Normcore, SalesHunterThemes' fourth Shopify theme, launched in mid-2024 with a focus on large-catalog and B2B merchants. Our 2-people product design team's in-depth market research identified an underserved segment of large-catalog merchants on Shopify's platform, which inspired us to begin development.
Large-catalog and wholesale Shopify merchants face challenges with inflexible themes that don't support complex products or scale well. This leads to slow setup, performance issues, and poor visibility into conversions, despite having solid business operations.
To solve this, we defined a bold vision:
Help merchants launch quickly with smart presets while offering powerful customization options for scaling their stores.
Our north-star metric became:
In Q1 after launch, over 400 merchants adopted Normcore with 20+ reviews at 100% satisfaction, validating our niche focus.
In our critical alignment session with the Head of Product and product team, led by product designers, we established five key deliverables:
This alignment set the foundation for Normcore's focused execution.
We partnered with visual-design agency Đình Collective to enhance aesthetics while our in-house team focused on UX and research. As the product designer, I took charge of leading weekly alignment sessions to keep their artistic vision aligned with our product goals and January 2025 launch timeline, ensuring their creative work stayed focused on solving real merchant needs.
The work was split into two parallel tracks:
After aligning both tracks into a shared vision, I developed our initial design system and settings framework:
This was just the initial version of these systems - we continued refining them throughout development.
First, we needed to understand our two key user groups:
Using Baymard Institute reports and StoreLeads data, we created two persona profiles with ChatGPT - one representing merchants struggling with complex setup processes, and another showing customers dealing with overwhelming product catalogs.
Using FigJam, we mapped user journeys and identified key needs: merchants wanted sophisticated catalog filtering, while shoppers needed simple navigation.
A card-sorting workshop helped create a focused backlog of core and future features based on persona insights.
Building on our card‑sorting exercise, my design manager and I transformed the brainstormed ideas into a feature prioritization board—grouping every feature into Must‑Haves, Should‑Haves, and Nice‑to‑Haves across each major theme section.
Using our prioritization, we defined core v1.0 features and created Figma wireframes:
This tightly integrated layout ensured that every prioritized feature directly mapped to a merchant-facing setting—keeping design, development, and stakeholder expectations perfectly in sync as we moved toward hi-fi mockups.
We integrated Đình Collective's visual designs with our wireframes and built an Atomic Design-based system for consistency and easy customization.
This systematic approach ensured theme consistency and simplified future refinements.
After finalizing our components and visuals, I moved from wireframes to high-fidelity designs, focusing on refinement:
This iterative process helped us create a robust theme that stayed true to our vision.
Check out Normcore's intro video to see what it's all about
After multiple review rounds with Shopify, we launched Normcore to their Theme Store in Febuary 2025. Since then, We've already reached 50% of our Q1 adoption goal with 200 merchants and 8 five-star reviews, showing strong momentum toward our quarter-end targets.
I want to show my appreciation to the few early adopters whose storefronts highlight how Normcore delivers on fast setup, smooth performance, and tailored experiences:
Artistbooths | Modular Artist Alley Booth Setup & Display Kits
Hip Hop Drum Samples, Sample Packs, & Drum Kits by The Drum Broker
Here are the key principles that guided this project:
Throughout the project, I focused on delivering scalable solutions through effective collaboration.
