Ecommerce case study · Functional food DTC

Shopify Redesign and CRO for a Functional Food DTC Brand

42% checkout drop-off diagnosed17 pages and modules in 30 daysDelivered before Black Friday

Dolca's product is genuinely new: real cane sugar blended with prebiotic fiber, so every serving has 25% less sugar. The press believed it. The storefront did not sell it. Traffic, clicks, and add-to-carts were all healthy, and then the funnel collapsed between cart and payment. We ran the audit first, then redesigned the whole journey around what it found.

Start with the $2,000 CRO Audit

The engagement at a glance

Audit, design, build: one 30-day window

17

Pages and modules shipped

3

Cane variants, one guided selector

100%

Of custom sections editable in the Shopify editor

30 days

Audit to delivery, ahead of Black Friday

The client

Meet Dolca Sugar

Dolca sells the world's first prebiotic cane sugar: 75% real single-origin Colombian cane, 25% natural prebiotic fiber, a true 1:1 swap that bakes and tastes like the sugar it replaces. Press coverage spans Business Insider, Apple News, Yahoo Finance, the Associated Press, and MarketWatch. The buyer is a home baker aged 45 to 65 who reads labels and distrusts fake sweeteners, which means the store has to be simple, legible, and premium. It was none of those things.

Industry

Functional food & wellness

Platform

Shopify

Market

United States

Scope

Audit + full redesign + CRO build

The challenge

The traffic was fine. The funnel was not.

The growth data showed a store with healthy demand and a broken finish. People clicked the ads, landed successfully, and added to cart at normal rates. Then the funnel fell apart exactly where it costs the most: between the cart and the payment.

Audit snapshot · September 2026

Add-to-cart to checkout21%
Healthy benchmark~35%
Checkout starts abandoned42%
Sessions on mobile81%

Tracking itself was verified healthy (Meta and Shopify order counts matched exactly), so the numbers pointed at the store, not the measurement.

What was holding it back

  • Variant decision paralysis: three near-identical product cards
  • The cart defaulted to a single bag, hiding the better-value bundles
  • Duplicated homepage sections rendering twice
  • Review stats disagreeing across pages (three different counts)
  • Pricing displays that did not reconcile between screens
  • Investor-voice copy where a 45 to 65 buyer needed plain benefit
  • Site health claims running ahead of what the packaging says

The work

From audit to a storefront built around the evidence

Audit first, then Figma, then build: every page was designed and signed off before development, and every custom section stayed editable in the Shopify editor. The redesign was not decoration. Each change traces back to a documented leak.

What changed, area by area

Variant choice

Current

Three near-identical cards, decision paralysis for a 45 to 65 buyer

What we changed

A guided selector: same Dolca Slim, choose your cane, with each pack's accent color carried from selector to cart

Cart and bundles

Current

Defaulted to the single bag, so most shoppers never saw the better deal

What we changed

Bundle-first tiers with a free-shipping progress nudge and one-tap add in a new cart drawer

Checkout

Current

42% of checkout starts abandoned, mostly on mobile

What we changed

Express payments up front (Shop Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal, Google Pay), trust at the point of choice, checkout styled to the brand

The free-bag offer

Current

The 3-bag bundle auto-assigned a duplicate bag, and the logic behaved inconsistently

What we changed

Choose-your-free-bag: cross-product gift logic that stays free through refreshes, quantity edits, and checkout

Trust and proof

Current

Three conflicting review counts, pricing that did not reconcile, duplicated sections

What we changed

One review number from one source, sitewide, with reviews moved to the point of decision

Claims and compliance

Current

Blood-sugar language on the site that went beyond the packaging

What we changed

Copy locked to packaging-level claims, with the regulated language flagged to the client before a word was published

Shipped in the 30-day window

17 pages and modules, homepage to policiesGuided three-variant selector with description modalBundle tiers built around the free-shipping thresholdCart drawer with progress nudge and one-tap addChoose-your-free-bag gift logic, held through checkoutIn-cart cross-sell and post-purchase upsellConsent-safe tracking with Microsoft ClarityEvery custom section editable in the Shopify editor

Client feedback

In the founder's words

Sean, founder of Dolca Sugar, studio portrait in a black shirt and blazer

“I'm a picky person, and I expect the work to be done perfectly. When she presented the mockup design, I truly loved it. It was exactly what I had envisioned. I've hired talent for several projects before her, and I can confidently say she is the only person I haven't regretted hiring. I normally don't write reviews, but she deserves my time to write this one.”

Sean

Founder, Dolca Sugar

The partnership continues

5.0-star public review on UpworkPost-launch iteration and A/B testingMonth 1 and Month 2 analytics reviews

FAQ

What this means if your store underperforms your product

The funnel told us. Click-through, landing, and add-to-cart rates were all healthy, and tracking was verified: Meta and Shopify order counts matched exactly. The collapse happened after the cart, where only 21% of shoppers who added to cart reached checkout against a benchmark near 35%, and 42% of those who started checkout never finished. That pattern is a store problem, not a traffic problem.

Your store could be next

A premium product deserves a storefront that can finish the sale.

Dolca's demand was never the problem; the last three screens were. If your traffic is healthy and your revenue is not, start with the audit that shows exactly where the funnel leaks, then fix it in priority order.

Explore the Shopify redesign serviceBook your CRO Audit, $2,000