond what’s taught in your classes—both hard and soft skills You can blast music while getting your work done, all while in cozy sweatpants :) Drawbacks of Freelance Designing in College You can set your own schedule...and work from your bed… Finding the balance between schoolwork, design projects, campus clubs, a social life, and anything else you’ve got going on. It’s hard to study for that test when you know you’ve got a design deadline coming up and vice versa! You’ve got to be careful about people walking all over you. The people around you will often ask “can you make this quick flyer for me?” and you’ll be tempted to do it for minimal pay or for free. Sometimes it is absolutely the move to help a friend or family member out, but it can become a slippery slope. Two hints in general: charge more than you think you should, and ALWAYS have a contract clearly outline the scope + number of revisions. It’s more lonesome than a traditional on-campus job. Overall, the one thing that I truly believe you need to have in order to balance a full course load + a design business is passion. Generally, when working on a design project, I don’t even feel like I’m working at all—that’s how much I love what I do. I’m not sure it’d be an easy feat to succeed if your heart’s not in the game. However, if graphic design is your thing (or at least you think it may be in the future and you’re excited to put in the work and learn), there’s a wealth of opportunity out there for you, even without the design degree and no previous experience under your belt. Graphic designers in college (or any other graphic designer for that matter!), how do you make it work? Are there any tips + secrets I missed? Leave a comment below! Let’s stay in touch! Instagram | @bungalow.creative Pinterest | @bungalowcreative
How to Become a Graphic Designer in College
If you’re looking to become a graphic designer as a college student but thinking “where do I start?”, you’re not alone. How am I supposed to find clients? How much should I charge? It can take a bit of testing the waters to truly figure it out. In celebration of graduating from university next week, I’ll pull together some insight into how I built a 800+ customer, five-figure graphic design business on the side over the past year while attending college full time. Tutorials, Tutorials, Tutorials! I’d say that 80% of my graphic design skills are self-taught with the remaining 20% coming from design school itself. The good news here? You don’t really need to go to design school to become a successful designer—it’s all about having the drive to learn and better your skills on your own time. Online tutorials are probably the #1 most powerful way to learn graphic design—the wealth of information at your fingertips online is astounding. Lynda.com, Skillshare, and Adobe are all wonderful resources that are great ways to learn the basics and get comfortable using a variety of graphic design tools and programs. Once you have those down, YouTube and Pinterest are amazing for finding more niche tutorials that will bring your design skills to the next level (and allow you to have fun while doing so). What Software Should I Use? My recommendation to someone looking to dive into graphic design would be the Adobe Suite all the way—specifically Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro (perhaps Lightroom too if you’re working heavily with photos). These are the pretty much the holy trinity of graphic design—learn the uses for each tool and when it’s appropriate to use them (ex. logo designs in Illustrator, magazine layouts in InDesign). Luckily, Adobe offers a pretty kickass student discount that makes it affordable and definitely worth a subscription. Beyond this, some of my top-used tools in my belt include: WeTransfer (sending large files to clients) Coolors.co (a seamless way to put together color palettes) Trello (for organizing and keeping track of client projects/other to-dos) Toggl (for keeping track of time spent on projects) AND CO (awesome invoicing, proposal/contract, and expense tracking tool) Hipsum (you’re going to want to show this to everyone you know) Where to Get Clients? I’ll let you in on a little secret—all of my clients so far have been inbound. That’s right, I haven’t once put out a sales pitch (yet—planning on it in the future!). So, how did I achieve a steady pipeline of clients as a total beginner without a degree or portfolio? My (not so) secret ingredient is—an Etsy shop! Here are a few magic things about Etsy that make it the perfect tool to jumpstart your graphic design career: It has so much traffic to offer. Get your keywords and search optimization right and you’ll have a much higher pipeline of people checking out your work compared to the traditional build-a-website and organically-grow-traffic route. It’ll be smart to build yourself a website down the line once you have a meatier portfolio, but Etsy will get you much more traffic at a much faster pace. The creative freedom that selling templates online gives you is powerful. When you’re creating templates to sell, you have no client to work for, therefore you can design products exactly how you want, which is a great exercise in helping you find your personal style (and keeping things interesting!). You have the chance to start building an email list way early on in your career as a graphic designer/creative. Some hints on how to do this—add a link to your email signup at the bottom of your email signature, offer a 10% discount off your products if customers sign up for your email list, add the signup into your thank you note that Etsy automatically sends out to your customers. It puts you in touch