Shopify development

Shopify Rebuild That Brought the McCoos and McZoos to Life Online

A full Shopify rebuild for the official home of the McCoos and McZoos, bringing bold colour and character to ecommerce.

Client
Steven Brown Art
Industry
Art and homeware
Timeframe
Ongoing
Project
Visit site
Shopify Rebuild That Brought the McCoos and McZoos to Life Online website on desktop

Steven Brown is known for his vibrant artwork and iconic McZoo animal prints (Heather McCoo, highland cow canvases, colourful homeware and gifts). With a strong following and a well-established brand, the website needed to reflect that same energy while offering a better, faster shopping experience.

The brief was to rebuild the Shopify store from the ground up, giving the site a fresh lease of life and making it easier for customers to browse, buy and enjoy the art.

Key results

  • Faster

    Site performance and page load times

  • Smoother

    Checkout and cart completion

  • Growth

    Conversions and customer satisfaction

The brief

The existing Shopify theme was outdated. The goals were to replace it with a clean, modern storefront, improve mobile experience and site speed, simplify product discovery and the path to checkout, and support seasonal promotions and future campaigns.

  • Replace outdated Shopify theme with a clean, modern storefront
  • Improve mobile experience and site speed
  • Simplify product discovery and path to checkout
  • Support seasonal promotions and future campaigns

The challenge

The site ran on a legacy Shopify theme with outdated code. It was slow, difficult to maintain and didn't match the bold, colourful character of the Steven Brown brand. Product discovery was clunky. With hundreds of designs across wall art, homeware, kitchenware and gifts, customers needed a clearer path to find what they wanted.

The site needed to handle high traffic during seasonal promotions and sales. It also needed to scale as the product range grew.

The technical challenge was to transition from the old theme without disrupting the live store, and to introduce a more flexible, performant architecture.

Shopify Rebuild That Brought the McCoos and McZoos to Life Online – the challenge

The approach

The site was rebuilt using Shopify's latest theme architecture. The work was done in close collaboration with the Steven Brown team to align the store with the bold personality of the brand.

Theme: Custom Shopify theme built for speed and flexibility. No bloated legacy code. Clean sections and templates that load quickly.

Product discovery: Navigation and product filtering cleaned up. Customers can browse by design (McCoo, McZoo, Animals, Trees, Scottish and more), by room (Living, Kitchen, Bedroom and more), or by gift price. Collections are organised to match how people shop.

Conversion: Custom sections and upsell logic integrated. Key changes made to optimise for mobile speed and conversion. Checkout and cart flow simplified so customers can complete purchases with less friction.

Scalability: Site ready for high traffic during promotional periods. Sections and content options are flexible so the team can run campaigns without technical support.

The outcome

The new site delivers faster performance and page load times. The legacy theme has been replaced with a modern, maintainable build.

Checkout experience is smoother and cart completion has improved. The visual style is more vibrant and engaging. It matches the brand and brings the McCoos and McZoos to life.

Conversions and customer satisfaction have grown. The site is built to scale and ready for seasonal promotions and future campaigns.

Why it worked

The rebuild kept the character of the brand at the centre. Steven Brown Art has a strong identity: colourful, playful, Scottish. The new site reflects that without sacrificing performance or usability.

The combination of a clean theme, clearer navigation and a smoother checkout gave customers a better path from browse to buy. The site is now built to support growth without losing what makes the brand special.

We have had the pleasure of working with Richard as our Shopify developer for Steven Brown Art. Not only is he extremely skilled, but he is also a real pleasure to work with. Richard has helped us overcome challenges in promoting individual variants that previous developers had not been able to support us with; this was a relatively small change that made a big difference in how we were able to run our sales promotions. His out-of-office support and problem-solving abilities have kept us selling even when unforeseen circumstances arise and his Shopify theme developments have boosted our revenue. Thanks Richard.

— Gemma Cramer, Marketing Manager at Steven Brown Art

Credit

This project was delivered as part of the team at Fluid Ideas; my contribution focused on Shopify rebuild and technical delivery. This page is my own write-up. Visit Fluid Ideas .

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