Visual Design
Translate Your Brand Into Commerce Experience
A redesign that drove 20%+ YoY DTC growth. A full rebrand and redesign delivered in four months. Record revenue within 30 days of launch.
Design systems, art direction, and narrative experiences built for Shopify and measured against the business. When you already have a brand agency, we lead from wireframes through development and translate their work into performance.
Redesigns without a diagnosis
A redesign is one of the largest discretionary investments a commerce brand makes. Frequently, redesigns are commissioned on the basis that the current site feels dated. Sometimes that’s the real problem. When it’s not, the redesign risks the trust the brand had already earned.
Where design work misses the mark
Concept before diagnosis
On Bare Performance Nutrition, our first deliverable was a diagnosis benchmarking the entire shopping experience against Baymard Institute’s research, separating what was working from what was costing growth.
A teardown of a site the audience already trusts
Instead of a teardown, BPN got heuristic updates across the homepage, collection, and product pages.
Aesthetics and conversion treated as a trade-off
Gaia Herbs’ redesign was growth-centric by mandate and it was also the most elevated expression of that brand’s history.
Templates that lock the team out
Dorel Juvenile’s build was component-based rather than template-bound, so their team assembles new pages from a library of reusable sections without developer support.
Design specified rather than prototyped
We build working proofs of concept instead — scroll behavior, transitions, particle effects, 2D-to-3D — and the prototypes become part of the handoff.
A rebrand that stops at the logo
Aventon came to us after an outsourced rebrand had left the site with errors and sticky points rather than a working expression of the new brand.
Experience
18+
Years of Unlocking Growth
Scale
$3.14B+
in GMV Migrated to Shopify
Partnership
1 of 5
Founding NA Shopify Platinum Partners
Precision
94.7%
Implementation Predictability
Clients
8
Unicorns & Counting
Two replatforms, three site redesigns, two rebrands, and 22 product launches for one brand across six years.
Five things we’ve concluded about designing for commerce
Seventeen years of designing stores that have to sell, survive rebrands, and still be operable by the team that inherits them.
We translate the brand with your team or your brand agency
On Gaia Herbs, we partnered with their branding agency and led the redesign from wireframes through development. Knowing where our work starts is more useful to you than claiming the whole territory.
One design system, as many brand expressions as the strategy calls for
Dorel Juvenile consolidated four brands onto one foundation, and when strategy called for dedicated brand storefronts, the portfolio restructured on the same shared codebase with no second migration. → System Replatform
Start with the narrative, not the screens
On the most ambitious work, screens come late. A script describing the argument, then storyboards, then client revision, and only then visual exploration.
Look outside ecommerce for references
Looking only at other stores produces work that looks like other stores. We scope exploration time deliberately — it’s the first thing a compressed timeline removes and the last thing that should go.
A page can’t peak the whole way through
Sustained maximum intensity exhausts the reader and devalues the moment you actually wanted to land. Deciding where the peak goes, and then coming down from it, is a design decision most commerce pages never make.
The work
UX diagnosis and heuristic audit
Baymard-certified research benchmarking your current experience before anything is redrawn. Sometimes recommends less work than you came for.
Design systems and component libraries
Typography, color, imagery, and component patterns built as a system your team composes pages from, not a set of fixed templates.
Brand translation
Where a brand agency has done the identity work, we take it from wireframes through development. Where there’s no brand partner, we handle art direction ourselves.
Narrative and story experiences
Script, storyboard, and interaction design for the pages that carry a brand’s argument — origin stories, science explainers, knowledge centers.
Art direction and visual exploration
Deliberate exploration time, scoped rather than squeezed, with references drawn from outside ecommerce.
Interactive prototyping and handoff
Working prototypes of complex interaction, handed to engineering as the specification.
What a design engagement commits to
| Commitment | Acceptance criterion |
|---|---|
| Diagnosis first | A documented audit of what’s working before any concept is presented |
| Scope honesty | If the audit says you need less than a redesign, that’s the recommendation |
| Brand partnership | Your existing brand agency’s work is translated, not overruled |
| Operability | A named list of what your team can build and change without engineering — tested at handover |
| Component library | Delivered and documented, not a set of locked templates |
| Accessibility | ADA considerations designed in, not retrofitted |
| Prototyped handoff | Complex interaction delivered as working prototypes rather than written specification |
| Measured | Success criteria agreed before design starts, and reviewed after launch |
The second row occasionally costs us the larger project.
How design work runs
Diagnosis
Weeks 1–2
Heuristic audit against Baymard research, analytics review, what’s working and what isn’t, prioritized roadmap.
Narrative and structure
Weeks 2–5
For story-led work: script, storyboards, client revision. For catalog work: information architecture and page structure.
