
Michael McBride
Founder & CEO, Atelier Commerce

Michael McBride
Founder & CEO, Atelier Commerce
Growth is not a function of volume. It is a function of clarity applied consistently over time. Most of the work is invisible. It is the removal of friction no one notices until it is gone.
Growth is not a function of volume. It is a function of clarity applied consistently over time. Most of the work is invisible. It is the removal of friction no one notices until it is gone.

The Challenge
The product did not have a demand problem. It had a discoverability problem and a clarity problem, and the two compounded each other.
Search engines could not fully read the site. Crawling was blocked in places, which meant pages Google should have indexed simply did not exist as far as search was concerned. On top of that, duplicate title tags, duplicate meta descriptions, and duplicate content sent conflicting signals across collections and products, diluting the authority of every page. The store also carried small frictions that added up. Collection pages led with description copy instead of product, pushing the actual reason to visit below the fold. The loyalty and reviews experience was split across platforms that did not work together. There was no clear path for wholesale or private label buyers, and a generic 404 page quietly leaked traffic that had already arrived. None of these were dramatic on their own. Together they formed a ceiling.
The Challenge
The product did not have a demand problem. It had a discoverability problem and a clarity problem, and the two compounded each other.
Search engines could not fully read the site. Crawling was blocked in places, which meant pages Google should have indexed simply did not exist as far as search was concerned. On top of that, duplicate title tags, duplicate meta descriptions, and duplicate content sent conflicting signals across collections and products, diluting the authority of every page. The store also carried small frictions that added up. Collection pages led with description copy instead of product, pushing the actual reason to visit below the fold. The loyalty and reviews experience was split across platforms that did not work together. There was no clear path for wholesale or private label buyers, and a generic 404 page quietly leaked traffic that had already arrived. None of these were dramatic on their own. Together they formed a ceiling.





The System
We started at the foundation. A full site launch and migration ran from January to April of 2024, a new Shopify theme built from design to go-live, giving us a clean base to optimize rather than a legacy site to patch.
On the technical SEO side, we cleared the crawling blocks so Google could finally index the catalog. We resolved duplicate title tags across collections and products, worked through multiple rounds of duplicate meta descriptions, and eliminated duplicate content so each page could stand on its own. A full sitewide review of SEO meta titles followed. We configured SEOKart for ongoing monitoring and stood up recurring Semrush audits under campaign 6105612, so the site is watched continuously rather than checked once. We also implemented llms.txt, an answer engine optimization layer that prepares the brand to be read and cited by AI engines, not just traditional search. To recover traffic that would otherwise be lost, we rebuilt the 404 page with the top three collections, Women, Men, and Babies, each with imagery and a direct link back into the catalog. On the conversion side, we moved collection descriptions to the bottom of the page so products lead and the reason to buy sits above the fold. We migrated the reviews and loyalty stack from Stamped to Reviews.io and Influence.io, rebuilding the rewards program in the process, and integrated a new referral widget into the loyalty page. We built dedicated wholesale sign-up and private label landing pages to open conversion paths the site did not have before, and optimized the subscription product to make recurring purchase easier. Alongside the on-site work, we built more than thirty email and SMS campaigns in Klaviyo with automated flows, and tuned paid media across Google Ads through transparency analysis, product feed fixes, and keyword reviews.
The System
We started at the foundation. A full site launch and migration ran from January to April of 2024, a new Shopify theme built from design to go-live, giving us a clean base to optimize rather than a legacy site to patch.
On the technical SEO side, we cleared the crawling blocks so Google could finally index the catalog. We resolved duplicate title tags across collections and products, worked through multiple rounds of duplicate meta descriptions, and eliminated duplicate content so each page could stand on its own. A full sitewide review of SEO meta titles followed. We configured SEOKart for ongoing monitoring and stood up recurring Semrush audits under campaign 6105612, so the site is watched continuously rather than checked once. We also implemented llms.txt, an answer engine optimization layer that prepares the brand to be read and cited by AI engines, not just traditional search. To recover traffic that would otherwise be lost, we rebuilt the 404 page with the top three collections, Women, Men, and Babies, each with imagery and a direct link back into the catalog. On the conversion side, we moved collection descriptions to the bottom of the page so products lead and the reason to buy sits above the fold. We migrated the reviews and loyalty stack from Stamped to Reviews.io and Influence.io, rebuilding the rewards program in the process, and integrated a new referral widget into the loyalty page. We built dedicated wholesale sign-up and private label landing pages to open conversion paths the site did not have before, and optimized the subscription product to make recurring purchase easier. Alongside the on-site work, we built more than thirty email and SMS campaigns in Klaviyo with automated flows, and tuned paid media across Google Ads through transparency analysis, product feed fixes, and keyword reviews.

Latest projects
Social Media Marketing
Alicia Adams Alpaca: Where nine in ten organic social visitors are meeting the brand for the very first time
Alicia Adams Alpaca runs organic social as top-of-funnel discovery, not bottom-funnel conversion. Nearly 90% of visitors it sends are first-timers, the brand's highest new-visitor rate of any channel, arriving curious after seeing a styled throw or editorial content, ready to look closer.

Social Media Marketing
Alicia Adams Alpaca: Where nine in ten organic social visitors are meeting the brand for the very first time
Alicia Adams Alpaca runs organic social as top-of-funnel discovery, not bottom-funnel conversion. Nearly 90% of visitors it sends are first-timers, the brand's highest new-visitor rate of any channel, arriving curious after seeing a styled throw or editorial content, ready to look closer.

Moonglow Jewelry: SEO & AEO, One Data Layer, Three Surfaces
We cleaned up a sprawling Shopify Plus catalog and enriched the product data behind it, structured for search engines and answer engines alike. The result: the blue link, the star-rating rich result, a seat in the AI Overview. Same data. Built to be found. Built to be cited.

Moonglow Jewelry: SEO & AEO, One Data Layer, Three Surfaces
We cleaned up a sprawling Shopify Plus catalog and enriched the product data behind it, structured for search engines and answer engines alike. The result: the blue link, the star-rating rich result, a seat in the AI Overview. Same data. Built to be found. Built to be cited.

Latest projects
Social Media Marketing
Alicia Adams Alpaca: Where nine in ten organic social visitors are meeting the brand for the very first time
Alicia Adams Alpaca runs organic social as top-of-funnel discovery, not bottom-funnel conversion. Nearly 90% of visitors it sends are first-timers, the brand's highest new-visitor rate of any channel, arriving curious after seeing a styled throw or editorial content, ready to look closer.

Moonglow Jewelry: SEO & AEO, One Data Layer, Three Surfaces
We cleaned up a sprawling Shopify Plus catalog and enriched the product data behind it, structured for search engines and answer engines alike. The result: the blue link, the star-rating rich result, a seat in the AI Overview. Same data. Built to be found. Built to be cited.