with a global network of clients, which is amazing networking-wise, but also fulfilling to know that you’re helping people out across the globe. In my first 1.5 years of selling on Etsy, I’ve completed custom client projects for businesses and individuals in over ten countries and sold templates to clients in over fourty. Don’t underestimate the power of a local network, but how cool is it to have that sort of reach right off the bat?! Once you’ve found your groove and put products up in your shop, the flood gates will open and you’ll start receiving inquiries for custom designs—it’s portfolio building time! Tips for Designers Selling on ETSY Templates, templates, templates! And no, I’m not talking about the awesome design templates that you’ll be selling. You’ll find that you’re going to receive the same questions over and over again once your shop starts getting noticed. Every time you answer a new question copy and paste your answer into an easy-to-access doc or notepad so that you can use it again later and streamline your question-answering process. Create an Etsy section titled “Custom Jobs” or the like and create listings for each of the common custom services you offer (example here!). This will let visitors know that you’re open to custom jobs, inform them more about budget and project specifics before they get in touch with you, and overall raise the quality of the inquiries you’ll get because they will (usually) have checked out the info on your custom services already. This puts your clients and yourself on the same page and sets reasonable expectations, making your job easier. Generally, charge for custom jobs through Etsy’s platform. The amount of fees taken out of the order may be higher than those of Paypal, however, your client will be able to leave you a sparkling review, the sale will count towards your overall order count, and you can consolidate all your earnings in one place. However, if it’s quite a large custom job, these benefits may not be worth it to you—it’s smart to judge this on a case-by-case basis. Recycle “custom job” listings to save a TON of time by eliminating the need to build an entire listing for each. I usually have three listings that are dedicated to custom job payments. Whenever there’s a payment for a project due, I reuse one of these listings that has already been paid by a previous client, adjust the title to be something like “Custom Listing for Julia - Logo Design”, and adjust the price accordingly. Send the link to your client and you’re good to go! So, do you think you’re leaning towards setting up shop and diving headfirst into the freelance world as a college student? Here are a few more points to consider when deciding if it’s right for you. Benefits of Freelance Designing in College You can set your own schedule (and work from your bed!) It looks great to future employers and shows your drive, initiative, and entrepreneurial spirit. Plus, by building a network of clients, this can open opportunities for you in the future when you’re on a post-grad job hunt (or decide to freelance full time)! You learn a lot beyond what’s taught in your classes—both hard and soft skills You can blast music while getting your work done, all while in cozy sweatpants :) Drawbacks of Freelance Designing in College You can set your own schedule...and work from your bed… Finding the balance between schoolwork, design projects, campus clubs, a social life, and anything else you’ve got going on. It’s hard to study for that test when you know you’ve got a design deadline coming up and vice versa! You’ve got to be careful about people walking all over you. The people around you will often ask “can you make this quick flyer for me?” and you’ll be tempted to do it for minimal pay or for free. Sometimes it is absolutely the move to help a friend or family member out, but it can become a slippery slope. Two hints in general: charge more than you think you should, and ALWAYS have a contract clearly outline the scope + number of revisions. It’s more lonesome than a traditional on-campus job. Overall, the one thing that I truly believe you need to have in order to balance a full course load + a design business is passion. Generally, when working on a design project, I don’t even feel like I’m working at all—that’s how much I love what I do. I’m not sure it’d be an easy feat to succeed if your heart’s not in the game. However, if graphic design is your thing (or at least you think it may be in the future and you’re excited to put in the work and learn), there’s a wealth of opportunity out there for you, even without the design degree and no previous experience under your belt. Graphic designers in college (or any other graphic designer for that matter!), how do you make it work? Are there any tips + secrets I missed? Leave a comment below! Let’s stay in touch! Instagram | @bungalow.creative Pinterest | @bungalowcreative
eCommerce Branding Mistakes that are Costing You Money
