Permella Shopify Web Design Case Study

Permella is a personalised jewellery brand specialising in charms, bracelets, necklaces and meaningful jewellery designed to be built around the individual wearing it.

Fat Buddha Web Design worked with Permella to develop a Shopify store that could deliver a much more sophisticated shopping experience than a conventional jewellery website.

The project combined a complete ecommerce design approach with bespoke Shopify development. Rather than forcing Permella's products into the limitations of an off-the-shelf theme, we developed functionality around the way customers actually shop for personalised jewellery.

A major part of this was the creation of a bespoke Charm Builder, allowing customers to explore Permella's charm collection and build their own jewellery.

Alongside the customer-facing functionality, we carried out extensive technical and on-page SEO work, improved the structure of the product catalogue, developed better collection navigation and introduced custom Shopify functionality designed to make the store easier to use, easier to manage and easier for search engines to understand.

Permella's products are highly visual and highly personal.

A customer may begin their journey looking for a bracelet or necklace, but the finished purchase can involve several individual charms chosen to represent different people, memories, initials or moments.

A conventional Shopify product page wasn't enough.

The website needed to make this process intuitive while still retaining the simplicity customers expect from a modern ecommerce store.

Our objectives included:

• Creating a premium Shopify storefront appropriate for a jewellery brand.
• Making a large collection of charms easier to browse.
• Developing a bespoke Charm Builder experience.
• Improving the relationship between bracelets, necklaces, charms and related products.
• Making product discovery easier across the site.
• Improving collection filtering and navigation.
• Creating a better mobile shopping experience.
• Developing reusable Shopify sections rather than relying on fixed page templates.
• Improving the underlying technical SEO of the store.
• Creating stronger collection and product page architecture.
• Protecting existing search visibility during development.
• Building a Shopify store capable of expanding as Permella's product range grows.

The result was a website where design, development, merchandising and SEO were considered as parts of the same project.

Collections are some of the most important SEO landing pages on a Shopify store.

Individual product pages can target highly specific searches, but collections allow the website to target broader commercial searches where someone is looking for a type of product rather than one particular item.

We reviewed how Permella's products were organised and how the website connected relevant products and collections.

This provides search engines with a clearer hierarchy while simultaneously giving customers more useful routes through the catalogue.

Instead of SEO pages existing separately from the shopping experience, the objective was to make the pages that are useful for customers the same pages we want search engines to understand and rank.

We strengthened internal linking throughout the store.

Internal links are important because they help Google discover pages and understand how different parts of a website relate to one another.

They're particularly important for large ecommerce websites.

Without a considered internal linking structure, products can gradually become buried several levels deep within the site.

By connecting related products, collections and key landing pages more effectively, we created clearer routes through the Permella website for customers and search engine crawlers.

The custom collection-aware product navigation also contributes to this broader product discovery experience.

Important products and collections were given more considered SEO metadata.

This included reviewing page titles and meta descriptions so that they more accurately reflected the products and search intent associated with each page.

Titles need to clearly communicate what a page offers, while descriptions should encourage a relevant searcher to choose Permella from the search results.

Combined with improved collection architecture, this gives Permella stronger landing pages for commercially relevant jewellery searches.

We also reviewed the underlying heading structure used throughout important templates.

A Shopify theme can look perfectly correct visually while producing a poor semantic structure behind the scenes.

Multiple inappropriate H1 tags, missing primary headings or headings being used purely for visual styling can make the hierarchy of a page less clear.

We developed the theme so important content follows a more logical structure using the appropriate H1, H2 and supporting heading levels.

This improves accessibility and gives search engines clearer information about the subject and hierarchy of each page.

Structured data was another important technical consideration.

Schema markup provides search engines with machine-readable information about the content of a website.

For an ecommerce store this can include information relating to:

• Products
• Prices
• Availability
• Reviews
• Breadcrumbs
• Website structure

Correct structured data helps Google understand that a page represents a purchasable product and interpret the information associated with it.

It can also make eligible pages available for enhanced ecommerce search features.

We therefore reviewed the structured data generated by the Shopify theme and the way important ecommerce information was being communicated to search engines.

Shopify can make products accessible through more than one URL depending on how a visitor reaches them.

For example, a product can potentially be accessed directly or within the context of a collection.

Without correct canonical signals, this can create multiple URLs representing essentially the same product.

As part of the technical SEO work, we considered canonicalisation and Shopify's URL behaviour to ensure search engines are directed towards the preferred version of important pages.

This helps consolidate ranking signals rather than unnecessarily splitting them between duplicate URLs.

URL management is particularly important when changing the structure of an established ecommerce website.

Products and collections may have accumulated links, search rankings and authority over time.

Simply changing a URL and allowing the old address to return a 404 can throw that value away.

Where URLs changed, appropriate redirects could be used to send visitors and search engines to the most relevant replacement page.

This protects the customer experience while helping preserve the SEO value associated with existing URLs.

We also considered the way search engines crawl through the website.

Broken links, unnecessary redirects and inaccessible pages waste crawl activity and create poor experiences for customers.

The improved navigation, collection architecture and internal linking all contribute towards making important pages easier to reach.

The aim was to create a logical site architecture where priority products and collections aren't hidden deep within the website.

Photography is fundamental to the Permella brand.

But jewellery websites can also become extremely image-heavy.

Large, unnecessarily loaded imagery can slow a website considerably, particularly on mobile connections.

We therefore considered responsive imagery and performance as part of the build, allowing the website to retain the high-quality visual presentation expected from a jewellery brand without treating performance as an afterthought.

Image optimisation also extends to accessibility and SEO considerations such as appropriate alternative text where relevant.

Performance was considered throughout the development rather than relying on an optimisation app after launch.

This included being conscious of the amount of JavaScript being introduced, the impact of custom functionality, image loading and unnecessary third-party functionality.

This is particularly important when creating bespoke features such as the Charm Builder.

Custom functionality needs to add genuine value without making the rest of the website unnecessarily heavy.

A faster Shopify website provides a better customer experience and creates stronger foundations for Google's page experience measurements and Core Web Vitals.

One of the most important ideas behind the Permella project was that SEO and usability shouldn't be treated as separate disciplines.

Consider the collection-aware Previous and Next functionality.

For the customer, it makes it easier to browse relevant charms.

For the business, it increases the opportunity for customers to discover more products.

For the website architecture, it creates stronger relationships between products and collections.

The same applies to collection structure.

A well-designed collection makes it easier for customers to find products while simultaneously creating a strong landing page for Google.

This approach informed much of the Permella development.