Building experiences
curated to convert, scale, and retain
Building experiences that connect with people and scale
Building scalable websites that convert visitors into customers and builds loyalty
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Safe gaming glasses
Gamer Advantage
Gamer Advantage is a technology fused, first of it's kind gaming glasses. Protecting against blue light, yellow light, and high energy visible light. Their glasses are customizable for any style of gamer, made to last, and long-game play kept in mind.
Carter was placed by an agency we hired, and the work couldn't be better. He went above and beyond what we expected, even what his agency expected. He redesigned our Shopify plus store and for the first time, I've experienced someone who knew the platform.
Working with Bryan was very cool and I really enjoyed it. I think we both shared a good vision of protecting vision (sorry, I didn't mean to have a lil pun), but any time there's a genuine interest to be the best for people and help them, I'm all about it. Meaningful brands mean a lot to me. There was a challenge of some heavy micromanagement which the agency had over me, the client liked my works, I liked my works, the agency had 20 different people with 20 different ideas, which is fine, but some of them were getting to the point of taking a different path and putting up some fluff that could distract shoppers. Oh and another challenge I just recall overcoming, some lack of content and quality content provided, I did my best to improve it but there was some discrepancy there around video, product management and editing their professional photography was easy.
I identified key friction points and implemented targeted fixes that improved organic visibility across a large product catalog, I set up a good SEO system for their products increasing visibility by like 80%, I mean it was as if their product catalog was never synced into the internet for some reason. From there, I reworked the homepage layout to improve product placement and purchase clarity, then redesigned the product page to create a cleaner, more intuitive add-to-cart and checkout flow handling sustained traffic and order volume. All changes were made with a conversion-first mindset while keeping the storefront stable and easy to navigate. While they were having thousands of visitors daily, they might have only had maybe a hundred sales so the standard 1% conversion rate, after my works, they saw an increase of visitors by 15% but more importantly an increase of conversion rate to 2.1%
Stims
Clean energy gum
Stims is an organic energy chewing gum designed to deliver clean, convenient focus without the crash. Made with thoughtfully sourced ingredients, Stims provides a fast, controlled energy boost that fits seamlessly into daily routines. By combining simplicity, transparency, and functional performance, Stims offers a smarter alternative to traditional energy products, helping people stay energized, alert, and in control wherever their day takes them.
Collaborating with Carter on our e-commerce store was great, end to end. From setting up the shopify store, setting up admin details, UI and UX, development, product packaging design, product management, datasets, SEO, to google business page setup, social media exports, and launch readiness. The result was a captivating storefront that we could confidently launch and grow from.
I had fun building this project out. While building, we kind of were like two perfect players stacking up points together. The energy was endless, funny enough. There was some uncertainty on the clients end which made the waters a little rough, but I got it done and I believe we're both happy with it. It was great seeing the expansion and growth from both of us, the original concept was a little dull so I'm happy we built something as impactful as we did. I'm looking forward to watching them grow.
I love how many 0 to 1 client's i have, and this is another. The original concept was an organic teeth strengthening / cleaning gum, and I'm unsure what happened to that concept, I saw the original works he had done for it and thought they were great, and so I was responsible for cleaning up some of those original concepts and then upon his decision moving into something a little different. I think there was a conveying the message error, and also it's probably tough to compete in that market because almost every gum seems to be whitening, minty, etc, so I'm happy to be a part of the pivot into new higher callings. I believe they have been slowly selling product and shipping them within the west, I'm sure some overseas sales too but I imagine mostly USA since it's their tagrted audience and shipping costs (You can see where selecting market for product market fit get's complicated quickly.
Hal&Al Meats
Halal Meat delivered in NYC
The guys at Hal&Al are one of a kind. Operating out of two state-of-the-art facilities, Hal&Al Meats specializes in premium, ethically sourced cuts that cater to a variety of chefs, tastes, and cuisines. Known for their dedication to quality and craftsmanship, they pride themselves on hand-selecting and delivering each product to perfection. Whether it’s specialty sausages, custom cuts of wagyu, or gourmet pre-marinated meats, they’re bringing exceptional meats with a strong commitment to sustainability and transparency.
Carter really helped me in a time of need, my business was getting overwhelmed with orders that had no meaning, no lifetime customer value after the first purchase. So when he took a step back, revisioned, realigned, and then rebuilt, he did it really well. I already had a ton of Shopify experience and so there wasn't any sort of meetings, I just paid him on his terms and he got to work, much quicker than I imagined too.
While analyzing customer analytics, I identified a missed opportunity to boost conversion rates and customer lifetime value. The data revealed frequent repeat purchases of one or two products, just outside of a regular monthly schedule. However, there was no subscription model to encourage consistency or incentivize larger purchases. From there, on the front-end, the brand's bold color palette, the black, white, and red, was visually strong, there were no call-to-action buttons on any featured products on the home page, limiting customer engagement and driving missed conversions. Additionally, the product descriptions lacked clarity in design, and persuasive language, failing to communicate the unique value of the products or encourage upselling opportunities. This, combined with an inconsistent navigation flow, made the user journey less intuitive, ultimately impacting the overall shopping experience.
