Mara Vance

Work/Salt River

05

Salt River

Ecommerce for a small batch coffee roaster.

Salt River
Client
Salt River Coffee
Role
Designer & Developer
Discipline
Ecommerce · Brand
Timeline
10 weeks
Year
2023

Tools

Figma · Shopify · Liquid

[ 01 ] The brief

A direct-to-consumer site for a single-origin coffee roaster in Oregon. Built to feel like a corner shop, not a checkout funnel.

The roaster's previous template-based store flattened every coffee into the same product card. Customers couldn't tell a Yirgacheffe from a Sumatran without reading three paragraphs of body copy.

[ 02 ] Approach

  1. 01

    Designed each coffee as its own one-page spread, with the origin photo, the tasting notes, and the brewing guide visible at once.

  2. 02

    Replaced the standard product grid with an editorial index — coffees are listed by origin and altitude, not SKU.

  3. 03

    Hand-coded the Liquid templates so every page weighs less than 70kb.

[ 03 ] Selected screens

Product spread

FIG. 01

Product spread

Origin index
Mobile checkout
FIG. 02Origin index
FIG. 03Mobile checkout

[ 04 ] Decisions

  • No carousel, no upsell

    The cart is one page. The checkout is one page. Nothing tries to sell you a second bag.

  • Tasting notes as typography

    Notes are set as a fragment of a poem, not a comma-separated list. Bright. Stone fruit. A long finish like wet slate.

[ 05 ] Outcomes

  • 01

    Revenue per visitor doubled in the first month.

  • 02

    Bounce rate on product pages dropped from 71% to 28%.

[ 06 ] Adjacent work

← All work

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