✍ Written by Julia Dennis, Shopify Expert ⏱ 9 min read Key Takeaways Brand inconsistency drops customer recognition by 23% and directly costs you repeat purchases and word-of-mouth (MadNext). Visitors judge your credibility in 50 milliseconds, and 94% of that judgment is design-related (Google/Behaviour & IT). DIY branding yields 47% lower brand recognition—and rebranding 12-18 months later costs $15K-$500K (Flowster, BlankBoard Studio). Your Shopify theme isn't your brand. Color, typography, photography, and strategy need to exist independently of your template. Branding extends far beyond your logo—every touchpoint from email headers to packaging to your 404 page shapes how customers perceive you. Ecommerce branding mistakes are sneakily draining revenue from Shopify stores every day, and most founders don't realize it. A Marq study found that consistent branding increases revenue by up to 33%, which means if your brand is inconsistent, vague, or cobbled together from Canva templates, you're leaving up to a third of your potential revenue on the table. I've reviewed hundreds of Shopify stores at this point, and the same brand design mistakes keep showing up. Customer acquisition costs have risen 60% over the last five years (Digital1010), which means every visitor who bounces because your brand doesn't feel trustworthy is more expensive to replace than ever. Here are the seven eCommerce branding mistakes I see most often, ranked by how much they're costing you. (If you're looking for a broader overview, I also cover common Shopify mistakes to avoid.) 1. The Costliest eCommerce Branding Mistake: Skipping Strategy This is the most expensive eCommerce branding mistake on the list, and it's the one I see most often. A founder picks brand colors, chooses fonts, designs a logo—and does all of it before answering foundational questions like: Who exactly is this brand for? What do I want them to feel? How is this different from the 47 other stores selling similar products? Without strategy, design becomes decoration. And decoration doesn't convert. $500K The upper cost of rebranding BlankBoard Studio reports that rebranding 12-18 months after launch costs between $15,000 and $500,000—money that could've been saved with strategy-first branding. Brand strategy defines your positioning, your audience's emotional triggers, your visual direction, and your messaging framework. It's the blueprint that makes every design decision intentional rather than arbitrary. I've written a full breakdown of what goes into building a successful brand strategy if you want the deep dive. I worked with a candle brand last year that had already gone through two logo redesigns in 18 months. Both times, they jumped straight to visuals without defining who their customer was or what feeling the brand should evoke. The third time, we started with a two-week strategy phase before touching any design files. That brand hasn't changed a pixel since, because every design decision finally had a reason behind it. Strategy Check 📋 Before you design anything, you should be able to answer these three questions in one sentence each: Who is my ideal customer? What emotion should my brand trigger? What makes my brand visually distinct from my top three competitors? If you can't, you need strategy before design. 2. The eCommerce Branding Mistake That Kills Recognition: Inconsistent Visuals Your Shopify store uses one color palette. Your Instagram has a different vibe. Your email templates feel like they came from a different company entirely. Your packaging arrives and it barely resembles your website. Sound familiar? Inconsistency is one of the most common eCommerce branding mistakes—and one of the most damaging. A MadNext study found that companies with inconsistent branding saw a 23% drop in customer recognition. Meanwhile, a Marq (formerly Lucidpress) study found that consistent branding increases revenue by up to 33%. 33% Revenue increase from consistent branding The Marq/Lucidpress study found that brands maintaining visual consistency across all touchpoints saw revenue gains of up to 33%. Consistency doesn't mean rigid. It means your customer could screenshot any touchpoint—your homepage, a Facebook ad, your shipping confirmation email, your product insert—and immediately know it's the same brand. An Envive study found that brand-consistent navigation alone reduces bounce rate by 28%. That's a massive conversion lever most founders overlook. If you've recently invested in branding but aren't seeing results, the issue might be application. I've got a guide on making the most of your new branding that covers how to roll it out across every channel without losing cohesion. 🎨 Quick audit: Pull up your Shopify homepage, your last three Instagram posts, your most recent email campaign, and your packaging (or mockup). Place them side by side. If they don't look like they came from the same brand, you've got an inconsistency problem—and it's costing you recognition and trust. 3. Choosing Trendy Over Timeless Remember when every DTC brand used the same millennial pink, the same sans-serif all-caps logo, and the same flat illustration style? That trend peaked around 2019. The brands that followed it had to rebrand within two years because they suddenly looked dated—and identical to each other. Trend-chasing is one of the sneakiest eCommerce branding mistakes because it feels right in the moment. That ultra-minimal aesthetic or that maximalist Y2K revival looks amazing on your mood board. But trends have a shelf life. Your brand shouldn't. Tropicana learned this the hard way. Their 2009 logo redesign—chasing a "cleaner, more modern" look—caused a $30 million sales drop in just two months. Customers couldn't find the product on shelves because the brand they trusted had visually disappeared. Timeless Test ⏳ Before committing to a design direction, ask: "Will this still feel current in five years?" If the answer is "probably not," you're chasing a trend. Build your brand on timeless design principles and use trends only as accents—never as the foundation. I break this down further in my guide on creating a timeless brand. 