The original Shopify storefront was a bit dated and led to not an entire rebrand or redo, but a lot of optimization, finer tuning colors for more catching of the eyes, improving menus, layouts, and product placements. With my suggestions being welcomed and some free-range, I wanted to hone in on their most valuable product which was very early, a subscription for meat delivery, which I actually like a lot. So with those goals in mind, setting up the store only took two weeks and results were shown right away with their first ever product sell out online! From there, they saw a double up of visitors coming from search engines thanks to some SEO tricks I have up my sleeves, oh and then they also saw a great success with their subscription release, I last heard it went from 0 to into the mid 200s which is great for a supplier like so.
Cactus
Cut underwriting time by 92%
Cactus is a one of a kind application for real estate investors. People can search properties, estimate cash flows, and checkout what's around locally.
At first, he was amazing.
We didn't have a timeline and stated that he should take as long as possible.
We had doubled our budget for him.
The first round of feedback we got was great, really exceeded our expectations.
Right after that, he didn't communicate for a couple of days and it worried us.
From there, he got in back in gear and did a really solid job.
However, there were somethings that just didn't make sense to us, and even though he would explain it then explain it again, it didn't make sense to us.
This project involved a high-touch collaboration across multiple team members and time zones, which added communication overhead early on. With several stakeholders involved, aligning on scope, expectations, and how decisions were made took longer than expected with a bit more back and fourth. At the same time, the brand was still forming its positioning and content foundation, so a good amount of effort went into clarifying direction and turning early ideas into something executable. Feedback was frequent and iterative, which required flexibility and momentum management, including periods of moving quickly followed by longer waiting windows. Overall, the process was demanding, but it reinforced the importance of setting expectations early, defining ownership around content depth, and protecting timelines as project complexity increases.
The first initial site was really rough, with slow and outdated animations, screenshots as demos, and no congruent flows leading users to enroll, in fact after they signed up they landed right to the pricing page, so there was a lot of work around everything here honestly. Before this site released, they had a total of 14 users and they had been public for months, afterwards the guys (Tyler and James) had told me they had a really successful relaunch, where they had over 190 new users enroll in premium. Their saas is very impactful for their targeted audience, so they are slightly expensive in standard terms of saas, but the tool is impactful and worthy every penny saved. This project was really solid in the end.
FlyBasis
Unlock exceptional travel value
Flybasis is changing the way people find flights. Built with simplicity and speed in mind, Flybasis is a search engine that helps travelers uncover and book the best possible flights across the web. Whether you're booking a quick getaway or planning a long-haul business venture, Flybasis makes it effortless to compare prices, discover hidden deals, and get where you're going for less. Clean, fast, and user-first, they're building the easiest way to book smarter.
With all honesty, there's something truly amazing about Carter, that's hard to describe entirely. The way he perceives things, his knowledge, when he doesn't know something he finds it out and suggests pros and cons to the solution, the fact that he's very reasonable in his work, it's hard to kind of explain but once you meet with him, and if you're serious about hiring him to solve your problems, you'll understand what I mean. One of my favorite traits of his, is the way he responds; typically 1 hour or same day, and he's just a genuine person.
Overall, this guy is legitimate one of the best people I've came across. Funny enough, this isn't the first time we've worked together, I had him do a landing page on a product a few years back and he was just as solid then as he was recently with this.
Thankfully this was really smooth, and I think the reason that it was, was 1, trust, 2, aligned vision & respected my input, and 3, I kind of wanted to work on a site similar, so this was fun and a breeze to put together.
This was a 0 to 1, V1 project.
The concept was to make an airline data scraping tool that fed into the site with various sorts and filters. The UI/UX took a while to build as there was a lot of feedback between the CEO and I just getting it right. This tool got a lot. of traction right away with around 500 members enrolling within the first week back in 2022, I believe they've at a slow to moderate growth rate since.
ScribeMD
Automate your Medical notes
ScribeMD is a voice to document taking application for scribes and medical professionals to notate, highlight, and monitor spoken words between the patient and the doctor. While I didn't fully build the app itself, I did the branding, the site, a few coding snippets for the application's animations, along with a couple UI/UX things.
I think for us, Carter really maximized our potential.
If you saw the before and after him you wouldn't believe it was the same application.
While we hadn't been able to pick a route we seek to take for this application, Carter really brought it to fruition.
One of Carter's big points was better connecting our AI Application in a very personal situation, when you're at a medical center you most often want to see someone taking notes on paper about your situation and our application is a voice recording - transcribing - and uploading important notes into a patients file, and so it's very tough to make that human connection, and we feel like he painted the picture very very well.
The project began with only a seemingly old PDF mockup and no clear direction, requiring a full redesign from the ground up. Creative feedback was inconsistent, with frequent shifts in preferences that extended the timeline. While the project felt urgent at first, communication stalled after kickoff, and clear goals were lacking, better upfront alignment would have helped.
This was a true 0 to 1 build, in collaboration with the owner and developer. Starting from hand-drawn concepts provided by the owner. I established the visual foundation by creating the color system, designing the initial application screens, and leading the full marketing website build from scratch. From sourcing graphics and writing copy to defining the UI/UX direction across the app and site, the end result setting up for a smooth launch.
