A retail rebuild that turned a quiet store into a loud-selling B2B engine

How it started

Dan reached out for a small fix - a Shopify bug that the official support team had been trying to resolve for weeks with no progress. We fixed it in under twelve hours. That was the start of the conversation.

Once the immediate problem was solved, the real story came out. Revenue had been flat for a couple of years. Abandoned carts were piling up. The store looked dated, customers were getting lost in the navigation, and there were almost no reasons to stay on the site once they landed. And then there was the bigger, quieter problem buried underneath all of it: the B2B side of the business was running entirely on email.

Approved wholesale customers had to send their resale tax ID, wait for verification, then place orders manually with the team. Every B2B sale was a small administrative project. It was capping growth in a way that didn't show up on any dashboard, because the bottleneck was hidden in how the business was being run, not in the metrics being measured.

What we set out to do

We treated this as a full rebuild, not a refresh. Three connected workstreams, each one feeding the next:

1. A complete storefront redesign that made navigation intuitive and shortened the path from landing page to checkout.
2. A simplified, self-serve B2B flow that took wholesale ordering out of the inbox and into the platform.
3. A long-term CRO and SEO foundation so the new store wouldn't just look better, it would compound over time.

We wanted Dan to wake up six months in and find that the store was doing the heavy lifting, not the team.

The redesign: fewer clicks, more reasons to stay

The old site asked too much of visitors. To find what they wanted, customers had to navigate through layers of categories, hunt for filters that didn't quite work, and click more times than any modern shopper has patience for.

We restructured the entire information architecture so the most-purchased categories surfaced from the home page directly. We rebuilt the collection and product pages with clear hierarchy, real product imagery, and trust elements (reviews, shipping signals, social proof) placed where they actually influence the decision. The new design isn't just prettier - it's faster to navigate, and the path to checkout is measured in seconds, not minutes.

We also added the small details that quietly make a store feel modern and trustworthy: a live chat that's genuinely useful, automated product reviews that build social proof passively, an Instagram feed that ties the store to the brand's day-to-day, and upsell logic that nudges average order value without being pushy.

The B2B fix: from inbox to self-serve

This was the change that unlocked the most growth, and it's the one Dan hadn't realized was possible.

We built a self-serve wholesale registration flow directly into the storefront. Prospective B2B customers now apply through the website itself - they submit their business details and resale tax documentation through a built-in form. Dan and his team review and approve applications from the Shopify admin, assign the appropriate discounted catalog to the approved customer, and the system handles the rest.

Once approved, B2B customers sign into their account on the storefront and see their negotiated prices automatically. They can place orders any time, at any volume, without a single email exchange. The administrative load on the team dropped to near zero, and B2B customers got the experience they expect in 2026: real-time pricing, real-time inventory, real-time checkout.

This was built on Shopify B2B (part of the Plus platform), which meant we could do all of this without bolting on a third-party app that would lag, conflict with the storefront, or break with the next Shopify update.

The technical decisions worth talking about

A few choices we made deliberately, because they shape how the store runs day to day:

Shopify Plus. The B2B functionality alone justified Plus, and the headroom it gives for Flow automations, checkout customization, and future scale was a separate strong argument. Plus pays for itself fast when you're using what it actually offers.

Hardcoded over apps, almost everywhere. Most Shopify stores collect apps the way computers collect browser tabs - one for upsells, one for reviews, one for badges, one for popups. Each one adds load time, conflict risk, and recurring cost. We hardcoded the majority of the functionality directly into the theme. The store runs lean, fast, and without the small UI quirks that signal "third-party app" to attentive shoppers.

Shopify Flow for the operational automation - approving B2B customers, tagging orders, triggering follow-up sequences. The work happens silently in the background while Dan focuses on the business.

Klaviyo email templates and flows for the customer side: welcome series, abandoned cart recovery, post-purchase, win-back. Built in the same brand language as the storefront so the experience is consistent from inbox to checkout.

Microsoft Clarity for behavioral analytics, because if you're going to do CRO seriously you need to see how people actually use the site, not just where they click.

What changed

In the months after launch, the numbers moved meaningfully and in the right direction:

• Sessions are up 70%, driven by the SEO foundation we put in and a better-converting site that signals quality to search engines
• Sales are up 42%
• Order volume is up 42%
• Conversion rate is up 26% from the pre-redesign baseline

But the numbers that matter most are the ones that don't show up on a dashboard. The B2B process now runs without human intervention. Abandoned carts are down. Dan can spend his time on the business instead of in it.

Where we are now

What started as a single bug fix is now an ongoing partnership. Code2Commerce runs the SEO program, handles ongoing development and maintenance, builds custom landing pages and product templates as the business grows, and acts as the technical extension of Dan's team.

The website is no longer something Dan has to think about. It's something that quietly compounds while he runs the parts of the business that only he can.