4. Ignoring Typography as a Conversion Tool Most eCommerce founders spend hours choosing their logo and about twelve seconds picking their fonts. That's a problem, because typography does more heavy lifting than almost any other brand element on your Shopify store. Your fonts affect readability (will people actually read your product descriptions?), perceived quality (does this feel like a $200 product or a $20 knockoff?), and trust (does this brand seem professional or thrown together?). All three directly affect whether someone clicks "Add to Cart." A CXL study found that 75% of users judge a brand's credibility based on website design—and typography is one of the first things the eye registers. If your heading font fights with your body font, or your type sizes create a lackluster visual hierarchy, you're creating friction that kills conversions. 🔤 Typography red flags: More than three font families on your store. Body text smaller than 16px. Line height below 1.4. Heading and body fonts that share no visual relationship. Any of these will hurt readability and, by extension, your sales. I've seen product pages increase time-on-page by 15-20% just by fixing their type hierarchy, specifically on stores where product descriptions were the primary conversion driver (skincare, supplements, anything with ingredients or technical specs). If you're not sure where to start, my guide on choosing the right Shopify font pairing covers the fundamentals for both brand personality and conversion. 5. Treating Your Shopify Theme as Your Brand So here's the thing: your Shopify theme is a container, not an identity. Installing Dawn or Prestige shouldn't be the first time you give thought to things like your type hierarchy or color palette. Your theme dictates layout and functionality. Your brand is the color palette, the typography, the photography style, the voice, the feeling someone gets when they land on your site. If you switched themes tomorrow, your brand should survive the transition fully intact. When your brand lives inside your theme instead of independently, you're locked in. Every theme update feels risky. Switching to a better-performing theme means "losing" your brand. And your store ends up looking like every other merchant using the same template. (I reviewed the best Shopify themes recently—they're starting points, not finishing lines.) Brand Independence 🏗️ Your brand should exist in a document before it exists in a theme. That means a defined color palette (with hex codes), font selections, photography guidelines, logo usage rules, and a voice guide. If your entire brand would vanish when you change themes, you don't have a brand—you have a theme with a logo on it. The fix here isn't complicated, but it does require intention. Build your brand system outside of Shopify, document it, and then apply it to whatever theme you're using. Custom sections like The Section Studio can help bridge the gap between template and brand without a full custom build. 6. DIY-ing Your Branding to Save Money Real talk, I understand the impulse. You're bootstrapping, every dollar matters, and Canva exists. Why wouldn't you handle your own branding? Because the data says it'll cost you more in the long run. Flowster research found that DIY branding yields 47% lower brand recognition compared to professional branding. Lower recognition means fewer repeat customers, weaker word-of-mouth, and higher customer acquisition costs—which, remember, have already risen 60% over five years. 47% Lower brand recognition from DIY branding Flowster research found that DIY-branded businesses achieve roughly half the recognition of professionally branded competitors—directly impacting customer acquisition and retention. I'm not saying you need a $50K brand identity package on day one. But there's a massive difference between "I picked some colors in Canva" and "a professional built a cohesive brand system for my business." The gap between those two scenarios shows up in every metric: conversion rate, average order value, customer lifetime value, return rate. Factor DIY Branding Professional Branding Brand recognition 47% lower (Flowster) Full recognition potential Upfront cost $0-$500 $3,000-$15,000+ Rebrand likelihood (within 18 months) Very high Very low Rebrand cost $15,000-$500,000 Typically unnecessary Cross-channel consistency Difficult to maintain Built into brand guidelines Conversion impact Lower trust signals Professional credibility from day one If you're past the product-validation stage and you're ready to scale, professional branding is one of the highest-ROI investments you can make. And if you're not sure how to vet a studio, I've got a guide on what to look for in a branding studio. 7. Forgetting That Branding Extends Beyond Your Logo Your logo is maybe 5% of your brand. I'd argue it's the least important 5%, too. Yet I constantly see founders pour 80% of their branding budget into a logo and then slap default everything else onto their store. Branding is every single interaction a customer has with your business. It's the colors on your Shopify homepage. The tone of your abandoned cart email. The texture of your packaging. The way your 404 page makes someone feel. The micro-copy on your checkout button. An 88% majority of U.S. consumers say they purchase from brands that align with their values (Givsly, 2025)—and values are communicated through every touchpoint, not just a mark in the corner of your header. Research from Google and the journal Behaviour & Information Technology found that visitors form first impressions in 50 milliseconds, and 94% of those impressions are design-related. That impression isn't about your logo. It's about the overall visual experience—layout, color, spacing, imagery, typography—all working together. 