Mischief Mates

The Challenge

Mischief Mates is a whole cast of original queer characters drawn by Kurt and Lee, on tees, tanks, caps, mugs and gifts. People find them online and in eight shops, from Provincetown to San Diego.

The old website ran on a standard Shopify theme, so the Mates' personality didn't come through. Shoppers saw 16 products and then a "page 2" link, every tee went into the cart as a size small unless they changed it, the size chart was buried in the product description, and there was no way to browse by character. AI tools like ChatGPT could find the name and the logo, and not much else.

The Strategy

Let the Mates run the store. Kurt and Lee's art leads every page, every character gets its own place to shop, and the shopping tools quietly help people pick the right size and add one more thing before checkout. We built it in Shopify so their team can keep running it day to day.

What We Built

• A new Shopify store built around Kurt and Lee's art, with Mates that move
• A page for every Mate, a menu with pictures, and a map of the eight shops
• A side cart with a free-shipping countdown and add-ons that go with what's in it
• A size check before anything goes in the cart, with the size guide one tap away
• A buy bar that follows shoppers on phones, and back-in-stock alerts for sold-out sizes
• Customer photos people can shop straight from the picture
• Search titles, descriptions and a facts page, so Google and AI tools describe the brand correctly

The Results

Before launch we tested the old site and the new one page for page, with the same tools on the same day. The new site went live on October 6, 2026, about four weeks after we started.

• Website score: 48 out of 100 on the old site, 96 on the new one
• Speed on phones: the homepage's main image shows up in 3.9 seconds, down from 10.9, even with far more art on the page
• Accessibility: a perfect 100, up from 88, with serious accessibility problems down from 20 to zero
• Search listings: 93, up from 57
• AI search readiness: 100, up from 10
• Shopping and checkout tools: 100, up from 15
• Finding products: 100, up from 18

Next, ads and email send more people to the new store.