Concept project · Shopify · SEO
North Supply Co.
A self-initiated concept looking at how trade buyers actually shop: by specification, under time pressure, on a phone, in a van. North Supply Co. is an invented company; nothing here is client work and no results are claimed.
North Supply Co.
- Type
- Concept project
- Industry
- Trade and industrial supply ecommerce
- Disciplines
- Shopify · SEO
- Year
- 2025
Overview
A self-initiated concept looking at how trade buyers actually shop: by specification, under time pressure, on a phone, in a van. North Supply Co. is an invented company; nothing here is client work and no results are claimed.
Business challenge
Trade catalogues are large, inconsistently named and usually organised for the warehouse rather than the buyer. The result is thin collection pages that cannot rank and product pages that fail to answer stock, lead time and bulk pricing.
Business goal
Win category-level search traffic and reduce the abandoned carts caused by unclear stock, delivery and bulk pricing.
Research
- Mapped how trade buyers search: specification and part number, rarely brand or lifestyle terms.
- Reviewed competitor collection structures and found deep, uncrawlable filter hierarchies.
- Tested product pages on a throttled mobile connection to reproduce real site conditions.
Wireframes
- Collection layout iterated to put specification filters above the fold on mobile.
- Product card variants tested with and without stock and lead-time data present.
- Reorder flow sketched from account history down to two taps.
Design decisions
Dense, utilitarian layouts that respect how trade buyers scan: specification tables first, photography second, no lifestyle imagery competing for space.
- Specification tables promoted above imagery on product pages.
- Stock and lead time shown on the card, not hidden behind a variant selection.
- No lifestyle photography: it added weight and answered nothing a trade buyer asked.
UX strategy
Filtering by specification rather than marketing category, stock and lead time stated on the product card, and reordering from account history in two taps.
Features
- Specification-led faceted filtering
- Bulk and trade pricing tiers
- Delivery estimates shown before checkout
- One-tap reordering from purchase history
Technology stack
- Shopify
- Liquid
- Hydrogen
- Cloudflare
SEO considerations
Flat, crawlable collection structure, Product and Offer schema with live availability, canonical rules for filtered views, image and script budgets enforced at build.
- Flat collection architecture so category pages sit within two clicks of the homepage.
- Product and Offer schema carrying live availability and price, validated on every deploy.
- Canonical rules for filtered and sorted views to keep crawl budget on pages that can rank.
Performance strategy
- Image budget per template, with responsive AVIF and WebP served from the edge.
- Third-party app scripts audited and reduced; each remaining one justified in writing.
- Collection pages paginated server-side rather than infinite-scrolling on the client.
Responsive strategy
- Filters presented as a full-height sheet on mobile with a persistent result count.
- Specification tables reflow into labelled rows instead of horizontal scroll.
- Tap targets sized for gloved hands — a genuine constraint for this audience.
Accessibility notes
- Filter controls implemented as real form elements with grouped labels.
- Result counts and filter changes announced through a polite live region.
- Tables marked up with proper headers and scope so screen readers can navigate them.
Expected business outcome
More qualified organic entries on collection pages and fewer carts lost at the delivery question.
Expected, not measured: this is a concept project with no client data behind it.
Gallery
Screen placeholders for the key views in this concept. Captions describe what each screen is designed to resolve.
- Collection page
Specification filters first, with a persistent result count.
- Product detail
Stock, lead time and bulk pricing answered before the cart.
- Filter sheet
Full-height mobile filtering with real form controls.
- Reorder view
Purchase history to basket in two taps.
Next step
Tell us what the
site has to do
Send the goal, the deadline and a budget range. You will get a considered reply within one working day — including an honest answer if we are the wrong studio for it.