💡 Beyond the logo: A Colorcom study found that 85% of consumers say color is the primary reason they bought a product. Your color palette, consistently applied across every touchpoint, has more brand impact than your logo ever will. Not sure about your palette? Take the color palette quiz to see where you stand. Your high-converting Shopify home page matters. But so does your order confirmation page. Your post-purchase email sequence. Your social media grid. Your product photography style. Every one of these is a branding moment. If you're looking for inspiration on where brand shows up in places you might not expect, check out my post on unexpected moments to showcase your brand. The Real Cost of Getting Branding Wrong I'll give you a real example of how these compound. I audited a jewelry brand doing $35K/month on Shopify. Their product photography was beautiful, but their Shopify store used a cool-toned minimal theme while their Instagram was warm and editorial. Their Klaviyo emails were still using default system fonts. Customers were clicking through from Instagram ads and landing on a store that felt like a completely different brand. Bounce rate was 68%. After aligning their storefront colors and typography to match their strongest brand asset (the Instagram aesthetic), updating their email templates to use the same font pairing, and tightening their product page layout, their bounce rate dropped to 41% and their conversion rate went from 1.4% to 2.3% within six weeks. That's an extra $10K/month from the same traffic. No new ad spend—just brand consistency. For a store doing $10K/month, leaving 33% on the table (per the Marq data) means $3,300 in lost revenue every month. For a store doing $50K/month, you're looking at $16,500. And that's before factoring in the rising acquisition costs eating into your margins. I've written about how to increase your Shopify conversion rate when traffic isn't the problem, and branding is almost always part of the answer. If you're wondering where to start, fix consistency first. It requires no new assets, just discipline. Audit your touchpoints, align them, and you'll see results before tackling the bigger strategic questions. Explore Bungalow Creative eCommerce Services Browse The Section Studio Frequently Asked Questions How much revenue can consistent branding add to an eCommerce business? A Marq (formerly Lucidpress) study found that consistent branding can increase revenue by up to 33%. This comes from stronger recognition, higher trust, and improved repeat purchase rates. Even small consistency improvements—like aligning your email templates with your storefront colors and typography—move the needle. What is the most expensive branding mistake eCommerce founders make? Skipping brand strategy and jumping straight into design. Without strategy, founders typically need to rebrand within 12-18 months, which costs between $15,000 and $500,000 depending on scope (BlankBoard Studio). Strategy-first branding saves money long-term because every design decision has a clear rationale behind it. How quickly do customers judge an eCommerce website's credibility? Research from Google and the journal Behaviour & Information Technology found that visitors form first impressions within 50 milliseconds, and 94% of those impressions are design-related. A CXL study also found that 75% of users judge credibility based on website design alone. Does typography really affect eCommerce sales? Yes. Typography directly affects readability, perceived product quality, and trust—all of which influence conversion rates. Poor font choices or inconsistent type sizing create friction that makes visitors less likely to read product descriptions, trust your brand, or complete a purchase. How do I know if my Shopify store has a branding problem? Common signs: your store looks different from your social media or packaging, you're getting traffic but low conversions, customers can't describe what makes you different, your visuals change depending on who creates the assets, and your bounce rate is above average. If two or more apply, branding is likely costing you sales. Can I fix my eCommerce branding without a full rebrand? Absolutely. Many branding issues can be addressed through a brand refresh. Audit your touchpoints for consistency, tighten your color palette and typography, create brand guidelines if you don't have them, and align your Shopify storefront with your strongest brand assets. A full rebrand is only necessary when your brand fundamentally no longer reflects your audience or market position. What branding elements matter most for Shopify conversion rates? The highest-impact elements are: a consistent color palette (85% of consumers say color drives purchase decisions), typography that reinforces trust and readability, cohesive product and lifestyle photography, brand-consistent navigation (which can reduce bounce rates by 28% per Envive), and a clear value proposition communicated visually within the first fold of your homepage. Should I DIY my eCommerce branding or hire a professional? It depends on your stage. DIY can work for validating a product idea, but Flowster research shows DIY branding yields 47% lower brand recognition. If you're past validation and ready to scale, professional branding typically pays for itself through higher conversions, stronger loyalty, and avoiding the $15K-$500K cost of rebranding later.
eCommerce Branding Mistakes that are Costing You Money
