Create Room: Redesign and Theme Migration

As the sole UX Engineer on a marketing team, I led a full redesign and theme migration for a multi-million dollar e-commerce brand, cutting page load times from 4.2s to 1.8s, simplifying the purchase funnel, and increasing conversion by 23%.

Overview

Create Room is a craft furniture brand with customers across the US, UK, and Canada. Their flagship product, the DreamBox, drove the majority of revenue, but the website wasn't keeping up. It was slow, cluttered, and losing customers at every step of the funnel.

My goal: Increase sales by redesigning the web experience from the ground up.

1. Identifying the Problems

I started by diving into Google Analytics and Shopify Analytics, mapping out the full purchase funnel (homepage, product page, cart, and checkout) and tracking click-through rates at each step.

The data told a clear story: out of 4.3 million sessions, 2.8 million were dropping off. We were losing customers at nearly every stage.

2. Analyzing the Funnel

The biggest insight from analytics was how much we were losing at each step. The homepage alone had a 50-60% drop-off rate, and the funnel had an unnecessary extra step: a "detail page" that sat between the homepage and the product page.

The old flow was: Homepage → Detail Page → Product Page → Cart → Checkout. Five steps where four would do.

There was also a major insight around price: the site hid the price until the cart page. Users were progressing through the funnel without knowing what they'd pay, and a huge chunk dropped off the moment they saw the total. We hypothesized that price transparency earlier in the flow would reduce sticker shock and improve cart-to-checkout conversion.

3. Setting Goals

The problems became clear opportunities to solve for during the theme migration and redesign:

4. Homepage Redesign: Designing for Persuasion

The homepage was the highest-leverage page to redesign. I structured it around Cialdini's 7 Principles of Influence, mapping each section to a psychological driver of conversion.

One key debate was whether the homepage should be purely focused on selling the DreamBox (our hero product), or whether it should be more navigational and showcase all offerings. We decided to test the navigational approach, and sales didn't drop, while other products gained significantly more visibility.

Principles in Practice

The redesigned homepage treated each section as a distinct persuasion layer, guiding visitors from awareness to action.

Result: Homepage drop-off rate went from 50-60% down to 20-30%.

5. Product Page: Reducing Friction

The product page was the biggest performance offender. Load times sat at around 4.2 seconds with significant layout shift as elements popped in.

I focused on three things:

• Reducing vertical scroll by cutting unnecessary content and being more intentional about what showed above the fold
• Eliminating layout shift so the page felt stable and trustworthy immediately
• Being transparent about price by showing the cost clearly on the product page, reducing the sticker shock that was causing cart abandonment

The product page was streamlined to load fast, show the price clearly, and reduce the amount of scrolling needed to reach the CTA.

Result: Product page drop-off decreased by roughly 30%, and load times dropped from 4.2 seconds to 1.8 seconds.

6. Cart Page: Clearing the Path to Checkout

The old cart page was the final leak in the funnel. It had heavy background noise, unclear section boundaries, and external links that pulled people away from completing their purchase.

I stripped back the design to make the cart focused and scannable:

• Clear visual hierarchy so the price and CTA stood out
• Removed distracting outbound links
• Simplified the layout so users could quickly review their order and proceed

The new cart page had one job: get people to checkout. Everything else was removed or de-emphasized.

7. Maintainable Component Library

In addition to the redesign, I built a reusable component library using Tailwind CSS and Shopify Liquid. This gave the marketing team the ability to spin up new landing pages quickly without needing developer involvement for every change.

Modular sections meant new pages could be assembled from existing parts, cutting turnaround time dramatically.

Outcomes

A Faster Website

By migrating to a well-supported theme, optimizing assets, and removing years of tech debt, we cut load times across the entire site.

The Numbers

Ongoing Optimization

With the new foundation in place, we continued running AB tests to iterate on the design and find further improvements.

Takeaways

• Let data lead. Google Analytics told us exactly where the funnel was leaking. That focus shaped every design decision.
• Performance is experience. A 1.8-second product page converts better than a 4-second one, no matter how good the design is.
• Transparency builds trust. Hiding the price created sticker shock at checkout. Showing it early reduced cart abandonment.
• Fewer steps, more conversions. Cutting one page from the funnel had a measurable impact on the bottom line.
• Test the assumptions. We debated whether showing all products would hurt DreamBox sales. Testing proved it didn't, and gave other products the visibility they needed.