The Transition
to Shopify
K. Hall Studio, LLC - Spring 2025
Since 1998, K. Hall Studio has been a local institution in St. Louis for high-quality handcrafted home fragrance and personal care. With a growing portfolio of brands, their online retail presence has become essential to their success in both B2B and B2C sales.
The old website, a custom Wordpress theme merged with BigCommerce retail management, created a shopping experience that was slow to load, hard to navigate and didn’t adhere to modern responsive web design principles. Transitioning to an all-in-one commerce hub like Shopify was an easier and more effective solution to increase their B2C sales. The objective through the transition was to unify their digital presence with elevated brand guidelines and storytelling, improve user experience and create a more future-proof theme.
While working in collaboration with the operations team to begin transitioning over, I focused my efforts on updating branding guidelines to ensure a consistent design direction for the new site. The stylistic changes were not a rebranding, but rather an elevation and unification of the K. Hall Studio look and feel for the future.
Analyzing the previous website found a plethora of issues, from overwhelming menus to non-existent product filters, unresponsive images and a lack of useful product information. It also needed improved information hierarchy, to increase legibility and create a smoother web experience for their older customer base.
With no dedicated web developers on staff, starting with a native Shopify theme provided a responsive and easily adaptable base to customize both in the redesign and in the future. I coded in their new signature Freight Pro serif and increased header sizing for a modern feel. To solve the menu issues, I adjusted a new organized mega menu with fragrances sorted by family, while allowing customers to shop bestsellers with one click. Search features now match the menu, with added color sorting. For a final touch, I added product information in collapsible sections, for added ingredient and candle care information, with a custom fragrance banner to highlight the scent description below.
