Role Overview
Clients bring in a Brand Design & Optimization Expert to protect and grow conversion. This role is trusted to shape the overall look, feel, and flow of a store in ways that influence buyer trust, product clarity, and brand credibility. A good design expert doesn’t just “make it pretty”—they align layout decisions to commerce outcomes. Whether it’s an early-stage private label store or a scaling DTC brand, the store has to look polished *and* perform. Clients expect better first impressions, less bounce, stronger product display, and a store experience that nudges toward the checkout button.
This is not a generalist design role or a branding brainstormer. It’s not about trendy aesthetics or client hand-holding on color choices. You are here to own performance-driven design decisions—what to spotlight, what to reduce, what to restructure—without needing micro-guidance. If your changes result in lower clarity or slower stores, it costs the business sales and trust. But when done right, strong brand optimization makes the store sell faster, feel more premium, and stand out in its category. That level of impact is why clients pay for this role—and why expectations stay high.
Standards You Must Meet
- The store must look professionally designed and conversion-focused—clients expect polished UX, clean layout hierarchy, and no amateur visual clutter.
- Homepage, product pages, and navigation should feel intentional, not templated—clients will notice if it feels generic or breaks trust.
- You’re expected to improve first-glance clarity—hero messaging, featured products, and brand positioning should be obvious in seconds.
- Any design upgrade must preserve or lift speed, accessibility, and mobile usability—a “pretty” store that loads slow or frustrates users is a fail.
- Assumptions aren’t enough—clients expect rationale behind every layout change, especially when removing or redistributing page elements.
- You should be refining—not just decorating—product presentation, value stacking, and add-to-cart flow to reduce bounce and lift on-page engagement.
- Inconsistent styling, broken images, or mismatched branding across the store are red flags—clients will see those as careless and conversion-costly.
- Above all, good design here must drive performance—clients want to see design directly tied to click-throughs, time on site, and checkout behavior.
What You’ll Be Doing
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Redesign homepage and product page layouts to improve visual priority, reduce confusion, and drive faster buying decisions.
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Apply mobile-responsive layout rules to ensure clarity, speed, and functionality across devices without bloated load times.
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Optimize hero content and key entry points to strengthen brand messaging within the first screen view.
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Adjust layout spacing, typography, and product flow to eliminate friction and improve scanability across page sections.
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Identify design bottlenecks or weak visual anchors using behavior data, then recommend targeted fixes that lift engagement.
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Align product image styles, offer blocks, and checkout nudges to create a clean, high-conversion storefront experience.
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Eliminate visual noise by removing or restructuring elements that distract or break the user journey.
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Present layout decisions with clear rationale tied to performance outcomes—no untested visual changes go live.
What You’ll Hand Over
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A fully optimized homepage and product layout tailored for conversion, with upgraded flow, trust signals, and mobile precision.
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A visual QA summary showing corrected styling, speed-tested assets, and UI consistency across key pages.
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A before-and-after UX walkthrough (via Loom) explaining major layout shifts and the rationale driving each change.
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A validated update log detailing removed, restyled, or repositioned elements and their performance-based justifications.
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A CRO snapshot report using heatmap or analytics insights to show initial engagement lift post-redesign.
Tools You’ll Need to Use
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Shopify + Shopify Theme Editor – Core platform for building, customizing, and optimizing DTC stores with stable, high-converting UX.
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Figma – Essential for wireframing, prototyping, and collaborating on brand-centric layouts before development.
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Adobe Photoshop – Used to create high-quality visuals, optimized banners, and branded assets for web use.
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Hotjar – Critical for analyzing user behavior through heatmaps and recordings to drive CRO decisions.
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Google Analytics (GA4) – Required for tracking KPI performance and identifying optimization opportunities based on real data.
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Klaviyo – Needed for integrating email flows seamlessly into brand experiences and optimizing lifecycle touchpoints.
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Loom – Standard tool for recording clear walkthroughs or visual reports when delivering creative insights to clients.
Why Work Smarter
You don’t need to be a technical expert, but you must be automation-aware. That means recognizing which tasks can and should be automated, collaborating with others who can build systems, and learning enough to not block progress. This isn’t some future trend — it’s the current baseline many VAs haven’t caught up to yet. Clients are moving fast, and they will not wait for someone still doing everything manually.
At OES, we align with market reality — and the market now expects automation-readiness as standard. So do we.
Why Your Work Matters
Right now, every DTC brand on Shopify is fighting for faster trust, better clarity, and fewer abandoned carts. If a store’s layout confuses, slows, or looks generic, it loses the sale—sometimes in under five seconds. Clients don’t have time to explain why a bounce rate spiked. They expect your design decisions to proactively prevent those losses by making the store sharper, faster, and more purchase-ready from the first screen. That’s not support work—it’s direct profit protection.
This role matters because visual errors cost credibility, and unclear flows cost conversions. When products look buried, when pages feel templated, or when mobile isn’t fully optimized, it hurts every marketing dollar the client spends. But when you execute with focus—clear value stacking, strong visual hierarchy, layout logic that sells—store metrics lift, retention improves, and product perception strengthens. That’s the compounding value of a strong Brand Design & Optimization Expert. It’s not nice to have. It’s non-negotiable.
What We Expect From You
As a Specialist Brand Design & Optimization Expert in Shopify Extension + Private Label, your role is to build high-converting, brand-differentiated stores that function as strategic business assets. You understand visual clarity is a business decision, not a creative whim—and you execute design that drives conversion, margin control, and customer retention. You’re not experimenting with templates; you’re applying judgment shaped by data, compliant practices, and platform mechanics. You know Shopify’s capabilities down to the build logic, and you operate with the discipline to deliver storefronts that are both beautiful and revenue-functional. You are expected to move with certainty, because what you deploy affects profit.
We are looking for someone who treats CRO, visual hierarchy, and layout discipline as non-negotiables—especially in the context of private label lifecycle risks. You don’t wait for direction to fix broken buying flows, and you take full ownership of QA, readability, and branded continuity before a store goes live. You’ll work directly with department leads and be held accountable for build quality, store standards, and client-ready output. This means making judgment calls and absorbing the outcome—because your work is live, testable, and tied to real benchmarks. This role directly shapes how brands perform at market, and we don’t give it lightly.
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$615 – $1,985
OES salary standards reflect real market benchmarks, tier and experience level, ensuring fair pay for VAs and realistic expectations for clients.
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