Case 01 · Turkey · retail

A paint factory's own store

ART IST is my brand. I make the paint and I built the site. This case is about the difference between pouring products into a ready-made template and someone who knows the product building the store.

RoleBrand owner + founding developer

InfrastructureShopify · custom theme

Catalogue40 products · 545 variants

ChannelSite + 3 marketplaces

Starting point

I had a good product: water-based acrylic paint, hundreds of colours, made in our own plant. But there was no way to explain the product online. Paint is a product that lies in photographs. A square patch of colour on a screen tells you nothing about how that paint flows off the brush, what it looks like once dry, or whether it is matt or glossy.

Every time I tried a ready-made theme I hit the same wall: templates are designed for one product with a few variants. We have 77 colours in a single product, and what the customer really wants to know is "what does this colour actually look like".

The decisions I made

ART IST product page: the product video that changes when you tap a colour swatch

ART IST home page: a theme written from scratch, an opening where the paint is computed in real time

artistboya.com — product page

A separate video for every colour — not a photograph

We filmed a separate product video for each of the 234 colours and linked it to the product page. When the customer taps a colour swatch, the video on the page switches to that colour. Not a square colour sample; real footage showing the flow of the paint, its coverage and how it looks once dry.

Why: the number one reason for returns is "this is not the colour I expected". Video settles that before the purchase — cutting both returns and support requests.

I wrote the theme from scratch

I did not buy a ready-made theme and tinker with it. The opening on the home page is a scene that computes the flow of paint in real time on the graphics card — not a video, a live image. For mobile I designed a separate opening: a vertical metallic colour chart that opens out from under the paint as you swipe.

Why: a paint brand's site has to make you feel the paint. A brand squeezed inside a template cannot be told apart from its competitors.

I coded the discount logic myself

The rule "10 % off if you buy 10 of the same size, 15 % off for 20" worked correctly in no ready-made discount app — because 100 ml and 500 ml have to be counted separately. I wrote that rule with Shopify's own function infrastructure; it applies automatically in the cart.

Why: a discount that works wrongly burns either your money or your credibility. If the rule is specific to your business, the software has to be too.

A "light mode" for weak phones

On an older Android phone the site went to a black screen and crashed. I measured the device's memory and added a mode that switches off the heavy imagery and the live scene below 4 GB. On those devices the site opens plain but working.

Why: most traffic in Turkey comes from phones, and not all of them are new. A site that does not open is a site that does not exist.

The reviews are real, not invented

I set up a real customer review system on the product pages and gathered reviews from past orders. The stars you see on this page belong to real buyers.

Why: fake reviews bring sales in the short term and returns and lost reputation in the long term.

What there is today

40product pages, 545 variants

234colours with their own product video

6series collections

3marketplace integration

ART IST catalogue page — Catalogue — price, rating and review count on the card.

The phone view of the ART IST product page — Phone view — a fixed cart bar at the bottom, the colour video inside the page.

ART IST blog page — Blog — articles answering the questions people actually search for, such as "where is acrylic paint used".

Before and after

What follows is not a revenue claim but a statement of facts: what there was at the start, what there is today. I do not write anything here that I have not measured.

At the start

Today

Explaining the product

The product page said "water-based acrylic, 100 ml"; the colour was shown as a single square patch.

Explaining the product

A separate product video for each of the 234 colours — pick a colour and the footage on the page switches to it.

Theme

A ready-made theme; hundreds of variants made the page unusable.

Theme

A theme written from scratch. 77 colours in a single product, and it opens on a phone too.

The discount rule

Ready-made apps could not tell 100 ml from 500 ml, so the rule worked incorrectly.

The discount rule

I wrote the rule myself with Shopify's function infrastructure; it applies automatically in the cart.

Older phones

On an older Android the site went to a black screen and crashed.

Older phones

Device memory is measured; on a weak device the heavy content switches off and the site opens plain but working.

Reviews

There were no reviews at all on the product pages.

Reviews

A real customer review system is in place; reviews were gathered from past orders.

Sales channel

Its own site only.

Sales channel

The site plus Trendyol, Hepsiburada and n11 — stock managed from one place.

The lesson from this

What it means for your business

The most expensive job on this site was not the flashiest one. It was filming 234 colours and linking each one to the right product. Boring, long, entirely mechanical work — and it turned out to be the thing that most influenced the buying decision.

An agency will not offer you this job, because it does not know the product. Someone who knows the product knows what the customer is wondering about. There is a job like that — boring but decisive — in your business too. When we talk, that is the first thing I look for.

I can build the same thing for your brand

I look at your brand and tell you what can be done — I do not charge for that. If I think we are not a fit, I say that plainly too.

Let us talk about your brand

Case 02 — the US export channel → Case 03 — a system that runs itself → Effects catalogue — 47 live demos →