Iakoe x Gossamer
Overview
Gossamer is a modern media & commerce brand exploring travel, design, food, culture, & wellness through a fresh perspective. While its editorial experience had built a loyal audience, the ecommerce experience felt disconnected from the magazine, limiting both conversion & organic growth. Gossamer partnered with us to redesign & rebuild the website on Shopify, creating a seamless experience that blends editorial storytelling with high-performing ecommerce.
- User experience design
- Theme development
Background
Gossamer has built a distinctive voice through beautifully crafted journalism, photography, & storytelling. However, while the editorial experience felt premium, the ecommerce experience lived separately on a subdomain, creating a disconnect between content & commerce.
Beyond the fragmented experience, the existing site architecture prevented the brand from fully benefiting from its strong domain authority. Product pages weren't capturing the organic search visibility they deserved, while the shopping experience made it difficult for customers to quickly discover products aligned with their needs.
The goal was to unify content & commerce into a single Shopify experience that maintained Gossamer's editorial identity while delivering stronger commercial performance.
The challenge
The first challenge was customer discovery.
Customers weren't shopping by product, they were shopping by outcomes like better sleep, focus, or relaxation. The existing navigation forced visitors to browse individual products before understanding which one was right for them, creating unnecessary friction & increasing bounce rates.
The second challenge was technical. Housing the storefront on a separate subdomain meant the authority built through years of editorial content wasn't benefiting product pages, limiting both organic visibility & commercial search performance.
Finally, the team wanted to move away from Contentful while preserving the creative freedom that made Gossamer's editorial experience feel more like a magazine than a traditional ecommerce blog.
The solution
We rebuilt the entire Gossamer experience around one objective: seamlessly connect editorial storytelling with ecommerce performance.
Customer journeys designer around intent
Rather than organizing the storefront around products alone, we restructured the navigation to reflect how customers actually shop. New "Shop by Need" journeys guide visitors toward products based on desired outcomes, allowing them to find the right solution faster while reducing friction throughout the buying journey.
A stronger site architecture
We consolidated the ecommerce experience onto the primary domain, allowing product pages to benefit from Gossamer's existing domain authority. The new information architecture improves internal linking, strengthens SEO performance, & creates a more cohesive relationship between editorial content & commerce.
Editorial experiences powered by Shopify
To replace Contentful without compromising creativity, we designed a flexible library of editorial templates that gives the content team complete control over article layouts. Multiple reusable content modules allow every story to feel unique while making content creation significantly faster & easier to manage directly within Shopify.
Product pages built for education & discovery
Many of Gossamer's products require thoughtful education before purchase. We redesigned the product pages to balance rich storytelling with conversion best practices, combining ingredient education, product benefits, FAQs, & keyword-optimized content into a structure that's equally effective for customers & search engines.
Built for long-term growth
Every component was designed to be modular, reusable, & scalable, allowing the Gossamer team to continuously evolve both the editorial experience & the storefront without relying on developers for every update.
The new Shopify experience successfully unified Gossamer's editorial & ecommerce worlds into a single high-performing platform.
By improving customer discovery, strengthening SEO foundations, & creating a more intuitive shopping journey, the rebuilt storefront delivered a 35% increase in mobile conversion rate & a 38% increase in overall conversion rate.
At the same time, migrating the editorial experience into Shopify eliminated the disconnect between content & commerce, giving the team a scalable publishing platform that supports both audience growth & long-term ecommerce performance.
Results
Page speed insights score
MOBILE CONVERSION RATE
CONVERSION RATE