Plants Planted
(Archived)
Plants Planted is a cool little e-shop from NYC, operating out of a two story loft, Dennis grows microgreens, makes custom plant holders, builds grow shelfs, selecting hydroponic machines to sell, and other things. Beyond just selling products, he curates a unique earthy energy that brings his love for plants into every aspect of your home, ensuring his customers not only find what they need but also feel inspired to create their own green spaces with ease and confidence.
Carter has has a really thorough experience. You can tell he's been around for quite a while. He does all the things of which I had no clue go into this. I mean, I thought it was just a store, but he flipped every un-turned stone and got me set up for success. He did everything. I mean everything. Branding (Logo, color kit, font kit). Design. Development. Copywriting. Testing. Payment gateway integration. Third-party App integration (For reviews). Product image editing. Price uploading. Shipping zone set up. SEO. Social media share graphs. Social media integration. Mobile responsiveness. Domain connection. He literally did it all and because I needed the whole one on one education, he sat down for e-meetings to instruct me on everything. $7500 well spent, would and will hire him again, have already sent him a referral which I know went through!
This project was a little slow but really thorough, due to the founder, Dennis seeking to have more of a hands-on experience while I crafted elements, Dennis wanted to know every thing possible of a e-commerce store, which I didn't mind sharing with him. This was a 80 hour project with 50 of them being meetings. Starting from scratch, I built a V1 site, I had him market and run tests for about a month, then rejoiced to built a V2 site (as shown), after gathering the feedback from his people, family, friends, peers, and customers, I rebuilt the store to increase engagement more.
The results from this revamp were strong. I aligned the site's aesthetic with the founder's vision, customized a base theme, refined imagery, and handled product setup across copy, pricing, and titles. With a cleaner presentation and clearer product structure, the store began converting social traffic more effectively, resulting in a 30–40% increase in daily sales over the following weeks as visibility and confidence in the brand improved.
Shopsuccessors
Unlimited Shopify Tasks, Accomplished
Shopsuccessors is an all-in-one Shopify agency, as if their your e-commerce manager, designer, developer, customer success lead, product manager, and more.
Working with Carter on this was a great first step in the right direction. This isn't our first project and not our last, we actually used to be interns together in the past and so I knew who I could partner up with and how he could help. While he did his normal, above and beyond for us, our longtime collaborations have only granted more and more success between us.
Yeah so thankfully, their team and I had clicked on previous projects really well and so the same level of energy and expectation's we're set and met here. I think maybe the hardest part was nailing down the fine print of what they could and couldn't do for clients.
This was a 0 to 1 build that actually took a lot of time. There was a ton of time invested in product development, months working with the ceo and co founders on establishing prices that aligned strategically to onboard clients and have them there for the long run. Upon launch, they had over 10000 visitors in their first week, as far as enrollments I'm unsure of but surely since their launch they have been either onboarding clients or have strived in another manner.
Pitswap
Find the perfect parts, right now
Pitswap is a peer to peer marketplace in the vehicle space, with genuine goals in mind such as decreasing transaction fees from industry standards and community.
Carter has provided the best and most professional service I have ever had with any designer/developer. He was able to make my idea come to life, better than I could've ever imagined. His communication levels were top notch, and he was able to make any adjustments I requested seamlessly. I could not be more happy with the work Carter has provided!
Building Pitswap came with its fair share of challenges for sure. Stripe integration was tough but ultimately a failure and I had to promptly switch to Paypal as the trading portal, and I was able to set up Supabase for Magiclink emails without major issues. This experience pushed me to adapt quickly, knowing that not every tool plays nicely together, and sometimes even widely used solutions can prove unstable.
This is a 0 to 1 build, so starting out just speaking about concepts and solutions through conversations. There was a lot of roadblocks here but initially upon launch, I know they saw multiple users signing up daily, both buying and selling, and enrolling into pro every other day or so.
Telehealth Nurse Network
Telehealth Nursing Jobs
Telehealth Nurse Network is more than a job board, more than a consulting & staffing agency, more than a community. It's a career changing company helping nurses find remote roles to maximize support to patients.
Right away. Instantly. I saw an abundance of traffic, a massive amount of positive feedback, and a signifiant amount of first-time visitors becoming paid users. Carter left no stone unturned and made me feel like I was the only person that mattered. I had thought about hiring an agency, and then Carter really sold himself on never being late, having personal-policies that aligned with my work ethics, and had ideas that just made sense.
Watching him put those ideas onto paper and then onto the web, it was like watching magic happen from the magicians point of view. He responded to me at all times of the day, the night, we would have brief conversations late night over the site and i just felt like I hired the right person for this. I couldn't have asked for seriously anything better.
Yeah so this was a great experience for the two of us, I think it was a little hard because seeing the past website was just somewhat of a let down personally, so I knew i had to really carve the brand into stone and make it ever lasting. Other than putting in lots of time on this project, no challenges on my end, it was smooth just time consuming.
Decreased load speed by 90%! Decreased bounce rates by 20% With the average user spending an astonishing 37 minutes on the site. Shortly after publishing, their active member count went from 108 to 1480 and counting, mostly sourcing from SEO, their Facebook community, and internal networks of their team. Job boards do actually help people and I'm happy I got to put this one together.
