From 1% to 3% CVR: How Top Hat Provisions rebuilt their store.

Shane built Top Hat Provisions in a niche that's genuinely growing - non-alcoholic beverages are no longer a compromise, they're a category. The product had a real audience. But the store wasn't converting that audience into customers. At 1%, the conversion rate reflected a site that was underperforming against the quality of what was being sold - outdated in design, broken in places, and not doing enough to communicate why someone should buy, or buy more.

The bigger issue wasn't just how the store looked. It was what it was asking people to do - or failing to ask. There were no quantity incentives to push customers toward larger orders. The subscription option existed but gave no real reason to commit: no clear benefits, no reassurance around cancellation. There were no upsells, no cross-sells, no variety packs. And one of the brand's strongest assets - how easy it is to make a non-alcoholic cocktail at home - was barely surfaced. Customers landed, saw a product, and were left to figure out the rest themselves.

The frustration was compounded by the fact that nobody could see clearly where things were going wrong. The GA4 setup was misconfigured. Without reliable data, every conversation about what to fix came down to gut feel. Revenue wasn't growing, and there was no clear picture of why.

What success looked like at the start of the project:

• Fix the analytics foundation so every future decision is based on clean data
• Increase conversion rate through a full redesign grounded in user research, not guesswork
• Restructure the offer to give customers clear reasons to buy more - subscriptions, quantity breaks, bundles
• Reduce friction in the purchase journey, particularly around shipping clarity
• Communicate the brand's value proposition clearly - including how easy it is to use at home
• Build a store that functions reliably and reflects the quality of the product

Phase 1 - Research and diagnostics

The first step was getting the data right. We rebuilt the GA4 setup and fixed the Microsoft Ads tracking so we could trust what we were looking at before making any design decisions.

With clean quantitative data, we mapped the funnel. The biggest drop-offs were between session start and product view, and between product view and add to cart - both pointing to problems with how the brand and product were being presented before customers even reached a decision point. Checkout abandonment flagged a separate issue, which we followed up in qualitative research.

We ran customer surveys to understand who was buying, why they'd chosen non-alcoholic beverages, and where they were getting stuck. Shipping cost transparency came up as a consistent friction point - customers were reaching the checkout and finding costs they hadn't expected, which was driving abandonment. The surveys also surfaced something more useful for the offer side: customers were interested in subscriptions and open to buying in larger quantities, but the store wasn't making either option feel worthwhile.

We also ran a full UX audit using Baymard Institute guidelines and our internal framework. The picture that came back was a site with a lot of addressable issues - navigation architecture that didn't reflect the product range, a homepage that undersold the variety on offer, and a set of functional problems (broken links, misconfigured collections, missing out-of-stock labels) that were quietly damaging the experience throughout.

Phase 2 - Design and strategy

With the research done, we went into a full redesign in Figma before touching the live store.

The navigation was rebuilt to reflect a clear product architecture - giving customers a logical way into the range and surfacing what the brand actually sells. The homepage was restructured to show the full product variety rather than leading with a narrow view.

The offer was the biggest strategic shift. We introduced quantity breaks to give customers a clear incentive to order more. The subscription option was rebuilt with explicit benefits, transparent perks for long-term subscribers, and clear reassurance around how easy it is to cancel - addressing the hesitation the research had surfaced. We added upsells of individual flavours and variety packs to increase the cart size without adding friction. And we built out content around the cocktail-making use case - how it works, how simple it is, how to get started - which had come through clearly in the surveys as an underserved part of the story. A risk-free return option was made prominent to reduce the purchase barrier for first-time buyers.

Shipping costs were addressed earlier in the journey so customers knew what to expect before they reached the checkout.

Phase 3 - Development and implementation

The new design was built in Shopify. We fixed every functional issue from the audit: broken links, buttons pointing to the wrong destinations, collections missing products, out-of-stock items not properly labelled, to name a few. The build was tested thoroughly across devices to make sure nothing introduced in the redesign created new problems.

The result was a store that worked properly, communicated the brand clearly, and gave customers a real reason to buy more.

• Conversion rate tripled from 1% to 3%
• AOV increased 28%, driven by quantity breaks, upsells, and a stronger subscription offer
• Reliable analytics in place across GA4, enabling evidence-based decisions going forward
• Navigation and homepage restructured to reflect the full product range
• Checkout friction reduced through earlier shipping cost transparency
• Functional issues resolved throughout - the store now works as it should across all devices