Meridian Commerce
Checkout as a product, not a theme. Catalog, tax, and fulfillment on the real operation — then conversion followed.
Commerce · Shopify Plus · Checkout
Storefront that holds under load
Project brief
The store looked finished and leaked orders.
Theme apps stacked on theme apps. Nobody could say which step lost the customer — or who owned the stack.
Client
Meridian Commerce
Industry
Retail / Commerce
Timeline
8 weeks
Unit
Commerce
The challenge
A theme that could not take an order
The live funnel was a collage of apps. Support tickets about 'the theme broke again' were the product. Conversion was a rumour, not a number anyone trusted.
The stakes
- Checkout leaked on tax, inventory, and failure states
- No one could name the step that lost the customer
- Merchandising required a developer for every collection
- A redesign without rewriting checkout would have been decoration
What we scoped
Checkout · catalog · 8 weeks
- Custom checkout on real inventory and tax rules
- Catalog the team can run without a developer
- Payments, shipping, and failure states as product work
- Fixed scope signed before a line of code
- Weekly demos against the live funnel
The solution
Instrument the funnel. Then rebuild checkout.
We measured the live path first, then rewrote checkout against catalog, tax, and fulfillment — not a Dribbble layout. The founders signed the list before we touched production.
The impact
Numbers that moved the needle
42%
Conversion lift
First full month after launch, against the prior theme.
Theme stack → product checkout
8
Weeks to launch
From signed scope to a store that takes the order.
Scope signed → live checkout
0
Theme-break tickets
Support stopped filing 'the theme broke again.'
The stack is the product now
Conversion moved 42% in the first full month. Checkout is a product. The theme is gone.
Timeline
Four phases, eight weeks, one storefront
Week 1 · Discover & Define
Instrumented the live funnel, wrote the checkout jobs, signed the scope.
Week 2–5 · Rebuild checkout
Tax, inventory, payments, and failure states on the real catalog.
Week 6–7 · Merchandising
Collections and content the team can run without a ticket.
Week 8 · Launch
Cutover, analytics, 30-day warranty on what shipped.
Gallery
What we shipped
Checkout · Real tax rules
Catalog · Merchandising the team runs
“Checkout stopped being a theme and started being a product. Conversion followed.”
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