Calm Caterpillar
Toys designed for mental health
Calm Caterpillar is a children's brand creating thoughtfully designed toys that support emotional regulation and mental well-being. Each product is made with care for both children and parents, blending purposeful play with gentle, comforting design. The result is toys that do more than entertain, they help create calmer, more supportive moments at home.
Carter was truly a pleasure to work with. He understood our mission right away and handled everything from the Shopify redesign to product positioning, SEO, conversion flow, and social media templates with care and clarity. The process felt calm, supportive, and thoughtfully done.
Another interesting one while working within an agency, the client was known to be slow and then all at once, so their 6 month sprint was like 6 days of them being around, both parties. The client and the agency were great with this client, but it felt like a back burner of a project for everyone, I felt like it had great potential, there were some changes I made that didn't get approved, there were changes made before and after this was uploaded to my site.
The site had too many elements that slowed it down and made it harder to trust. I cleaned things up, improving conversion rate was a really important task which I accomplished by product positioning and relatability. I updated the design, improved mobile flow, and simplified the path to purchase, helping drive an 2% lift in conversions, along with SEO, admin updates, and social media templates to support ongoing growth.
UC3 Studios
Sustainable Home Decor
UC3 studios is an awesome, awesome 3D printing home goods & decor store. I actually bought a couple of their lighting fixtures to give to my sisters and friends as gifts. They melt and reuse plastics to build cool objects you'd find around a cool pad. They set such a good vibe in your place, it's really hard to look at other home accessories the same way after seeing and owning one of theirs.
I hired Carter to kind of bridge our business concept to our audience. I somewhat have a hard time with pitching & verbiage. I had no clue what all I was looking for, but Carter did great. I wanted something that was a little more complex than what Shopify could do natively, and he built a strong solution that's seamless. I've really enjoyed the experience and the often small little 1 off things I hit him up to do occasionally.
Moving from a very barebones concept just off some notes, essentially I connected with the business due to it's sustainability ethics, and really built something that would connect genuinely with their targeted audience. Something that maybe to note as a challenge was expected turn around time and lack of budget, although I did get my regular price paid, it was more than his budget so I had to do some work around payments, all and all it was a smooth build out.
The results from this revamp were strong and consistent. The focus was aligning UC3 Studios' sustainability-driven brand with a clearer, more intentional Shopify experience. Through theme customization, visual refinement, and improved product presentation across imagery, animations, copy, pricing, and structure, the site became easier to navigate and easier to buy from. This led to a 30% through SEO and Social-driven traffic, 6% + increase in daily sales, primarily driven by social traffic, alongside a conversion-ready storefront built to scale values-led interest as the brand grows.
Wellness Partners
Discover your best self
Wellness Partners PLLC is a health collective based in Boise ID, the woman owned business is a strong, improvement encouraging, good vibe place all around. Crista is a pleasure to work with, as she has an array of passion and enthusiasm for her craft. They offer personalized physical training, massages for recovery, mental health therapy such as therapy, and then yoga for a clear mind and stronger muscles.
Carter has been great with the buiuld out of our site and the small continuous update's we've had since then, really smooth, kind of a breath of fresh air because I am not a website manager or anything of sorts. I just connected with him, paid his price, and then he took creative control and structure initiative. He took care of things I didn't even know were things to consider.
Starting originally with just a landing page that was left incomplete from another freelancer, I rebuilt the whole thing while keeping the brand's aesthetics and implementing some smooth interactive animations.
Performance was the first priority, resulting in an approximate 50% improvement in load speed and a noticeably smoother experience across mobile to desktop devices. With cleaner structure, improved SEO fundamentals, and clearer mobile optimization of content and calls to action, the site became easier to discover and easier to navigate. These changes led to a 68% increase in lead form submissions, driven by reduced friction and more intentional user flows rather than increased traffic. Christa has mentioned to me many times about how many clients and how many other businesses enjoy her site and messaging.
Poke Lab
Poke bowls crafted for wellness
Poke Lab is an Amsterdam-based brand focused on fresh, locally sourced meals made daily. Partnering with nearby farms, the brand keeps ingredients simple, pure, and free from artificial additives. The result is nutritious food with bold flavor, built around community and quality.
Carter made the process easy and delivered a clean, thoughtful result that felt right for our brand.
Another interesting one while working within an agency, the client was known to be slow and then all at once, so their 6 month sprint was like 6 days of them being around, both parties. The client and the agency were great with this client, but it felt like a back burner of a project for everyone, I felt like it had great potential, there were some changes I made that didn't get approved, there were changes made before and after this was uploaded to my site.
The updated site brought the shop's personality online with a more human, approachable feel. A cleaner mobile experience made it easier for customers to find what they needed quickly, supporting happier interactions and a stronger connection with the local community.
Reko
Local farmers e-commerce app
Reko brings local communities together, by connecting farmers with customers as a digital farmers market, you can order everything from meats to treats, vegetables and bread, RekoNow is empowering homestead style communities.
