A UX-Focused Shopify Redesign for a Niche Manufacturing Brand

Redesigning for Growth and Modernization

Nile Polymers—a chemical-resistant coating and plastic filament manufacturer—needed a clean, modern site that would not only showcase their products clearly but also support lead generation, analytics, and customer outreach. Their existing site was outdated and difficult to navigate, with poor SEO performance and limited content management capabilities.

They had already chosen Shopify as their platform but needed a UX Designer with technical implementation experience to rethink their content structure and bring the new vision to life.

📷 Image: Before/after homepage screenshots (if available)
📷 Image: Wireframe of redesigned homepage or product detail flow

Auditing and Realigning the Site Experience

I began with a full UX audit of Nile’s existing site, identifying major friction points, including:

• Redundant and irrelevant pages making the site needlessly complicated

• Poor content hierarchy and page flow

• Unresponsive, slow-loading images

• Outdated visual design

• No analytics integration

• Broken sales and contact funnels

I then mapped out a proposed site structure focused on:

• Clear product segmentation

• Logical navigation

• Visual clarity for technical buyers

📷 Image: Site map or page flow diagram
📷 Image: Sketch or wireframe of proposed redesign

Designing and Implementing the Redesign

I wore multiple hats for this project, serving as the UX architect, visual designer, and Shopify implementer. My work included:

• Understanding not only user needs, but interpreting and even coaching the owners on what the business needed to generate completed sales.

• Designing new layout templates for key pages (homepage, product detail, contact, applications)

• Updating brand visuals to feel more modern and clean while remaining the legitimacy of their established brand and futureproofing their assets

• Implementing the site directly in Shopify, including layout logic, embedded assets, and responsive behavior

📷 Image: Redacted UI elements or a live screenshot from final Shopify build
📷 Image: Custom icons or branded graphic elements created for the site

Improving Outreach and Performance

Beyond design, I structured the site for improved customer outreach, including:

• Embedded lead capture forms

• Minimized, optimal navigation paths to high-intent product and application pages.

• Support for Shopify’s analytics and marketing tools, allowing the client to track visits, clicks, and form completions post-launch

This brought measurable improvements to site usability, content control, and lead generation strategy.

Challenges and How I Solved Them

Existing brand assets were plentiful, but totally un-maintaned. Colors had to be identified and canonized, low-resolution logos had to be vectorized, [3rd example]. I created a style guide from all of the assets I created in this process and presented it with the completed website. When the next designer works on the website (in the distant future), they won’t have so much to rework.

Another challenge was aligning Shopify’s default theming structure with the custom UX flow I designed. I learned and worked within Shopify’s framework - called liquid,  and carefully customized layout elements and navigation without introducing technical debt or unsupported plugins.

What I Learned

While Shopify matches many of the web development platforms on the market in its structure and capabilities, this was my first occasion at having to crawl under the hood, so to speak, and make structural changes. I managed to do so without deviating from the selected theme so that the code remained navigable for future maintenance and updates. It was nice to flex my technical side on a design project.

I enjoyed bringing simple elegance to an overcomplicated and lethargic site, and the owner has since reported a sharp uptake in successful sales!

Tools & Methods: Shopify, Adobe XD, Illustrator, UX Audit, Site Mapping, Responsive Layouts, Lead Funnel Design, Visual Design