Viori
Shopify PlusFull Store Relaunch2022
Viori is a DTC hair care brand crafting plastic-free shampoo and conditioner bars from ancient Longsheng rice water recipes, partnering directly with the Red Yao community in China and reinvesting profits into cultural preservation. Their existing store architecture couldn't keep up with the brand's growth: campaigns required constant developer involvement, subscription management was rigid, and the team had no CI/CD workflow for safe, iterative changes. I architected and led the full relaunch of their Shopify Plus store with a new custom theme architecture and Git-based development workflow, delivered on time and on budget. The result: design and marketing teams gained complete campaign autonomy, non-technical admin time dropped by over 68%, and overall development costs were reduced by over 88%.
Role
Lead Shopify Plus Developer
Year
2022
Tech Stack
Recharge Subscriptions
Rebuy Smart Cart
CI/CD Pipeline
The store was rebuilt from the ground up with a new theme architecture designed for long-term maintainability and team autonomy. The previous codebase had accumulated significant technical debt, making even simple campaign launches require developer intervention. I restructured the entire theme around modular sections and blocks with deeply configurable theme settings, enabling design and marketing teams to launch seasonal campaigns, create landing pages, and update promotional content with complete flexibility, with no developer tickets and no deployment cycles. The architecture reduced non-technical admin time by over 68% and saved over 88% on development costs, fundamentally changing how the organization operated its storefront.
I developed a highly flexible Recharge solution for subscription users, building all custom components with pure JavaScript for maximum performance and zero framework overhead. The subscription widget integration was purpose-built from scratch: custom buy box components, dynamic plan selectors, real-time frequency switching, and discount previews that updated instantly without page reloads. Unlike drop-in solutions that inherit Recharge's default styling and JavaScript bloat, this approach gave the design team pixel-perfect control over every subscription touchpoint while maintaining a minimal performance footprint. The subscribe-and-save experience was designed to feel native to the brand, seamlessly embedded into product pages with the same visual language and interaction patterns as the rest of the storefront.
Subscription
Recharge Custom Widget
Pure JavaScript Components
Shopify Plus Post-purchase
Dynamic Frequency Options
The Recharge integration went far beyond simply embedding the default widget. I developed a fully custom subscription buy box that replaced Recharge's out-of-the-box components entirely, building every element from scratch in pure JavaScript without any framework dependencies. The custom widget communicated directly with the Recharge API to handle plan selection, frequency switching, and discount calculations in real time. Variant changes synced seamlessly between Liquid-rendered product data and the JavaScript layer, ensuring the buy box always reflected the correct pricing, availability, and subscription options without page reloads. This approach eliminated the performance overhead of Recharge's default JavaScript bundle while giving the design team complete control over the subscription UI, matching Viori's brand aesthetic precisely instead of being constrained by third-party widget styling limitations.
Quiz & Conversion
Quiz App Integration
Product Recommendation Engine
Inventory Messaging Logic
Session-based Stock Display
I built custom solutions and apps to create unique customer experiences that worked around Shopify platform limitations, while also managing the full ecosystem of third-party integrations. The Quiz App integration was significantly improved, refining the recommendation logic, streamlining the user flow, and optimizing how quiz results mapped to product suggestions, resulting in higher completion rates and more accurate product matches. For urgency and social proof, I developed an engaging inventory messaging system with a custom logic that displayed randomized stock counts per user session within a configurable range set through the theme settings. The messaging rotated naturally across sessions, creating authentic purchase urgency without relying on static, predictable countdown patterns that erode customer trust.
To deepen VIP customer engagement, I developed a Rewards program and Secret Shop solution: a gated, invitation-only storefront section where loyal customers could access exclusive products, early drops, and members-only pricing. The entire system was powered by advanced, optimized CMS settings, giving the marketing team granular control over exclusivity tiers, access rules, discount structures, and product visibility, all manageable through the theme editor without any developer involvement. The Rewards integration tracked customer activity, tier progression, and point redemption, while the Secret Shop leveraged customer tags and metafields to dynamically gate content at the template level.
VIP Experience
Rewards Program
Secret Shop (Gated Access)
Advanced CMS Controls
Customer Tags & Tiers
I integrated Rebuy widgets deeply throughout the store, not just dropping in default components, but customizing their placement, styling, and logic to feel native to the theme. The advanced Smart Cart drawer featured cross-sell and upsell recommendations powered by Rebuy's AI engine, with contextual product suggestions that adapted based on cart contents, browsing history, and purchase patterns. The cart experience included tiered free-shipping progress bars, one-click add-to-cart for recommended items, and bundling prompts that drove measurable AOV increases. Beyond Rebuy, I managed the full ecosystem of third-party integrations, auditing each app's performance footprint, resolving script conflicts, and ensuring every integration worked harmoniously within the custom theme architecture without degrading page speed or user experience.
Beyond the storefront itself, I improved the post-purchase experience by leveraging advanced Shopify Plus checkout features. The post-purchase flow was customized to include targeted upsell offers immediately after order confirmation, capitalizing on the highest-intent moment in the customer journey. I implemented conditional logic that presented different offers based on cart contents, subscription status, and customer lifetime value, ensuring each post-purchase interaction felt relevant rather than generic. Order confirmation pages were redesigned to reinforce the brand's sustainability story, include personalized product recommendations for the next purchase, and provide clear subscription management entry points that reduced support ticket volume for common account questions.
Shopify Plus
Post-purchase Upsells
Conditional Offer Logic
Custom Order Confirmation
Support Ticket Reduction
Dev Workflow
Git-based Migration
GitHub Actions CI/CD
Shopify CLI Integration
Staging & Preview Environments
I developed an up-to-date Shopify theme migration workflow leveraging Git and the Shopify CLI, establishing a professional development pipeline that the team had never had before. The workflow included branching strategies for feature development, automated GitHub Actions for linting and deployment, staging theme previews for stakeholder review, and protected production deployments that required approval. This CI/CD infrastructure fundamentally changed how the development team operated, moving from a fragile copy-paste workflow where live store edits were the norm, to a proper version-controlled system where every change was tracked, reviewable, and safely rollbackable. The pipeline also enabled parallel development across multiple contributors without merge conflicts disrupting the live store.
- Efficiency Admin working time reduction 28% Saved
- Cost Development cost savings 88%+ Saved
- Delivery Full store relaunch On Time & Budget