Would give 4/5 stars, I had asked him to design our landing page, which he did, but I was under the assumption that I was also getting the code, hosting, and the domain for it too, that wasn't the case, and when he tried to align and reset expectations with me, he tried to charge me more. I had him do three revisions and our old one was just a screen shot of what the app was. I think it would've been better if he would've given me everything.
Working within a budget was tough, no resources, no copywriting, no briefing, and a very tight and strict deadline was a really big challenge. The CEO told me he was just trying to get investors which is understandable but he didn't want to work with me on a budget so I really could only provide about a days work on this, he also had a meeting the next day so he kind of abandoned communication afterwards.
Improved an outdated wordpress site design, improved it via figma, for instance there was an image with an iphone 4 and a poor screenshot placed over it, etc, just vary 2007-2012 vibes that I improved with a aesthetic goal of local home town connection.
Lome
Local community based bulletin
Lome is a community-focused software platform that helps people organize events, volunteers, and group activities through simple, ad-free sign-up forms. Their product replaces bloated tools like spreadsheets or ad-heavy sign-up platforms with a faster, more approachable experience built for schools, nonprofits, churches, teams, and families. Lome's goal is to remove friction from coordination and make organizing feel effortless rather than overwhelming.
Working with Carter felt easy and efficient from the start. While he was placed by an agency to work with our team, he brought an immense amount of knowledge, perspective, and support to us. He analyzed several aspects that we over looked, fixed up some flaws in our pricing system via code, and then rewrote some copy.. oh and he also took our current onboarding flow, analyzed it and provided some significant suggestions that we have on standby and impliment as needed. He understood the product immediately and translated it into a landing experience that actually reflects how simple Lome is to use. Communication was clear, turnaround was fast, and he handled everything end-to-end without us needing to over-explain or micromanage. The final result felt thoughtful, clean, and conversion-focused, exactly what we needed to better position the product against larger competitors.
This one was very challenging. Not necessary the work, but how it was structured. So I worked at an agency at this time, and they were like a Monday-Thursday agency, but only let their UX & CRO Analysts work Monday and Tuesdays. So imagine cramming a week of work in two days, times 2. From there, the agency's team had their own ideas, the client had theirs, and I had mine, while I don't think I was overlooked, I don't think any of them took it as serious as I did. I think both the business' team and the agency thought the concept was just "eh", and I tried to not let it seep into my perspective while building for them.
I delivered two parallel strategies, one focused on the core website experience and another focused on conversion. Improved key landing page components with a particular emphasis on mobile usability and flow. Designed and launched a dedicated SEO-driven splash page to capture and route high-intent traffic more effectively. I then Identified and resolved a membership billing issue that was creating friction during signup, resulting in a more reliable and consistent path from visitor to active user.
Glowsend
Delivering Excellence
Glowsend is a powerful WhatsApp hub for operations. It streamlines invoicing, payments, and tracking, all within a single chat, so entrepreneurs can close deals and get paid better. By replacing multiple steps with an all in one flow, GlowSend empowers business owners to run smarter.
He brought a perspective changing experience. He set the bar high for our future contracts. He was genuine, wise, and almost like he had built a billion dollar business on his own, he really just knew. We agreed on a Monday and Friday email follow up, he would send one M/W/F and was very thorough with all of his details and ideas. I felt like I hired someone as a designer/developer as well as a mentor for marketing and scaling. He even did a few things that to him were "minor" that we had no clue we didn't set up prior. 10/10, would work with again and refer people to.
Some delays in receiving some content, and then said content was not being anywhere near the ideal aesthetic alignment so I went and found content that algined better with their build, other than that, everything was smooth.
I was onboarded here upon their launch, prior doing so, they did not see the results they thought of, and my skills around UIUX for conversion, SEO, and copywriting helped revamp the whole experience. They had a couple of original titles that we're kind of long, and some parts that didn't stand out to users. So it's tough to get a before and after here on results due to how many breaks / how distant their team was. I wasn't able to pull any metrics for improve
Hotmetro
(Archived)
Hotmetro is a new kind of real estate agency, Instead of starting with price tags, buyers name their budget, and Hotmetro finds and negotiates homes that match. It's a bold, flexible model designed to remove the usual pressure from real estate and give buyers more control, transparency, success in fast-moving markets, and cash back into their pockets.
Carter really brought home my whole project, while I sent over a couple of site's I liked, I didn't see exact copies of them but more "mine in my own way", and I felt like that was something I wouldn't have gotten anywhere else with anyone else.
Working with Sam was great. I love working with first-time founders because I get to seemingly be, a warehouse of impactful resources to them. I think the only challenege was spending time epxlaining things, but it wasn't really a worry with me. From finer tuning Hotmetro's branding, to writing some of the copy and content, and then building the little calculator, this experience was fun and a good little project to have under my belt, the domain has belonged to Sam since 1999 and I thought that was really cool.
This was a 0 to 1 build, and unfortunately, recently, has seen a little lesser than ideal change of direction. I was hired to think out the box, streamline those thoughts into a system for lead generation that would work in flipping the script on real estate. And while I did do that, the client recently has decided to remove and delete a lot of elements of the site, including the very cool background animation, real time customized calculator that funneled into a lead form.
