SantaBarbara Pickleball Shop

Project Overview

This project focused on a comprehensive front-end overhaul for SB Pickleball Shop. The primary goal was to transform the online presence into a dynamic, high-performance platform. By focusing on responsive design, JavaScript functionality, and Shopify Liquid template customizations, the platform was enhanced to drive significant increases in online sales and brand engagement.

Our team focused on a user-centric design approach, conducting extensive research to identify key user pain points in the existing market. We implemented modern front-end frameworks and libraries to ensure a fast, reliable, and secure application.

The Challenge

The existing website was a static, outdated e-commerce site that lacked modern functionality. The challenge was to build a platform that not only looked modern but also performed exceptionally well, even under heavy traffic. Key challenges included:

• Creating a dynamic product filtering and search system without sacrificing performance.
• Integrating a JavaScript-powered cart feature that could be used on static landing pages outside of Shopify's domain.
• Ensuring the site was fully responsive and accessible on all devices.
• Customizing Shopify's Liquid templates to enable new features and a more intuitive user experience.

My Role & Solution

As the lead front-end developer, I was responsible for the entire user interface and user experience implementation. I worked closely with the design team to translate high-fidelity mockups into functional, pixel-perfect code. My solution involved:

• Developing a custom Shopify theme built on a Bootstrap framework, ensuring the site was fully responsive and mobile-first.
• Implementing advanced Liquid template customizations to create new page layouts and product displays.
• Creating a dynamic cart feature using JavaScript. This allowed for a seamless shopping experience and provided a standalone script that could be integrated into any HTML page, extending our e-commerce reach beyond the Shopify store.
• Optimizing asset loading and utilizing lazy loading techniques to improve page load times, a key performance indicator (KPI).
• Integrating Google Gemini for image generation, creating dynamic, high-quality promotional banners and product visuals directly from text prompts.

Results & Takeaways

The new platform launched successfully, with several key performance indicators (KPIs) showing significant positive movement. The streamlined shopping experience and promotional campaigns resulted in a 30% increase in conversion rates within the first quarter. The implementation of the blog campaign and new social media profiles resulted in a 45% increase in organic traffic. Finally, the JavaScript cart feature proved invaluable, enabling targeted campaigns on non-Shopify landing pages, which contributed to a 15% increase in sales from external sources.

This project taught me the importance of a strong foundational architecture and the value of close collaboration between design and development teams. It reinforced my passion for building beautiful and functional web applications that solve real-world problems.