A retail site that stops bleeding revenue on mobile search and checkout
Fast retail storefront with clean information architecture, real on-site search, and mobile checkout tuned for conversion. From $2,000.
Who this is for
Owner or marketing director at a $2M to $30M online retailer, often multi-brand or multi-category, whose storefront is bloated and whose mobile conversion is flat.
The pain today
- Storefront is bloated with apps and custom code slowing every page
- Category pages bury products under banners and promotions
- On-site search returns irrelevant results and customers leave
- Mobile conversion is flat despite growing mobile traffic share
- Platform lock-in makes every change expensive and slow
The outcome you get
- Fast retail storefront from $2,000 in four to six weeks
- Clean category information architecture that matches buyer mental model
- Real on-site search (Algolia, Klevu, Searchanise) with relevance tuning
- Mobile-first checkout with one-tap payment options
- Core Web Vitals in the green across category and product pages
Where retail sites bleed revenue
Three places. Search — 30 percent of retail visitors use on-site search, and a bad search experience loses them in one query. Category depth — category pages that show 24 products when the catalog has 300 hide inventory that converts. Mobile checkout — every extra field or re-authentication loses 3 to 5 percent of completions. Fix all three and conversion on existing traffic lifts 15 to 25 percent. No new marketing spend required. I have shipped search and catalog work at Imohub scale; the patterns transfer cleanly to retail.
Platform choice (Shopify, BigCommerce, headless, custom)
Shopify stays right for most retailers under $20M a year. Clean checkout, huge app ecosystem, predictable cost. BigCommerce wins for B2B and wholesale-heavy retailers with custom pricing needs. Headless (Shopify + Next.js, BigCommerce + Next.js) wins when performance is a primary KPI or you need multi-brand flexibility — but it adds complexity. Full custom is rarely the right call for retail in 2026. I help you decide in week one based on your team, traffic, and roadmap — not based on what is trendy.
On-site search that pays for itself
Default Shopify search is bad. Default BigCommerce search is worse. Every retailer past $1M in revenue should upgrade to a proper search layer — Algolia, Klevu, Searchanise, or similar. Relevance tuning matters: synonym mapping (tee = t-shirt), typo tolerance, category boosting, merchandising rules. Search analytics surface what customers actually search for, which informs both SKU decisions and content. Search upgrade cost is $200 to $800 a month depending on traffic; ROI typically lands within a quarter through recovered conversions.
Pricing and timeline
Starter $2,000 — focused theme rebuild or storefront refresh. Business $5,000 — full redesign with custom product templates, search integration, CRM wiring. Corporate $10,000+ — headless setup, multi-brand support, international setups, custom admin. Four to six weeks start to launch. 14-day money-back guarantee. 1-year bug warranty. 100 percent code ownership under Work Made for Hire. SEO migration included. Product catalog migration up to 500 SKUs included in Business tier; larger catalogs priced per batch.
Case: Imohub — 120k-item catalog with sub-second search
At Imohub I rebuilt a real estate portal with 120,000+ properties, sub-500ms query response, 70 percent infrastructure cost reduction, and top three Google rankings. Stack: Next.js, React, Laravel, MongoDB, Meilisearch, AWS, Docker. Retail sites run the same challenge — large catalog, fast browse, fast search, fast checkout. The Imohub playbook transfers directly to retailers with 10,000+ SKUs. Search infrastructure is the single highest-ROI investment once you cross the catalog-complexity threshold where stock search breaks down.
When a platform switch is overkill
If your current Shopify site is well-optimised, running fast, and converting at healthy rates, a platform switch is not worth the risk. What is worth the work: a theme rebuild, a search upgrade, and a checkout flow audit. Those three changes capture 80 percent of the upside at 20 percent of the cost of a full replatform. Platform switches make sense when the platform itself is blocking growth — B2B pricing on Shopify, custom checkout flows, multi-brand complexity. For most retailers, optimisation beats replatform.
Recent proof
A comparable engagement, delivered and documented.
Rebuilt a real estate portal at a fraction of the cost
Rebuilt Imóveis SC's real estate portal as ImoHub — a faster, more scalable successor — handling 120k+ properties with sub-second search and drastically reduced AWS costs.
Frequently asked questions
The questions prospects ask before they book.
- Can you migrate us to headless without breaking SEO?
- Yes. Headless migrations done right preserve rankings — sometimes improve them because the new site is faster. I map every existing URL, keep redirects tight, preserve meta structure and schema, and run Search Console audits before and after. The first 30 days post-launch are monitored closely for any ranking slips. If rankings drop beyond normal fluctuation, I fix it at no extra cost under the 1-year bug warranty. Migration planning takes one week; execution takes two to four weeks depending on catalog size.
- Which search provider do you recommend?
- Algolia for retailers under $10M with complex catalogs — best relevance, easiest to tune. Klevu for retailers who want deep merchandising controls and AI-ranking. Searchanise for Shopify-first retailers who want a budget-friendly plug-in. For retailers at Imohub scale (100k+ SKUs), self-hosted Meilisearch or Elasticsearch is worth considering. Pick based on catalog complexity and team capacity to tune — a powerful search tool untuned is often worse than a simple one tuned well.
- Do you support subscriptions and recurring orders?
- Yes. Recharge, Bold Subscriptions, and Appstle are the main Shopify options. Stripe Subscriptions for BigCommerce and custom stores. I integrate whichever fits your current stack. Subscription UX on product pages and checkout is tuned for conversion — clear pricing savings, skip and swap options, cancellation flow that does not punish customers. For subscription-first retailers, the subscription experience is the primary conversion surface and deserves dedicated attention.
- How do you handle loyalty and email/SMS integration?
- Loyalty: Smile, LoyaltyLion, Yotpo, or POS-native loyalty. Email: Klaviyo is the default, Mailchimp or Omnisend for lower-volume setups. SMS: Attentive, Postscript, Klaviyo SMS. I wire integrations, set up event tracking, and configure automations for abandoned cart, post-purchase, and re-engagement. Strategy and content for email/SMS is your marketing team's responsibility; I make sure the infrastructure works and the data flows cleanly.
- Can you work with our current app stack?
- Yes, if the apps are well-maintained and earn their weight on the page. Week one includes a stack audit — I flag apps dragging performance, duplicating features, or breaking on theme updates. You decide what stays. Most retailers can cut their app stack by 30 to 50 percent without losing functionality. Every removed app recovers page performance and reduces monthly cost. For apps that stay, I tune loading so they do not block critical rendering.
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