Notes from the desk

Short notes from nine years of shipping.

These are the things I’d tell a founder over coffee. Specific, useful, and written for the kind of operator who wants the answer in two minutes, not twenty. New ones land most weeks. There is no newsletter, no popup, no scarcity timer — the page either has something for you or it doesn’t.

Jun 09, 2026

Why I stopped using premium Shopify themes for serious DTC brands

After three hundred and seven stores, the $300 theme economy has a clear ceiling. Here’s where it ends and where a custom build pays for itself in eleven days.

4 min

Jun 02, 2026

The one question I ask of every product detail page before touching it

It’s not “what’s the conversion rate.” It’s a quieter question, and the answer rearranges the whole page.

3 min

May 24, 2026

Passing Core Web Vitals on Shopify without ripping out every app

A short list of what actually moves the needle on LCP, INP and CLS for a Shopify store with twelve apps installed, in order of effort versus payoff.

6 min

May 17, 2026

When WooCommerce still makes more sense than Shopify in 2026

Four scenarios where Woo is genuinely the better answer, and four where founders pick it for the wrong reason and end up paying twice.

5 min

May 09, 2026

The agency handoff problem nobody warns you about

The senior who pitched you isn’t the junior who writes your code. Here’s the question to ask in the discovery call that filters for the difference.

3 min

May 01, 2026

Migrating to Shopify Plus without losing a weekend

A staged migration playbook from a few dozen Plus migrations. What to do six weeks out, what to do the night before, and the three things to never do on a Friday.

7 min

Apr 24, 2026

A two-hour checkout friction audit you can run yourself

Eleven steps, a $20 burner phone, a stopwatch. The cheapest CRO exercise on Earth and the one nobody actually does.

4 min

Apr 16, 2026

Three quiet conversion killers most A/B tests will never catch

Why some sites lose buyers in places the analytics layer doesn’t see, and what to look at instead of yet another button-color experiment.

5 min

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