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Retail

Rebuilding a stagnating Shopify Plus storefront for 38% conversion lift

Custom Shopify Plus theme, native Payfast + Yoco, AI product recommendations and a re-thought checkout — same traffic, 38% more revenue.

Client
NorthStar Retail
Location
Johannesburg, SA
Duration
6 weeks
Published
05 Apr 2026
The challenge

What we walked into

NorthStar's previous Shopify theme was a generic install. Slow Largest Contentful Paint, broken mobile cart UX, no on-site search worth using, and a Stripe-only checkout that didn't work for the 70% of SA buyers who pay via Payfast or Yoco.

Our approach

How we tackled it

Six-week rebuild on Shopify Plus. Custom theme (Liquid + Tailwind), Payfast and Yoco native checkouts as defaults with Stripe for cross-border. AI recommendation engine tuned on the South African catalogue. Search powered by Algolia with synonyms for local lingo.

The outcome

What changed

LCP went from 4.1s to 1.6s. Mobile conversion lifted 38% in the first month. Cart abandonment dropped from 71% to 49%. The AI recommender now drives 14% of revenue.

By the numbers

Results that paid for the work

  • 38% lift in mobile conversion
  • LCP 4.1s → 1.6s
  • Cart abandonment 71% → 49%
  • AI recommender = 14% of revenue

Technologies used

Shopify PlusPayfastYocoAlgoliaOpenAI embeddings

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