Design and creative for ecommerce brands
Brand, UX and ad creative work best as one system. We design to help customers understand, trust and buy, not to decorate.
Design and creative
What we do in design and creative
4 services
Ad creative
Ad creative is the strategy, design and templates behind your ads and emails. We help you test ideas, keep assets on brand and make them easy to reuse.
- Creative strategy
- Static ad design
- Dynamic creative
3 services
Branding
Branding is the decisions about who you are for and what you say, then the visual identity and rules that carry them everywhere. We treat strategy, identity and guidelines as one system.
2 services
UX
UX design makes your store easy to understand and use. We start with research, then agree structure in wireframes and prototypes, so changes are cheap and the build has a clear plan.
How it fits together
Design that supports sales, not decoration
Good design helps a customer understand what you sell, trust you and take the next step. We work on three things: your brand, how your store is used, and the ads and emails that bring people to it. We treat them as one system, because customers meet them as one.
Brand, UX and ad creative are one system
A customer sees an ad, lands on a page, reads an email a week later and opens a parcel. If each of those was made separately, they feel like different businesses, and trust drops at every hand-off.
- Brand decides who you are for and what you say. Without it, everything else is guesswork.
- UX makes the store easy to follow, especially on a phone.
- Ad creative carries the brand into places where you have a few seconds to be understood.
A common problem: the ad promises one thing, the product page leads with another, and the email uses a third tone of voice. Polishing any one of them will not help much. The fix is to agree the message first, then design each piece to say it.
What a creative review is
A creative review is where we look at your brand, website, ads or emails and tell you plainly what is working, what is not and what to fix first. You send links to what you want looked at, not files, and we write back.
It suits you if you suspect something is off but are not sure what, or if you want a second opinion before spending on a redesign or a new campaign. You do not have to hire us afterwards.
The review is free. You get a slide deck of findings in priority order, talked through on a short follow-up call, and we aim to send it within 5 working days of receiving your website address.
Where to start
Branding covers strategy, identity and guidelines, and how they connect. Start here if you are launching, repositioning, or your brand lives in one person’s head. Our strongest starting points are brand strategy, which works out what you stand for before anything is drawn, and brand guidelines, which turn that into rules your team and developers can follow.
UX is research and design before build. Start here if visitors arrive but do not buy, or you are about to rebuild your store. UX research puts evidence ahead of opinion. If your main question is where people drop out of the checkout, conversion rate optimisation is the measurement side of the same job.
Ad creative covers strategy, static and dynamic ads, and email layout. Start here if you already advertise and the creative is the weak link. Email layout design builds templates that stay on brand across email apps. Ads also need a plan for where they run and what they cost, which sits in PPC. We plan the two together.
Evidence first
We start with evidence, not taste. We look at your current brand and store, ask what you want customers to do, and agree a short list of changes before any design begins. We would rather make three well-chosen changes than redesign everything.
If you are building or rebuilding on Shopify, we plan the design with the people who will build it, so what is agreed is what gets made. See Shopify development.
What it costs
Design work is priced by what is involved, not from a fixed menu. See pricing for how we approach it.
Branding, logo, UX and wireframing work is priced per project, with up to three rounds of revisions. One-off creative and assets are priced at an agreed hourly rate. If you have a digital marketing retainer, some design is already part of it, such as email templates or the display ads we run for you. See the pricing page.
How we work
Every project is different, so timings depend on its size and complexity. You get a realistic timeline in writing before work starts, and we never promise results by a date.
Step 1: Review
We look at your brand, store, ads and emails together, as a customer meets them, and note where the story breaks.
Step 2: Prioritise
We list what to change, in order of likely benefit against effort, and say what to leave alone.
Step 3: Design
We do the work that matters most first, whether that is positioning, a key page or a set of ads.
Step 4: Hand over and check
We hand over files your team can use, then look at what happened and keep what works.
How we approach pricing
We price this by what you need, so you can start small and add stages later. You see the quote in writing before work starts. Our pricing page explains how we approach design and creative work.
Questions people ask
What is a creative review?
You send us links to your brand, ads, emails or website. We look at them as a customer would and tell you what is working, what is not and what to fix first. It is free: a slide deck of findings, talked through on a short follow-up call, and we aim to send it within 5 working days.
Do I need a full redesign?
Often not. Many stores improve a lot from targeted changes to a few pages or assets. If a redesign is the honest answer, we will say so and explain why.
Can you work with our existing brand?
Yes. We can follow your current guidelines, tidy them up or help you create them if you do not have any yet.
Do I need branding before UX or ads?
Not always, but you need a clear idea of who you are for and what you say. If that is fuzzy, ads and page design both suffer, so we start there.
Will better design increase my sales?
It can help people understand your offer, trust you and find what they need, which is what supports sales. Nobody can promise a particular result, and we do not.
Who does the work?
Specialist designers do the work, and each piece is checked before you see it. There are no account managers in between.
Not sure where to start?
Get a free UX and conversion review of your website, focused on how your creative affects performance. A subject matter expert at Advent reviews it, and we aim to send it within 5 working days.