Artisan Case Study
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Case Study 2026 Retail · E-commerce & creative

ARTISAN

Dom
Woodworker hand-planing timber at Artisan, Queensland's home of craft and design
platform
Shopify 
engagement
2026 
ongoing retainer
None 

Overview

Artisan is Queensland’s home of craft and design — a store and gallery representing local makers, selling online through Shopify. Beautiful objects, and a site that needed to work as hard as the makers do.

The engagement covers website and e-commerce plus creative consulting: audit what the store has, fix what slows a buyer down, and bring the creative standard of the gallery floor to the screen.

What was built

  • ✓Full Shopify theme audit: speed, UX and conversion issues found, then fixed on a working theme copy
  • ✓E-commerce improvements shipped to the live store, not left in a slide deck
  • ✓Creative consulting: bringing the gallery’s standard to campaigns and the online presence

Approach & Tools

Key decisions

  • Nothing touches the live store
    Every change is built and verified on a working theme copy. The owner reviews and publishes. A working store with real daily revenue is not a sandbox, and treating it like one is how agencies break things they do not own.
  • Hero the makers, not the merchandise
    Artisan represents over a hundred Queensland makers, and the people are the story. The rebuild put them at the front: maker spotlights on the homepage, a maker wall, profile pages for every stocked maker, and a meet-the-maker band on each product. Craft sells because someone made it.
  • Black and white, typography-led
    An early art direction drifted warm and editorial. It was reversed. The store's real brand is black type, black buttons and the rainbow logomark as the only colour, so the objects and the makers carry the visual weight. The design serves the craft, not the designer.
  • Fix what blocks a buyer first
    Before anything decorative: faceted filtering across the full catalogue, a cart drawer with a free-shipping bar, workshop registration embedded so booking never leaves the site, and an accessibility sweep that cut violations from 31 to 9. Conversion work is mostly the removal of friction.

Inside look

Ceramic vessel by a Queensland maker at Artisan Woodworker hand-planing timber at Artisan, Queensland's home of craft and design
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