✍ Written by Julia Dennis, Shopify Expert ⏱ 9 min read Key Takeaways Brand inconsistency drops customer recognition by 23% and directly costs you repeat purchases and word-of-mouth (MadNext). Visitors judge your credibility in 50 milliseconds, and 94% of that judgment is design-related (Google/Behaviour & IT). DIY branding yields 47% lower brand recognition—and rebranding 12-18 months later costs $15K-$500K (Flowster, BlankBoard Studio). Your Shopify theme isn't your brand. Color, typography, photography, and strategy need to exist independently of your template. Branding extends far beyond your logo—every touchpoint from email headers to packaging to your 404 page shapes how customers perceive you. Ecommerce branding mistakes are sneakily draining revenue from Shopify stores every day, and most founders don't realize it. A Marq study found that consistent branding increases revenue by up to 33%, which means if your brand is inconsistent, vague, or cobbled together from Canva templates, you're leaving up to a third of your potential revenue on the table. I've reviewed hundreds of Shopify stores at this point, and the same brand design mistakes keep showing up. Customer acquisition costs have risen 60% over the last five years (Digital1010), which means every visitor who bounces because your brand doesn't feel trustworthy is more expensive to replace than ever. Here are the seven eCommerce branding mistakes I see most often, ranked by how much they're costing you. (If you're looking for a broader overview, I also cover common Shopify mistakes to avoid.) 1. The Costliest eCommerce Branding Mistake: Skipping Strategy This is the most expensive eCommerce branding mistake on the list, and it's the one I see most often. A founder picks brand colors, chooses fonts, designs a logo—and does all of it before answering foundational questions like: Who exactly is this brand for? What do I want them to feel? How is this different from the 47 other stores selling similar products? Without strategy, design becomes decoration. And decoration doesn't convert. $500K The upper cost of rebranding BlankBoard Studio reports that rebranding 12-18 months after launch costs between $15,000 and $500,000—money that could've been saved with strategy-first branding. Brand strategy defines your positioning, your audience's emotional triggers, your visual direction, and your messaging framework. It's the blueprint that makes every design decision intentional rather than arbitrary. I've written a full breakdown of what goes into building a successful brand strategy if you want the deep dive. I worked with a candle brand last year that had already gone through two logo redesigns in 18 months. Both times, they jumped straight to visuals without defining who their customer was or what feeling the brand should evoke. The third time, we started with a two-week strategy phase before touching any design files. That brand hasn't changed a pixel since, because every design decision finally had a reason behind it. Strategy Check 📋 Before you design anything, you should be able to answer these three questions in one sentence each: Who is my ideal customer? What emotion should my brand trigger? What makes my brand visually distinct from my top three competitors? If you can't, you need strategy before design. 2. The eCommerce Branding Mistake That Kills Recognition: Inconsistent Visuals Your Shopify store uses one color palette. Your Instagram has a different vibe. Your email templates feel like they came from a different company entirely. Your packaging arrives and it barely resembles your website. Sound familiar? Inconsistency is one of the most common eCommerce branding mistakes—and one of the most damaging. A MadNext study found that companies with inconsistent branding saw a 23% drop in customer recognition. Meanwhile, a Marq (formerly Lucidpress) study found that consistent branding increases revenue by up to 33%. 33% Revenue increase from consistent branding The Marq/Lucidpress study found that brands maintaining visual consistency across all touchpoints saw revenue gains of up to 33%. Consistency doesn't mean rigid. It means your customer could screenshot any touchpoint—your homepage, a Facebook ad, your shipping confirmation email, your product insert—and immediately know it's the same brand. An Envive study found that brand-consistent navigation alone reduces bounce rate by 28%. That's a massive conversion lever most founders overlook. If you've recently invested in branding but aren't seeing results, the issue might be application. I've got a guide on making the most of your new branding that covers how to roll it out across every channel without losing cohesion. 🎨 Quick audit: Pull up your Shopify homepage, your last three Instagram posts, your most recent email campaign, and your packaging (or mockup). Place them side by side. If they don't look like they came from the same brand, you've got an inconsistency problem—and it's costing you recognition and trust. 3. Choosing Trendy Over Timeless Remember when every DTC brand used the same millennial pink, the same sans-serif all-caps logo, and the same flat illustration style? That trend peaked around 2019. The brands that followed it had to rebrand within two years because they suddenly looked dated—and identical to each other. Trend-chasing is one of the sneakiest eCommerce branding mistakes because it feels right in the moment. That ultra-minimal aesthetic or that maximalist Y2K revival looks amazing on your mood board. But trends have a shelf life. Your brand shouldn't. Tropicana learned this the hard way. Their 2009 logo redesign—chasing a "cleaner, more modern" look—caused a $30 million sales drop in just two months. Customers couldn't find the product on shelves because the brand they trusted had visually disappeared. Timeless Test ⏳ Before committing to a design direction, ask: "Will this still feel current in five years?" If the answer is "probably not," you're chasing a trend. Build your brand on timeless design principles and use trends only as accents—never as the foundation. I break this down further in my guide on creating a timeless brand. 