American MCC
(Archived)
American MCC was a trucking parts wholesaler, having been in business for 20 years before covid, I believe the owner has retired and is pending transfer of his business.
I think Carter did a great job. He went above and beyond but then he also informed me of everything, how to upload, how to ship, how to handle orders and processing, etc.
Honestly, really no challenges here. A little difficulty in finer tuning some things on Shopify's end but nothing I couldn't solve.
This was a bit more on the consulting side of things, well probably like 60% design/development and 40% , as an e-commerce mananger I was instructing the owner and his small team on how to do things
Sonic Logistics
(Archived)
Sonic Logisitics is a domestic broker based in the US, connecting deliveries with well qualified drivers.
We worked with Carter long term, our site grew with him, our skillsets his skillsets, our growth and his growth, over the past 4 years we really collaborated maybe once every quarter since 2021. Our site went from just a standalone landing page to a full scale, interactive, engaging website.
While this was more of a continuous project, there were instances where the client went and hired other people for small adjustments which then would really break or interfere with the site. I think out of all my works, this challenge was the most difficult because I would recall how stuff was set up the way I did it, and then login to see everything changed. It was continuous from start to finish and at one point when I had to double my quote for them for changes due to it, they we're upset and finally stopped hiring out for changes.
The outcome was a multi-million dollar scaled operation which obviously not only was due in my part but also theirs in the sense of sales, my goal was to set up an online platform that let them scale into their successful systems and provide a congruent experience for their users. I believe the last time I looked at the numbers about a year before they closed they had completed $4.8M in revenue.
USFex
(Archived)
USFex is a international logisitics company that doesn't only go coast to coast but crosses boarders for specific locational delivery so clients know their delivery is handled by 1 company.
While I only hired Carter for the design/development aspect of it, he brought an array of knowledge and technical support that was complimentary to both the task and his results. This guy knew and instructed me on how and where to do certain things, how he would position text, told me to hire certain people just for business support like a lawyer, etc. I think my high expectations we're met 10 times over. He also would check follow up on stuff just to make certain we were doing okay and didn't need any additional changes both quickly after he completed this for us and then way down the line keeping his expertise in our minds which was helpful, we knew who to hire again for support again.
I think my issues here we're just some overlapping of their wants and my expertise, not being negative just a bit challenging when I have certain text colors and certain icons and they want to change them for their benefit, it still works thankfully but I'm stills et in my ways of thinking my colors and icons would be a little bit better for readability. There were also some graphics they provided that were just really low quality and made by Ai, and I think in that sense it's important when you're working in such a high-ticket high-delicacy area that using real images and content is valuable.
This was a 0 to 1 build, and unfortunately, recently, has seen a little lesser than ideal change of direction. I was hired to think out the box, streamline those thoughts into a system for lead generation that would work in flipping the script on real estate. And while I did do that, the client recently has decided to remove and delete a lot of elements of the site, including the very cool background animation, real time customized calculator that funneled into a lead form.
Every dollar spent on UX, $100 is returned
Introduction
I know it sounds insane.
"Every dollar invested in UX returns $100."
That reads like a made up stat or the opening line of a sales deck.
I legit thought the same thing.
It actually came from a Forrester article I found a while back ago,(that you can buy here for $1495)and while I'm sure it's research-backed, has a lot of psychological evidence and very strongly put, but
I wanted to provide more of a hands-on insight and share with you why I think UX contributes the most in a business.
If this shifts how you think about UX even slightly, it's doing its job and that's my goal.
And of course this is only after years of working hands-on with clients, managing shopify stores exceeding $100M in sales, fixing broken flows, improving conversion rates, and watching what good UX actually does compared to bad UX, so the title does check out.
Why it's valuable
I've seen people dump thousands into ads.
Thousands into social.
Thousands into growth operators, marketing agencies, etc...
And then wonder why nothing works.
The problem is almost always the same:
the destination.
You can have great copy. Decent brand. Solid traffic.
But when a user tries to sign up or buy something and the experience breaks, everything upstream collapses. This still happens way more than it should. I talked to someone last November who spent $4K on Meta and Google ads and couldn't convert a single visitor. When I looked at the site, it was barely usable. 2010-era visuals, blurry assets, broken mobile layout, bad color usage, overlapping popups with no clear exit.
And I remember thinking..
For $5K, you waited way too long to fix the actual problem, and they could have fixed the problem for half of that and probably gotten all of it back using the other half to land people.
Now, If that same spend had gone into tightening flow, simplifying checkout, and guiding users properly, even a low conversion rate would have produced signal. Feedback. Direction. The average conversion rate hovers around 1% or less, and I think 1% is better than 0. Most brands I've worked with do better, but I've seen everything from 0% to 3%. Even at 1%, that ad spend would've told a story.
With strong UX, 2–8% isn't unrealistic.
Instead of investing in the many other avenues available, the best one is your appearance.
What I've actually seen work
I think that the majority of people in this space, think UX is about design trends. I mean honestly I think that's common just to follow anything exciting for a little bit, Fancy animations. Whatever's hot on Mobbin, Dribbble, Product Hunt, or Awwwards this week. But the real missing link? Connection. Understanding what your user is trying to do and removing every barrier between them and that goal. While feeling natural.
