Honolua Ukuleles

Shopify Website

Custom Shopify website for Canadian ukulele maker

Owner Dave Simpson started Honolua Ukuleles after years of working in a music shop, seeing an unmet need for high-quality ukuleles. He reached out to me for a redesign of his existing Shopify site that wasn't communicating his brand as well as he wanted. We started from scratch and developed a custom branded Shopify site designed to make it easy for first-time buyers to make a purchase.

During our kickoff workshop, Dave told me that his existing homepage felt too cluttered and was missing a custom feel. He felt that he had a good story, but the site wasn't good at telling it. Armed with a thorough understanding of his story, business background and vision, I dove right into developing the shop's brand and custom Shopify website.

I first created a brand look and feel that was nature-inspired and subtly tropical, complementing the Hawaiian-inspired logo, product and collection names. This included creating a brand style guide and designing custom textures, icons and graphics.

Animal illustrations by Jennifer Delaney

Next, we dove into the custom website design by mapping out a user journey for the shop's key demographic: first-time ukulele buyers. We needed to make the buying process easy to understand for visitors who have never bought a ukulele, and help them make educated decisions about materials and sizes.

To achieve this goal, we used the home page as a guide to the brand's products, with clearly-defined collections, icons that explain product features, and jumping off points for further product exploration. We also created information pages, such as the buyer's guide and a 'meet your match' quiz.

The result is a fresh and elegant custom site for Honolua Ukuleles that, since its launch in late 2020, has increased the overall conversion rate and significantly reduced customer questions.

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