EM Cosmetics — Shopify CRO Investigation & Fix

EM Cosmetics is a premium beauty and skincare brand founded by Michelle Phan, selling direct-to-consumer through a custom Shopify storefront at emcosmetics.com. The brand offers a curated range of lip, face, cheek, and eye products with a strong emphasis on clean formulations and soft-focus aesthetics.

The EM Cosmetics team identified conversion rate optimization (CRO) issues impacting their storefront performance. As a full stack developer, I was brought in to investigate the root causes of conversion drop-offs and implement targeted fixes across the Shopify theme and underlying codebase.

Audited the full purchase funnel from homepage through product pages, cart, and checkout to identify friction points and drop-off patterns

Investigated front-end performance issues including render-blocking scripts, heavy asset loading, and layout shifts that were degrading the shopping experience

Diagnosed Shopify Liquid template issues affecting product variant selection, add-to-cart flows, and dynamic pricing display (the store uses Affirm installments, shade selectors, and multi-variant product cards)

Reviewed third-party integrations including analytics, cookie consent, accessibility widgets, and payment providers (Affirm, Shop Pay) for conflicts and performance overhead

Implemented targeted fixes to resolve the identified CRO blockers, improving page load times, streamlining the add-to-cart experience, and ensuring consistent behavior across product types

The store runs on Shopify with a heavily customized theme, Affirm for buy-now-pay-later, Shop Pay integration, SMS signup flows, and a loyalty/account system ("Join The Kingdom"). Products range from $22 to $48 with complex variant structures (multiple shades per product, before/after imagery, and inline swatch selectors).

Delivered a set of CRO improvements that addressed the identified conversion blockers, resulting in a smoother, faster shopping experience for EM Cosmetics customers.