When Aurelie & Co. came to us, they had a problem that looked like a design problem but was really an identity problem. Their WooCommerce store was generating traffic — paid social was working — but conversion sat stubbornly at 0.8%. Industry average for fashion e-commerce is 1.5–2.5%. Something between the click and the purchase was breaking trust.

The founder’s instruction was simple: “Make it feel like walking into our Paris showroom.” That sentence became the filter for every design decision we made over the following three weeks. Anything that didn’t feel like a considered luxury experience got cut.

The existing site was built on a generic Shopify theme. The brand had outgrown it: the photography was editorial-level, but the product pages were formatted like a discount retailer. Price, add to cart, shipping info — in that order. No story, no context, no reason to linger.

We moved the project to WooCommerce on WordPress for two reasons: the client needed a lookbook system (custom post type, not a plugin) and they needed the product page layout to vary by collection without developer intervention each time.

The product page restructure was the most significant change. We introduced a two-column full-height layout: product imagery on the left, a curated story panel on the right — fabric sourcing, the atelier, the designer’s notes. Add-to-cart moved below the fold intentionally. Visitors who read the story converted at 4.2× the rate of those who scrolled past it.

We also rebuilt the size guide from scratch as an interactive overlay — the existing PDF link had an 11% click rate; the new interactive version reached 34% within the first month.

Three months post-launch, conversion rate sits at 2.4% — a 3× improvement. Average order value increased by €47, driven by the cross-sell system we built into the collection pages. The client has since expanded the scope to a second brand under the same parent company.

The most important lesson from this project: in luxury e-commerce, friction is not always the enemy. Slowing the visitor down — giving them a reason to stay — can be more valuable than removing every obstacle between them and checkout.