UMÉ

UMÉ makes gift-worthy objects in Oakland, California: cold process soaps cured for eight weeks, beeswax candles and ceramic vessels. Its best-known collection is Gifts Under $100, aimed at people buying for someone who already has everything. The store ran on Symmetry, and Mei-Lan wanted it ready for the holiday season, starting with Black Friday.

The brief covered a cart pop-up and cart page with gift wrap, a tote bag, suggested products, a note field and progress toward free shipping and a free gift. It also covered restyled product reviews, new layouts across the shop pages and suggested products on the cart.

UMÉ sells gifts, but the cart didn't treat orders like gifts. There was no way to add gift wrap or a tote bag, and nothing suggested a small extra item before checkout.

The free shipping message was a single line. Mei-Lan wanted two steps, free shipping first and then a free gift, so customers could see how close they were to each.

The side cart and the main cart page looked and worked differently. Anything added to one had to be added to the other.

On mobile, the shop pages had wide margins that left little room for the products, and the layout had to change before the sale started.

Gifting Sets and Gifts Under $100 shared one collection template, so changing the banner on one page changed it on the other.

• 01 Reviews restyled to match the PDF mockups UMÉ had around 150 product reviews in Judge.me. We restyled the reviews block at the bottom of each product page to follow Mei-Lan's PDF, with separate layouts for mobile and desktop. Two requests, a new date format and like or dislike buttons on each review, aren't supported by Judge.me, so we told the team that up front instead of building something fragile around the app.
• 02 One shop page layout across every collection We rebuilt the Gifts Under $100 collection for mobile first, with tighter margins and a grid that shows one image per product in rows of one or two. We also tried a two-images-per-product layout for the Soap collection. Mei-Lan preferred the single-image version, so we applied that layout to Shop All and every other collection during the Black Friday weekend.
• 03 A cart drawer built for gifting We built a new side cart that opens as soon as something is added. It shows suggested products with their own add buttons, an order note, a gift wrap option and a tote bag with its own image. The team chooses which products to suggest in the theme editor and can switch the gift options on or off for each season without a developer.
• 04 The same features on the main cart page Mei-Lan wanted the full cart page to match the drawer on both mobile and desktop. We brought over the suggested products in the same format, put the gift bag with its picture first, restyled the buttons to match, and moved the "You may also like" block to sit just above the footer.
• 05 A free shipping bar with two tiers We replaced the single free shipping line with a bar that counts down to two goals, set at launch to free shipping at $130 and a free gift at $165. Both thresholds can be changed in the theme settings. Mei-Lan had planned a Friday launch, so we held the unfinished code back so she could publish the rest of the store on time, then delivered the bar the next day on a fresh copy of the theme.
• 06 Separate templates and fixes after handover When a banner change on Gifting Sets also changed Gifts Under $100, we created separate collection templates so each page has its own banner. We found that Cart Bot wasn't adding the free gift because the gift product wasn't active on any sales channel. We also put the full cart page back after a template change removed it, so the store has both the side cart and the cart page.