4. Ignoring Typography as a Conversion Tool Most eCommerce founders spend hours choosing their logo and about twelve seconds picking their fonts. That's a problem, because typography does more heavy lifting than almost any other brand element on your Shopify store. Your fonts affect readability (will people actually read your product descriptions?), perceived quality (does this feel like a $200 product or a $20 knockoff?), and trust (does this brand seem professional or thrown together?). All three directly affect whether someone clicks "Add to Cart." A CXL study found that 75% of users judge a brand's credibility based on website design—and typography is one of the first things the eye registers. If your heading font fights with your body font, or your type sizes create a lackluster visual hierarchy, you're creating friction that kills conversions. 🔤 Typography red flags: More than three font families on your store. Body text smaller than 16px. Line height below 1.4. Heading and body fonts that share no visual relationship. Any of these will hurt readability and, by extension, your sales. I've seen product pages increase time-on-page by 15-20% just by fixing their type hierarchy, specifically on stores where product descriptions were the primary conversion driver (skincare, supplements, anything with ingredients or technical specs). If you're not sure where to start, my guide on choosing the right Shopify font pairing covers the fundamentals for both brand personality and conversion. 5. Treating Your Shopify Theme as Your Brand So here's the thing: your Shopify theme is a container, not an identity. Installing Dawn or Prestige shouldn't be the first time you give thought to things like your type hierarchy or color palette. Your theme dictates layout and functionality. Your brand is the color palette, the typography, the photography style, the voice, the feeling someone gets when they land on your site. If you switched themes tomorrow, your brand should survive the transition fully intact. When your brand lives inside your theme instead of independently, you're locked in. Every theme update feels risky. Switching to a better-performing theme means "losing" your brand. And your store ends up looking like every other merchant using the same template. (I reviewed the best Shopify themes recently—they're starting points, not finishing lines.) Brand Independence 🏗️ Your brand should exist in a document before it exists in a theme. That means a defined color palette (with hex codes), font selections, photography guidelines, logo usage rules, and a voice guide. If your entire brand would vanish when you change themes, you don't have a brand—you have a theme with a logo on it. The fix here isn't complicated, but it does require intention. Build your brand system outside of Shopify, document it, and then apply it to whatever theme you're using. Custom sections like The Section Studio can help bridge the gap between template and brand without a full custom build. 6. DIY-ing Your Branding to Save Money Real talk, I understand the impulse. You're bootstrapping, every dollar matters, and Canva exists. Why wouldn't you handle your own branding? Because the data says it'll cost you more in the long run. Flowster research found that DIY branding yields 47% lower brand recognition compared to professional branding. Lower recognition means fewer repeat customers, weaker word-of-mouth, and higher customer acquisition costs—which, remember, have already risen 60% over five years. 47% Lower brand recognition from DIY branding Flowster research found that DIY-branded businesses achieve roughly half the recognition of professionally branded competitors—directly impacting customer acquisition and retention. I'm not saying you need a $50K brand identity package on day one. But there's a massive difference between "I picked some colors in Canva" and "a professional built a cohesive brand system for my business." The gap between those two scenarios shows up in every metric: conversion rate, average order value, customer lifetime value, return rate. Factor DIY Branding Professional Branding Brand recognition 47% lower (Flowster) Full recognition potential Upfront cost $0-$500 $3,000-$15,000+ Rebrand likelihood (within 18 months) Very high Very low Rebrand cost $15,000-$500,000 Typically unnecessary Cross-channel consistency Difficult to maintain Built into brand guidelines Conversion impact Lower trust signals Professional credibility from day one If you're past the product-validation stage and you're ready to scale, professional branding is one of the highest-ROI investments you can make. And if you're not sure how to vet a studio, I've got a guide on what to look for in a branding studio. 7. Forgetting That Branding Extends Beyond Your Logo Your logo is maybe 5% of your brand. I'd argue it's the least important 5%, too. Yet I constantly see founders pour 80% of their branding budget into a logo and then slap default everything else onto their store. Branding is every single interaction a customer has with your business. It's the colors on your Shopify homepage. The tone of your abandoned cart email. The texture of your packaging. The way your 404 page makes someone feel. The micro-copy on your checkout button. An 88% majority of U.S. consumers say they purchase from brands that align with their values (Givsly, 2025)—and values are communicated through every touchpoint, not just a mark in the corner of your header. Research from Google and the journal Behaviour & Information Technology found that visitors form first impressions in 50 milliseconds, and 94% of those impressions are design-related. That impression isn't about your logo. It's about the overall visual experience—layout, color, spacing, imagery, typography—all working together. 