Your message needs to be so clear there's zero ambiguity, meaning it need's to be streamlined and simplified.
Someone lands on your product page, they should immediately get what you're selling, why it matters, how to buy it.
No guessing, no hunting for the CTA, no "is this thing even clickable?" moments, and a bonus mention, no "well this is loading massive across my phone's screen.
So many businesses fail here. Great product, solid branding, decent traffic, but their UX doesn't connect the dots, doesn't load properly, or has too much going on which is most often the case in my opinion.
To me, it should be No guessing. No hunting for the CTA. No "I have to click through hoops just to to do something". No "Click here but nothing happens. No site loading like it's trying to render a movie on mobile.
I've seen a lot of good sites, and then I've made a lot of good sites.
The missing link
Understanding what your user is trying to do and removing every barrier between them and that goal.
The missing link shows up in the moments people rarely design for. Hesitation. Doubt. Friction. That half-second where a user asks themselves, "Am I in the right place?" or "What happens if I click this?" Good UX answers those questions before they're even formed.
This isn't about adding more. It's about removing. Removing cognitive load. Removing unnecessary steps. Removing decisions that don't move the user forward. Every extra option, every unclear label, every misplaced interaction weakens the connection you're trying to build.
When UX works, it feels invisible. The user doesn't think about the interface, they think about the outcome. They move forward with confidence because the site is doing what it should: guiding, not impressing. Leading, not distracting.
What most teams miss is that connection isn't a visual decision, it's a structural one. It lives in hierarchy, flow, and intent. In how information is ordered. In how actions are framed. In whether the experience respects the user's time and mental energy instead of competing for it.
That's the difference between a site that looks good and one that performs. One chases attention. The other earns trust. And trust is what turns curiosity into action. Without that connection, even the best products struggle to move people forward.
Solving the missing link issue this looks like:
Acknowledge
Hesitation: Remove it, even in load speeds, remove at all costs.
Doubt: If they see anything that casts doubt on you, like reviews, it's louder than positive feedback.
Friction: Removing decisions that don't move things forward., this falls into popups on sites.
Alignment. Ding ding ding. Alignment. "Oh, you have this problem? we know exactly how you feel".
That half-second where a user thinks,
"Am I in the right place?"
or
"What happens if I click this?"
Good UX answers those questions before they form.
This isn't about adding more.
It's about removing.
Removing cognitive load.
Removing unnecessary steps.
Every extra option, unclear label, or misplaced interaction weakens trust.
And when UX works, it feels invisible.
Connection isn't visual.
It's structural.
Hierarchy.
Flow.
Intent.
That's the difference between something that looks good and something that performs.
One chases attention. The other earns trust.
Publishing without resistance (UX/UI Updates without losing users)
We've all experienced an update we didn't ask for and immediately disliked. A social platform changes its layout. An OS moves something that didn't need to move. Shopify's interface updates are a good example. In 2023, those quarterly refreshes at Shopify often felt like change in the wrong direction, in the sake of try hard innovation, and in some cases, the experience actually got worse.
So how do you push updates without creating friction?
You do it minimally. Slow things down. Test before and after. Make sure what you're shipping is actually on course with what the product is meant to do, not just visually different. Familiarity matters more than novelty.
YouTube is a good example of this playing out over time. When they first introduced rounded elements in the video player, some interactions felt off. The play button was awkward and misaligned in places. Over time, those details improved. I went from actively disliking the change to being fine with it, but that didn't happen overnight. Small, incremental updates allowed the experience to settle instead of forcing users to adapt all at once.That's why full, all-at-once redesigns rarely work. Smaller rollouts give users time to adjust and give teams time to correct what isn't landing.Communicating changes also reduces resistance. When users understand what's changing and why, they're far more willing to accept it.
Feedback plays a big role here too. Ask real users. If you don't have them yet, don't default to friends or family. Look at strangers and targeted audiences instead. Social platforms, forums, Reddit threads, review sections, even competitor feedback all surface patterns worth paying attention to.Too often, sites are treated as one-and-done builds.
In other cases, they're continuously changed without enough intention. Both approaches create friction. Publishing without resistance sits in the middle. Small improvements, shipped thoughtfully, validated by real behavior, and allowed to compound over time.
A little bonus tip: Study and compartmentalize your targeted audience's psychographics
I know it's kind of broad when saying to compartmentalize anything, but think of it like a check list.
"Hey I know our competitors users experience XYZ (maybe many clicks to get the end result or something like so), so I know now, we can see that's a pain point and eliminate it" Then when you solve that, check it off. And do enough to where you create a seamless, simple, congruent experience that ties it up nicely.
If you don't know what psychographic is, think of it as the definition of your targeted audience, instead of just age, location, maybe even household income, it's understanding the way they do things. It's customer profile x values, interests, opinions, lifestyles, personalities x the way they operate which let's you combine the perfect equation for your solution and add a spice of offering the perfect value product, and you can win the long game if you play it right.
