Commence Studio

The new https://na2.hubs.ly/H05gQ9w0 is live.

A clearer story. A sharper identity. 69 case studies. 47 essays. One coherent point of view about brand and commerce, finally in one place.

Built in 7 days, because we wanted to see if we could.

The work is the part we want you to look at. Start with the case studies and discover our Insights.
→ https://na2.hubs.ly/H05gQ9w0

We are absolutely feeling the force.

Seven days ago, the team accepted a mission that, for the record, had a non-zero chance of ending in a Sith-level meltdown.

A week later, here's the receipt:
69 case studies. 47 blog posts. One new website. One week.

Made the Kessel run in slightly more than 12 parsecs. Documentation pending.
A new hope drops later this week. Stay tuned. These are the case studies you're looking for.

"We already have a brand. We just need a new website."

That's exactly what Sorella Apothecary told us on our first call.

It's the most common thing we hear from growth-stage brands. And it's almost never the full picture.

When we dug into Sorella's situation, their brand was a logo and a color palette that looked different on every channel. The website said one thing. The packaging said another. Their wholesale materials for estheticians and spas told a completely different story. There was no system connecting any of it.

So we did something most agencies wouldn't suggest (because it's more work and a bigger conversation): we rebuilt the content architecture first. Defined the art direction and UX. Created a visual system that worked across web, social, events and wholesale. Then we brought in our photography and video team to create content that matched. Then we built the commerce experience on Shopify Plus to deliver on all of it.

If we had just "built a new website" without addressing the content architecture, we would have built a pretty site on a shaky foundation. And in 12 months, they'd be back for another redesign.

Instead: AOV up 17%. Add-to-carts up 155%. First-time purchasers up 92%. Email revenue up 150%. And a brand that finally feels like one brand everywhere.

The brands that invest in the foundation don't need to keep rebuilding. They compound.

CRO is not a Shopify app.

I see this pattern constantly: a brand installs three or four conversion optimization apps, runs some A/B tests on button colors, and calls it a "CRO strategy."

Then they wonder why their conversion rate hasn't moved.

When we rebuilt Sorella Apothecary's commerce experience, we didn't start with apps. We started with research; heatmaps, customer surveys, behavioral analytics. We studied how people actually shopped on their site before we changed a single thing.

Then we rebuilt the architecture around what we learned. Navigation built around how customers actually browse, not how the brand organized their inventory internally. Clear page hierarchy where every page has a job and a next step. Load performance so people don't bounce before they see the product. Trust signals at every friction point.

The result was a 4.86% conversion rate and a 155% increase in add-to-carts. Not from apps. From strategy & architecture.

The brands with the best conversion rates don't have the best tech stack. They have the best understanding of how their customers actually behave, and they've built a system around that.

If you're spending money on traffic but haven't invested in understanding what happens after the click, you're filling a leaky bucket. That's literally what our Blueprint diagnostic is designed to uncover.