Charmello nails
Overview
Charmello is a new Canadian DTC brand selling handmade Korean salon-style press-on nails. The original Shopify store had no clear value proposition, no social proof, invisible sale pricing, and AI-generated images on a handmade beauty product. Press-on nails also carry a category stigma — most people associate them with cheap drugstore sets, not $49–$72 hand-painted nail art. The site needed to both educate and convert.
My role: Product designer (UI/UX) — audit, strategy, high-fidelity mockups, conversion-focused page architecture, Shopify implementation guidance.
The problem
The homepage was a product catalog, not a sales experience. It listed all 10 products with no hierarchy, had no reviews, buried its 25% off promotion, and did nothing to explain why Korean press-on nails are worth the price. First-time visitors had no reason to trust the brand and no path from curiosity to purchase.
The approach
I restructured the homepage as a conversion funnel — each section
answers one question in the buyer's decision sequence:
Key decisions
"Korean nail salon" is the positioning, not "salon nails." Every press-on brand says salon nails. The Korean nail art aesthetic — 3D charms, magnetic gel, sculptural details — is specific, ownable, and instantly recognizable to the target audience.
Education is part of the funnel. A significant portion of potential customers have never used press-on nails or associate them with low quality. The how-it-works section and comparison chart exist specifically to bridge that knowledge gap and reframe the category.
Show the discount. The original site ran a 25% off grand opening but only displayed full prices on product cards. Making the strikethrough + sale price visible was the single highest-impact change.
Results
Post-redesign metrics (first 30 days vs. pre-redesign):
+62% homepage-to-product click-through rate
+38% add-to-cart rate
+2.4x email signup rate (after adding 10% off incentive)
+28% average order value (after adding bundle upsell)
Bounce rate dropped from 71% to 48%
Tools
Figma, Shopify