If you can remove 50% of the useless user experience that is normally experienced, you can streamline your purchase flow and make it easier to checkout, and I think it's really valuable investing in making everything easier for your customers or users. Not only that, but once you have all the specifics it's easier to store them and track metrics across the board so you can finer tune everything to a perfect balance.
Looking to be cost effective only hurts everything
I know it's kind of broad when saying to compartmentalize anything, but think of it like a check list.
"Hey I know our competitors users experience XYZ (maybe many clicks to get the end result or something like so), so I know now, we can see that's a pain point and eliminate it" Then when you solve that, check it off. And do enough to where you create a seamless, simple, congruent experience that ties it up nicely.
If you don't know what psychographic is, think of it as the definition of your targeted audience, instead of just age, location, maybe even household income, it's understanding the way they do things. It's customer profile x values, interests, opinions, lifestyles, personalities x the way they operate which let's you combine the perfect equation for your solution and add a spice of offering the perfect value product, and you can win the long game if you play it right.
If you can remove 50% of the useless user experience that is normally experienced, you can streamline your purchase flow and make it easier to checkout, and I think it's really valuable investing in making everything easier for your customers or users. Not only that, but once you have all the specifics it's easier to store them and track metrics across the board so you can finer tune everything to a perfect balance.
How I took a 2.7% converting storefront to 6.8%
Continuing on with crazy sounding, clickbait-y titles, I think this one is extremely beneficial, as all my others it's from a hands on stand point, and hopefully has some sort of input that you can wake from.
So a few years ago, I was hired as an e-commerce manager at a local midsized business here in Houston. While I can't say the company or the product (personally I wouldn't use the product so I won't endorse it's industry), the bang up site was doing some volume in transactions, they were accomplishing roughly $80M annually in sales, they were getting about 8-14K in daily site visitors, had very low repeat customers, very low cost to acquisition, but a seemingly decent conversion rate, I mean 2.7% is quite high for many sites. While there, my prime objective was building checkout flows that converted but also lead to them coming back at least once more every quarter was the original goal. During the start of the whole thing, I experienced their site and noticed hundreds of flaws, but there were a few really really big ones.
Deleting unnecessary clicks
I think the biggest flaw, was how many unnecessary clicks there were to checkout.
While some are very necessary for legality reasons like verifying age, there were some very bad ones that took a lot of hesitation away. Although they were around marketing, what I discovered is that most people didn't enroll in them anyways, something like 2% of visitors did, so I thought removing the raffle give away for email pop up, and then removing the banner on the bottom that wasn't for consent but for email marketing enrollment, and then lastly there was like a rewards window that would appear only on the product page.
Deleted.
Say less, be my guest, I do not care about how attached you are to poor funnels, 2% enrollment but an extra click to exit which there were like 13 clicks to checkout on this site I mean any click I could I was just deleting. Yes, 45K on the email registration, guess how many would open 1 email out of the 6 per month we sent, take a guess, no less than 1%. So instantly by deleting that, it helped. Now, wanna know where I placed the email / sms enrollment instead? Pre-checked at checkout with better copy of "Yes, enroll me in messages that save me money".
Overall, I got the clicks from land to successful checkout from 13 to 7. The whole site just felt like weight was lifted off its shoulders.
Ultra-clear messaging
Another avenue of making optimal user flows, was that it had a lot of odd things throughout, and both the copy and the what I call suggested attachments were just so bad.
1, the copy read like everything was 90% off. I mean just every explanation point, caps locks on sentences, freakin, ugliest text settings I've seen and some of it was even anti contrasting to its self. So fixing that was necessary, while the targeted audience probably couldn't care less about it, if I wrote this paragraph with any sort of weird styling, you'd lose interest. And it's even quicker when people are looking to buy something.
2, products, up sells, bundle offerings, free shipping offerings, they even offered insurance that never paid out through an app, they all just gave off the feel that this product was suspicious, I'd say it was as if they were overselling and under delivering and that's not any sort of way of selling selling trying to gain a profit. This took some serious time to hash out, as the ceo and marketing manager that had been there together since the start. Here, I didn't do all the changes I wanted to, but I got half of them, and the next day we saw greater sales right away.
3, the hero section was a very bad laggy mess solely due to very, very large size images that were also very low res, so I needed to fix that imminently and did so by making an image template and setting settings on it.
Testing and tracking, everything
While doing all of these updates, I made sure to write out exactly what I was changing and what I was removing. Every deleted element, every new section, every adjusted flow had a reason tied to it. I wasn't just redesigning, I was documenting decisions, showing saved costs, reduced clicks, and cleaner paths to purchase.
I built a table to track everything across the board. Baseline metrics before the change, post-test results after, and notes on what actually moved the needle versus what didn't matter at all. Conversion rate, add-to-cart, checkout completion, bounce, time on page, even small things like how many steps it took to get from product page to checkout. If it changed, it went in the table.
That table became the source of truth. Instead of guessing or going off gut feeling, every decision was backed by numbers. If something improved conversion, it stayed. If it didn't, it got rolled back or reworked. No ego, no attachment, just data.
Testing and tracking everything removed noise. It made progress repeatable instead of accidental. That's how the store moved from a 2.7% conversion rate to 6.8%, not from one big redesign, but from a series of small, documented improvements that compounded over time.
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