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Beauty · DTC · Skincare · Shopify Plus · Klaviyo · Recharge · 2026

How Ember & Rose lifted Shopify checkout conversion 2.1% → 4.6% in one quarter

Ember & Rose rebuilt their Shopify Plus store with a custom theme, conversion patterns from a six-week qualitative research phase, and a Klaviyo + Recharge lifecycle that grew subscription LTV by 38%.

Checkout conversion 2.1% → 4.6% · LTV +38%

Client
Ember & Rose
Industry
Beauty · DTC · Skincare
Platform
Shopify Plus · Klaviyo · Recharge
Year
2026
Read
9 min
Ember & Rose custom Shopify Plus product detail page with subscription options

Problem

What we found

Ember & Rose had grown to $4.2M in annual GMV on a heavily-modified Dawn theme with 23 active apps, a 5.1s LCP on the median product page, and a checkout conversion rate of 2.1% — well below the 3.5% benchmark for premium skincare DTC.

Three previous agencies told the team the problem was "the theme." After our six-week qualitative research phase, the real problem was clearer: the brand was beautiful but the buying experience asked too much of the visitor. Product detail pages had inconsistent merchandising patterns across 14 templates. The subscription option was buried two clicks deep. The cart drawer offered five upsells the brand could not credibly recommend. And the checkout shipping calculator behaved differently from the cart shipping calculator.

The SEO surface was actually healthy. The conversion problem was a design and product problem dressed up as a tech problem.

Solution

How we approached it

Started with six weeks of qualitative research — 22 customer interviews, 6 prospect interviews, three usability sessions, heuristic audit of the entire purchase flow. That produced a 14-hypothesis backlog ranked by expected impact and confidence.

  • Custom Shopify Plus theme — no Dawn modifications, hand-coded with conversion patterns
  • Subscription experience rebuild — Recharge integration, one-click subscription on the product page itself
  • Klaviyo lifecycle — 18 flows replacing 6, segmented by purchase stage, product category, skincare concern
  • Performance budget — JS payload under 280KB per page, LCP under 2.0s median mobile, INP under 200ms
  • CRO experimentation infrastructure — proper A/B testing with hypothesis-led discipline

Outcome

What changed

Within one quarter of launch:

  • Checkout conversion: 2.1% → 4.6% (115% lift)
  • Mobile LCP: 5.1s → 1.8s
  • Average order value: $64 → $79 (+23%)
  • Subscription attach rate: 8% → 31% of new customers
  • Subscription LTV: +38%
  • Klaviyo revenue: +112%
  • Cart abandonment: 71% → 52%
  • Customer service tickets per order: −34%

The deeper read

Why custom theme, not Dawn modifications

Brand had been told Dawn modifications were "good enough" by three previous agencies. They were not. A premium DTC brand at $4M+ in GMV is competing against premium brands with custom themes. The cumulative effect of small inconsistencies across 14 product templates was real. Custom theme cost was recovered in checkout-conversion lift inside 90 days.

The subscription rebuild

Highest-impact change was making subscription the default on the product page rather than an upsell after add-to-cart. Subscription attach rate moved from 8% to 31%. A subscriber is worth roughly 4.2x a one-time buyer over 18 months for skincare. The 23-point attach-rate gain compounds for years.

The Klaviyo discipline

Most ecommerce brands have too many Klaviyo flows. Ember & Rose had 41 active, half firing inconsistently. We deleted 35 and rebuilt 18 with proper segmentation. Klaviyo revenue more than doubled. Lesson — segmentation, not flow count.

CRO as discipline, not sprint

The 115% checkout conversion lift was 14 hypotheses, eight tested, six implemented. The experiments that worked came from qualitative research. The experiments that failed came from brainstorms. See our approach in Shopify conversion optimization.

The bigger lesson

A 115% checkout conversion lift sounds dramatic. The work behind it was not — six weeks of qualitative research, a custom theme that respected merchandising patterns, a subscription experience that respected the buyer, a Klaviyo program that respected segmentation. Each piece unglamorous. The compounding was the story.

Team credits

  • James Holloway

    Shopify Plus lead engineer

  • Eliza Park

    UX research + CRO lead

  • Sarah Bennett

    Editorial design director

  • Ahmad Hussain

    Lifecycle marketing + analytics

  • Ajmair Hussain

    Engagement lead

Shopify PlusCustom Shopify themeCROConversion optimizationKlaviyoRechargeSubscriptionBeauty DTCSkincareLifecycle marketing

Frequently asked

Project questions, answered.

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For a premium DTC brand at $4M+ in GMV, the cumulative effect of small inconsistencies across product templates is a real cost. The custom theme paid back in conversion lift within 90 days.

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