E-commerce

Twenty years in luxury, D2C, B2B, and content commerce.

E-commerce is where complex digital decision journeys get worked out first, accommodating customers researching, comparing, abandoning carts, returning to the site for the fifth time before they buy. The patterns from that work; search and discovery, decision support, content that earns trust, and checkout that doesn't lose people at the last step, are what we bring to e-commerce engagements. Some of them, we came up with in the first place. Our core services (digital strategy, user research, UX design, and content strategy) cover most engagement shapes.

The problems we work on

Across e-commerce engagements, most of the available revenue and experience gains cluster around the same set of problems. Here’s the top five; if of these seem familiar, let's talk.

  • If you can't find it, you can't buy it. If you can't understand what it is, you won't buy it. Faceted search, natural-language query handling, recommendation logic, content-driven discovery for products that don't have obvious search terms (visual products, fashion, art, anything where the customer can't fully articulate what they want), and a page strategy that connects campaigns to products.

  • For high-consideration purchases (luxury goods, art, B2B equipment, financial products, anything customers think about over days or weeks), the decision journey is where the work is. A page of product specs documents facts. A well-designed decision journey guides the decision. That means content that addresses the actual decision criteria, comparison patterns that don't paralyze, social proof done credibly, and the digital equivalent of a knowledgeable salesperson at the moment of hesitation. This is where Ben has spent the most time, and it's where most considered-purchase sites have the most room to improve.

  • The work that gets a customer to the cart is wasted if the cart and/or checkout loses them. Address forms that respect international and edge-case users. Payment options that match what the customer actually wants to use (Apple Pay, Klarna, ACH for B2B). Guest checkout that genuinely works. Error handling that doesn't punish the customer for the form's mistakes. Post-purchase that sets up the next purchase rather than ends the relationship. Most checkout problems are old problems. Solving them is mostly disciplined craft.

  • For brands where content is a customer-acquisition channel (publications, lifestyle brands, content-led D2C, art and culture sites), the editorial-to-commerce path is where the leverage is. Editorial that does the merchandising job without feeling like merchandising. Product placement inside content that doesn't break the read. Reader-to-buyer journeys built around the actual editorial calendar your team runs. This is where Christine and Ben collaborate most directly: design and content strategy on the same engagement, with editorial discipline that respects the reader.

  • Sooner or later, every e-commerce site outgrows the platform it's on. Shopify-to-headless. Magento-to-Shopify Plus. Custom legacy stack to a modern one. The migration itself is engineering work. The design and content work around it (information architecture for the new platform, content modeling, design system rebuild, redirect strategy, SEO continuity) determines whether the new platform is better than the old one or just newer. This is also where e-commerce work overlaps directly with the systematic-design practice.

Services

Most e-commerce engagements start with strategy work, defining problems and goals, and assessing needs, and then grow from there. If the work grows enough, we can source any capabilities we need, from marketing to full stack development.

Digital strategy

Assessing your current funnel against your revenue and customer-acquisition goals. Audits of catalog architecture, discovery, decision journeys, conversion, and post-purchase. KPI definition to close the loop. A roadmap your merchandising, product, and engineering teams can all work from.

IA & UX Design

Information architecture for catalog and content, product detail page design, search and category page patterns, cart and checkout flows, account and post-purchase experiences. Design that works with, instead of against, your platform.

User research

Direct work with customers across the purchase journey: moderated and unmoderated usability studies, customer interviews, focus groups, and surveys. The patterns from this work shape every design decision and validate hypotheses before they get built rather than after.

Content strategy

Category and landing page content. Editorial-to-commerce flows for content commerce sites. Editorial governance for who owns what, how product copy gets created and maintained, and how the editorial calendar connects to merchandising.

Why it works

We have decades of experience with B2B, healthcare, fintech, and other high consideration, high regulation categories, where customers take their time and do their research, and where the design discipline for supporting customer decisions has been refined and tested. We understand why customers behave the way they do, where the friction actually is, and which design decisions move the metrics that matter. On content commerce engagements, editorial discipline pays off directly — brand voice, content that respects the read, and the governance that keeps content-led commerce sites working, as the catalog and calendar change. When an engagement needs additional capacity, we bring in &Kind Collective for design and development and Fitch Ink for content production at scale.

Get in touch

You don't need a fully scoped brief to start a conversation. Bring the problem — a specific initiative, a strategic question, a persistent frustration with your current digital experience or content program. We'll help you figure out the right next step. If it's a fit, we'll say so. If it isn't, you'll leave with a clearer picture of what you actually need.

No pitch decks. No agency theater. Just a direct conversation about your situation.