Our Website v1 Autopsy: It Looked Okay, and That Was the Problem
Our first website did its job in the narrowest possible sense: it existed. It had products, a cart, and a checkout, and nobody ever told us it was bad. That was the problem. Most post-mortems are about something that failed loudly. This one is about something that failed quietly, which turns out to be harder to catch.
What v1 actually was
We bought the Celeste Naturals domain in May 2024. Chrissy ended up in the hospital almost immediately after, and the site sat there as a generic “coming soon” page until late fall or early winter of 2025. When we finally built it, it was on Shopify (it’s always been Shopify) using the Sleek theme. The theme cost $350, and that was the entire budget. The rest was my time, learning how to organize a store and thinking about how a customer navigates and checks out. We still use Sleek today, which matters for later.
We followed the theme’s default layout. The banner was a pyramid of soap sitting on a wooden bridge rail with a waterfall behind it. At that point all we really had were bars of soap, a few moisturizers, and candles, so our “collections” were mostly individual products with a label on them.
The photos were our best effort, and it showed
Chrissy and I handled our own small business product photography, shooting every photo with our DSLR up in the mountains near where we live. We were leaning hard into the “naturals” part of our name, and the pictures matched that. We were proud of them. We were also not happy with them. The product hero shots were inconsistent in angle and perspective, and once you saw it, you couldn’t unsee it.
Doing your best is a perfectly good way to launch. We launched before we were ready and I’d do it again, and perfect really is the enemy of good. But images are the first thing a new visitor sees, and “we did our best” is not what a stranger reads into them. It’s the same reason our listings have to work without us in the room.
Okay isn’t bad feedback, it’s worse
Nobody complained. That’s the part that stings. Anyone who landed on the site assumed it was the vibe we were going for. There was no bad review to react to, just a site that looked generally fine.
Meanwhile, we were drifting. We were still finding our real brand voice, and we kept moving away from “artisanal, handmade, farm to skin” and toward actual luxury, focused on the quality of our ingredients and the skill in how we apply them. Our guts told us the story we were telling and the way we presented it didn’t line up. A mismatch like that never produces a complaint. It produces a quiet lack of interest and trust from people finding you for the first time, and you never see it happen.
We also didn’t have much traffic then, and we’re still working on that. So the site wasn’t being punished loudly. It just wasn’t pulling its weight.
What we skipped
A lot of this was a Joe task more than a Chrissy task, so I’ll say “we” to make myself feel better and then own it. Here’s what we should have considered:
It wasn’t SEO optimized. We weren’t consistent with alt text or image file names, which is an accessibility problem as much as a search problem. We got every product loaded, but even inside the basic collections there was no thoughtful organization. Our best-selling soaps weren’t at the top. We offered no suggested groupings and no upsell opportunities. And we had no effective way to collect emails, even from people who were interested but not ready to buy yet. (Klaviyo and communication flows are their own rabbit hole, and they’ll get their own post.)
What v2 was really about
The new site was less about features and more about the customer’s journey. We wanted a first impression of warmth and luxurious comfort, not just a place to go find a product. How do people actually shop? How do we make it as easy as possible to find what they want, especially as the catalog grows? All of that is aimed at keeping people interested and cutting the bounce rate.
The biggest visible change was the imagery. We went from “we did our best” to professional images throughout the whole site. We also reorganized our product groupings and collections, and we took the time to get the basics right: Google index mapping, SEO audits and diligence on new pages and products, up-to-date accessibility, and better collection organization. Same Sleek theme as before. The theme was never the problem.
What I’d tell someone building their first store
All of this should have been considered on day one, and all of it is also a slog to get perfect before launch. If I were sitting in the same chair a year ago, I’d do it in phases. A poorly organized website at launch isn’t going to break your business. But before you spend real money driving traffic to it, you want it to be as attractive and easy to use as possible, because that’s the foundation of trust you’re asking new customers to build on. Three things I’d definitely tell you:
- Your images are the first impression. Small business product photography is not where to coast. If they look amateur, a new visitor will, fairly, see an amateur operation. If that’s not the feeling you want to leave, solid product shots, banner images, and other visuals are a smart use of early money.
- Build for the customer, not for your own preferences. Shopify gives you great low-code and no-code options for customization, but plenty of shiny gadgets don’t make for a better experience. Focus on reducing “clicks to close,” not on how many widgets you can fit on the screen or whether some random cool idea belongs on the page.
- Get the SEO bones in place from the start. It doesn’t have to be fully built out, but submit your sitemap to Google Search Console even if it’s basic. As you learn your products and customers, you can keep building on your search phrasing, site titles, and meta descriptions.
Version one was worth shipping. The mistake was treating “okay” as finished before we started asking strangers to look at it.