Design system
Weeks 3–8
Typography, color, imagery, component patterns — the system before the showpiece pages.
Exploration and prototyping
Overlapping
Visual exploration with deliberate incubation time, then working prototypes of complex interaction.
Handoff and build
Ongoing
Prototypes and direction to engineering, implemented and QA’d against the prototype.
Timelines: Heuristic updates on key pages take weeks. A full redesign with a new design system is a quarter or more — BPN’s complete rebrand and redesign ran four months.
Where design work starts
A rebrand that needs a digital home
Momentous merged a new brand identity with its digital experience and hit record revenue within 30 days of launch.
A full redesign
Gaia Herbs’ growth-centric redesign paired an elevated brand expression with product discovery and education.
A design system with no showpiece yet
The foundation first: typography, color, imagery, components.
One flagship narrative experience
A single page carrying the brand’s argument, built with animation, interaction, and a deliberate narrative arc.
A migration that shouldn’t look like one
Dorel Juvenile moved four brands with a one-for-one design approach, keeping timelines short and brand equity intact.
Targeted heuristic fixes
The smallest useful version. Prioritized updates to the pages that matter, on a site your audience already trusts.
Anatta’s Agentic Operating System
Every design engagement runs on one system.
Senior designers paired with an agentic framework that compresses the distance between an idea, something visible, something testable, and something engineering can implement. The point isn’t faster output — it’s that the time saved on communicating an idea goes back into exploring it.
See how we workDesign work we’ve run
Humann
“Our Story” — an animated opening, horizontal scroll, an interactive particle heart, and a 2D-to-3D transition, built to make cardiovascular science approachable
Explore the Humann success storyGaia Herbs
A growth-centric redesign, led from wireframes through development with the brand’s own agency — 20%+ YoY DTC growth since
Explore the Gaia Herbs success storyMomentous
A new brand identity merged with the digital experience, and record revenue within 30 days
Explore the Momentous success storyBare Performance Nutrition
A diagnosis before a concept, then a full rebrand and redesign in four months
Explore the Bare Performance Nutrition success storyDorel Juvenile
Four brands on one design system — and a portfolio restructure with no second migration
Explore the Dorel Juvenile success storyFour Sigmatic
Three redesigns and two rebrands across six years, on a foundation that absorbed all of it
Explore the Four Sigmatic success storyThe site functions far better for the consumer experience, and I’m actually proud of what our customers get to experience.
Adele NasrCMO, Aventon
Many people who build sites think linearly, while consumer behavior and brands are not. Anatta’s understanding of brand and eCommerce strategy exceeded our expectations.
Tero IsokauppilaFounder, Four Sigmatic
How to tell whether you actually need a redesign
Work through this first — several of these will point you toward a smaller project, which is frequently the right answer.
- Write down what’s working. Specifically. If you can’t, you’re about to remove some of it by accident.
- Separate the aesthetic complaint from the performance problem. They have different solutions.
- Check whether your audience is confused or you are bored. Familiarity has real value.
- Benchmark against research, not against competitors. Competitor sites look modern and may convert worse.
- Ask what your team can currently change without a developer. A component library may deliver more value than new visuals.
- Identify who owns the brand. If you have a brand agency, their work should be the input.
- Name the peak. In a story-led experience, what is the one moment you want someone to remember?
- Agree success criteria before design starts. Otherwise the launch gets judged on taste.
The Redesign Readiness Framework
The worksheet version, including the smaller-project decision path. Name and email.
Frequently asked questions
Do you replace our brand agency?
No, and we’d generally recommend against it. Where you have a brand partner you trust, we lead from wireframes through development and translate the brand into an experience that performs. On Gaia Herbs we worked alongside their branding agency on exactly that basis.
How do we know a redesign won’t hurt conversion?
By diagnosing before designing, and by not redesigning what’s already working. Our first deliverable is an audit benchmarked against established UX research.
Do we need a full redesign?
Frequently not. Dorel Juvenile moved four brands with a one-for-one design approach rather than a redesign, keeping timelines short and brand equity intact.
What’s a design system, and do we need one?
It’s the layer beneath the pages your team composes from, rather than a set of fixed templates. It matters most for multi-brand portfolios.
How do you hand off design to development?
For complex interaction, as working prototypes rather than written specification. Building the interaction as a functioning prototype means engineering implements what was designed.
Will our team be able to update the site afterwards?
That’s a design decision, and we treat it as a requirement. Dorel’s team assembles new pages from reusable sections directly in Shopify’s admin with no developer involvement.
How is this different from funnel engineering?
This page is brand expression; funnel engineering is conversion architecture. If the objective is fixing the system that turns traffic into revenue, start with eCommerce Funnel Engineering.
Tell us what’s working on your current site.