💡 Beyond the logo: A Colorcom study found that 85% of consumers say color is the primary reason they bought a product. Your color palette, consistently applied across every touchpoint, has more brand impact than your logo ever will. Not sure about your palette? Take the color palette quiz to see where you stand. Your high-converting Shopify home page matters. But so does your order confirmation page. Your post-purchase email sequence. Your social media grid. Your product photography style. Every one of these is a branding moment. If you're looking for inspiration on where brand shows up in places you might not expect, check out my post on unexpected moments to showcase your brand. The Real Cost of Getting Branding Wrong I'll give you a real example of how these compound. I audited a jewelry brand doing $35K/month on Shopify. Their product photography was beautiful, but their Shopify store used a cool-toned minimal theme while their Instagram was warm and editorial. Their Klaviyo emails were still using default system fonts. Customers were clicking through from Instagram ads and landing on a store that felt like a completely different brand. Bounce rate was 68%. After aligning their storefront colors and typography to match their strongest brand asset (the Instagram aesthetic), updating their email templates to use the same font pairing, and tightening their product page layout, their bounce rate dropped to 41% and their conversion rate went from 1.4% to 2.3% within six weeks. That's an extra $10K/month from the same traffic. No new ad spend—just brand consistency. For a store doing $10K/month, leaving 33% on the table (per the Marq data) means $3,300 in lost revenue every month. For a store doing $50K/month, you're looking at $16,500. And that's before factoring in the rising acquisition costs eating into your margins. I've written about how to increase your Shopify conversion rate when traffic isn't the problem, and branding is almost always part of the answer. If you're wondering where to start, fix consistency first. It requires no new assets, just discipline. Audit your touchpoints, align them, and you'll see results before tackling the bigger strategic questions. Explore Bungalow Creative eCommerce Services Browse The Section Studio Frequently Asked Questions How much revenue can consistent branding add to an eCommerce business? A Marq (formerly Lucidpress) study found that consistent branding can increase revenue by up to 33%. This comes from stronger recognition, higher trust, and improved repeat purchase rates. Even small consistency improvements—like aligning your email templates with your storefront colors and typography—move the needle. What is the most expensive branding mistake eCommerce founders make? Skipping brand strategy and jumping straight into design. Without strategy, founders typically need to rebrand within 12-18 months, which costs between $15,000 and $500,000 depending on scope (BlankBoard Studio). Strategy-first branding saves money long-term because every design decision has a clear rationale behind it. How quickly do customers judge an eCommerce website's credibility? Research from Google and the journal Behaviour & Information Technology found that visitors form first impressions within 50 milliseconds, and 94% of those impressions are design-related. A CXL study also found that 75% of users judge credibility based on website design alone. Does typography really affect eCommerce sales? Yes. Typography directly affects readability, perceived product quality, and trust—all of which influence conversion rates. Poor font choices or inconsistent type sizing create friction that makes visitors less likely to read product descriptions, trust your brand, or complete a purchase. How do I know if my Shopify store has a branding problem? Common signs: your store looks different from your social media or packaging, you're getting traffic but low conversions, customers can't describe what makes you different, your visuals change depending on who creates the assets, and your bounce rate is above average. If two or more apply, branding is likely costing you sales. Can I fix my eCommerce branding without a full rebrand? Absolutely. Many branding issues can be addressed through a brand refresh. Audit your touchpoints for consistency, tighten your color palette and typography, create brand guidelines if you don't have them, and align your Shopify storefront with your strongest brand assets. A full rebrand is only necessary when your brand fundamentally no longer reflects your audience or market position. What branding elements matter most for Shopify conversion rates? The highest-impact elements are: a consistent color palette (85% of consumers say color drives purchase decisions), typography that reinforces trust and readability, cohesive product and lifestyle photography, brand-consistent navigation (which can reduce bounce rates by 28% per Envive), and a clear value proposition communicated visually within the first fold of your homepage. Should I DIY my eCommerce branding or hire a professional? It depends on your stage. DIY can work for validating a product idea, but Flowster research shows DIY branding yields 47% lower brand recognition. If you're past validation and ready to scale, professional branding typically pays for itself through higher conversions, stronger loyalty, and avoiding the $15K-$500K cost of rebranding later.
