Silky Bouquets

Silky Bouquets makes silk and artificial flower arrangements to order in its Cheshire shop and delivers them across the UK: funeral tributes, grave pots, wedding bouquets, door wreaths, gifts and Christmas pieces, plus fresh flowers for local delivery.

The project was a full move and rebuild. The business ran on a completely custom-made store with its own dashboard. I migrated the customer data from that dashboard to Shopify and redesigned the whole store from scratch, so the business now runs on a platform it can manage day to day.

The old store was custom-made from top to bottom. That is a big commitment for a small florist: every change depended on custom code, the interface looked old-school, and the layout and user experience were broken in places. People buying funeral flowers are often upset and short of time, and a confusing store makes a hard task harder.

The goal was to stop maintaining a custom system, keep every customer record, and give the shop a store that feels calm, clear and easy to order from.

The brief came down to three needs. First, nothing could be lost: the customer data in the old dashboard had to arrive in Shopify intact. Second, the store had to work for two very different shoppers: someone ordering a tribute for a funeral, who needs clarity and reassurance, and someone choosing a bouquet, grave pot or gift, who wants to browse.

Buyers of made-to-order flowers have the same questions before they pay: how fast can it arrive, can it go to a funeral director, can the colours be chosen, can a name or message be added. The new store answers them on the homepage instead of leaving them to a phone call.

The design is warm and quiet: a soft cream background, dark text, a single brown accent for buttons, and a serif heading style that suits the subject. A hand-drawn logo and small botanical sketches add personality without clutter.

The homepage opens with the three things people most often come for: funeral tributes, grave pots and wedding flowers. Below that, a section titled "What Are the Flowers For?" lets visitors start with the occasion (To Say Goodbye, To Remember Them Always, To Say I Do) rather than guessing which product category they need. Photography is the product, so images are large, cropped consistently and given room.

The store is built on Shopify's Dawn theme and structured around how people shop. Six top-level menu groups (Tributes, Christmas, Grave Pots, Weddings, Home & Gift, Fresh Flowers) open into sub-collections, so a large range stays easy to navigate. The Tributes collection alone holds 275 designs, each grouped by type: wreaths and posies, hearts and cushions, names and letters, coffin sprays, gates and crosses, and family packages.

Every category shows a starting price, collection pages show the number of designs and the free-delivery threshold, and a round category selector sits at the top of each collection. Information pages cover delivery, payment, returns, personalisation requests and user guides.

The work had two parts that run side by side: moving the customer data from the custom dashboard into Shopify, and building the new storefront on Shopify's Dawn theme.

The storefront is fully responsive. On phones the navigation collapses to a compact bar with search and basket within reach, the hero panels stack into full-width cards, and category circles scroll sideways. Product carousels, collection grids and the FAQ were adjusted so that text stays readable and buttons stay easy to tap.

Moving from a custom system to Shopify is not a copy and paste. Data held in a custom dashboard has to be matched to the way Shopify stores customers before it can be imported cleanly, and nothing can be dropped on the way.

The second challenge was a very wide, made-to-order range. Almost everything can be made in different colours, sizes or wording, which could easily overwhelm a shopper. The answer was to organise by occasion and type, show starting prices early, and explain personalisation in plain words (choose the flower and ribbon colours, add a name or message) so shoppers know what is possible before they ask.

Silky Bouquets now runs on Shopify instead of a custom-made store, with its customer data moved across and a store designed from scratch for the way its customers actually shop. The shop no longer depends on custom code for every change, and shoppers get a store that is easy to browse on any device.

The live store is linked above. No traffic or sales figures are quoted here because none have been verified for publication.

Every project includes one month of free post-project support after completion, covering fixes for issues in the delivered work and help with questions about using the website. New features and redesigns are scoped separately.