Commerce, three buying decisions

What it was

This is not one project stretched into a case study. It brings together the most recent, clearest examples of pure e-commerce work I have been involved in. All three asked customers to make very different buying decisions, and each was built on a different commerce platform.

Eleven OBI used WooCommerce for natural skincare, where the difficult part is often knowing which product belongs in your routine. That’s Me Stories used Shopify to turn a child into the main character of a book, so choosing and personalising are part of the product. For illy Spain, the PrestaShop work focused more closely on the B2B supply-purchase journey.

The hard part

There is no single conversion pattern that works for all three.

A skincare customer needs confidence that a product suits their skin and works with the rest of their routine. A parent buying a personalised book needs to understand the story, make several choices and still feel the warmth of the idea. A business buyer may already know the illy brand, but still needs a practical way to understand the supplies available and make the right purchase.

The interface has to do more than make the checkout short. It has to remove the right uncertainty before asking for the sale.

What I did

My work sat between brand, interface and delivery. Across the three projects, I worked on the structure of the shop, the product journeys and the design details that help someone move from browsing to a confident decision. I stayed close to the build, because product options, content, responsive behaviour and checkout states are where a tidy design can quickly become a confusing real experience.

The visual language changed from one brand to the next. The job underneath did not: understand the buying decision, make the important information easy to find, and keep the path to purchase clear without flattening the personality of the product.

The technology changed too. Working across WooCommerce, Shopify and PrestaShop meant understanding what each platform handled well, where it introduced constraints, and how closely the design and development work needed to stay connected once real catalogue data and purchasing rules were in place.

Three decisions worth calling out

Eleven OBI — choosing a routine, not one jar (WooCommerce)

Skincare products rarely live alone. Skin type, ingredients, time of day and the products already in a routine all affect the choice. The commerce experience had to connect education with shopping, so people could browse by need, compare products and understand what fitted together before reaching the basket.

It was also a premium visual brand. Product imagery, editorial content, proof, offers and calls to action had to share the page without making it feel like a discount shop. The useful conversion work was in that balance: answer the doubt, then make the next step obvious.

That’s Me Stories — the configuration carries emotion (Shopify)

The value of the book is that a child can recognise themselves in it. That makes personalisation central to the experience, not an extra field added before checkout.

The journey had to explain what the book helps with, let a parent choose the right story and collect the details needed to make it personal. The design challenge was keeping those decisions simple while protecting the warmth and sensitivity of the product.

illy Spain — making B2B supply purchasing clearer (PrestaShop)

illy came with a strong global identity and an established product range. Our contribution was more focused than the consumer shop: we helped with the B2B supplies purchase journey for the Spanish market.

The experience had to make practical purchasing information clear for business customers while remaining recognisably illy. Product structure, ordering and the path back to repeat purchase needed to feel straightforward, because the buyer was there to complete a job rather than explore a lifestyle catalogue.

What travelled between them

Help someone choose before asking them to convert. Good product education is part of the buying journey. It reduces doubt and gives the call to action a reason to be there.

Treat variants as decisions, not database fields. A skin routine, a child’s character and a coffee format carry different meaning, even if the commerce platform stores all three as product options.

Keep brand and performance in the same conversation. A clearer path to purchase should not make every shop look alike. The product’s personality is part of why someone trusts it.

Stay close to the build. Responsive layouts, unavailable combinations, validation, basket states and real content are part of the design. The work is not finished when the ideal Figma frame is handed over.

Where it landed

Three sectors and three different buying models, connected by one simple idea: conversion improves when the customer understands what they are choosing.

The work gave me practical experience across product discovery, branded DTC, personalisation, B2B supply purchasing and the path from product page to checkout. It also gave me direct experience of how the same design decisions behave differently in WooCommerce, Shopify and PrestaShop.

It reinforced something I still use today: the shortest journey is not always the clearest one, and clarity is usually what makes it convert.