Sienna Art Studio
Toms River, NJ
An online store for mosaic lamps and gifts, built from a supplier sheet and a folder of photos, then handed over so the owner runs it himself.
Sienna is an online shop in Toms River: mosaic and stained-glass lamps, crystal glow lamps, squishy toys and custom art gifts. The owner came to us with a supplier sheet and a folder of product photos, and no store yet.
The design came from the lamps. A mosaic lamp only shows what it is when it’s lit, so the store is dark where the lit photos sit and cream where the plain studio shots do, with brass buttons to match the stands.
What we got wrong first, and fixed
We first set the store up as a Shopify development store, which can never be handed to a client or take payments. We caught it before launch, made a new store meant for handing over, and copied every product, photo, collection and page across, checked item by item. Then it went into his name.
What they asked for, and what we did
-
Nothing had arrived yet, so every product should say Coming soon.
Each one shows a Coming soon badge and can't be ordered until he sets the stock. Done the same evening he asked.
-
He wrote the headline and the story in his own words.
"Made for meaningful moments" opens the home page as he wrote it, and his sentence about warmer homes became the About page.
-
He picked his own logo, a stained-glass star.
We set the header and the browser-tab icon from his artwork. The three logos we had drawn stayed in the drawer.
-
Only the swan lamp patterns he has in hand should sell.
Each of the 12 patterns shows its own photo. The ones in stock can be bought; the rest show Sold out.
-
He wanted to run the store himself.
We moved the store and the domain into his name, and he took it live himself on October 9.
What's different now
- He owns the store and the domain, and changes products, prices and stock himself.
- Customers pay by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay or PayPal.
- Each lamp pattern shows its own photo, and a sold-out pattern can't be ordered.
- Shoppers can join the Sienna List for new arrivals; signups land in his customer list.
Run a local shop that people should be able to find?
Tell us what customers ask you most and what's not working now. We'll tell you what we'd change and what it costs.
Under the hood (for the technical folks)
- Shopify, with a theme built on Shopify's Dawn and colored from the lamps themselves.
- Every text and background color pair passes the 4.5:1 contrast standard for readable text.
- Products, photos and stock were loaded by script and read back after every change.
- Before the hand-over, a script compared all 37 products, the collections and the pages between the two stores.