Smokin Jon's BBQ
Framer headless to native Shopify in 42 days: a conversion rescue, a platform migration, and the first Christmas season that actually delivered
Smokin Jon's BBQ is a New Brunswick artisan brand making small-batch BBQ sauces, rubs, and gift boxes with a loyal local following and 34 products ready to sell online at scale. The online channel was generating $6,000 per year. A headless Shopify storefront with a Framer front end had been left behind by a prior agency, and it had quietly broken every tool the business needed: Google Analytics was not firing, heatmaps showed nothing, the sitemap was not being indexed, and legacy URLs returned 404 errors on every product search. Conversion sat at 0.2%. The Christmas season was three months away. We migrated the entire store, rebuilt the conversion layer, launched paid acquisition on three channels, and got out of the way before peak season opened.
Services
- Shopify migration (Framer headless to native Shopify)
- Full store rebuild on Shopify premium theme (Trove)
- Store ownership transfer and access cleanup
- Complete URL mapping and 301 redirect implementation
- Analytics and conversion tracking rebuild (GA4, Meta Pixel, CAPI, Clarity, GSC)
- Shipping automation via ClickShip and Freightcom
- Bundle builder, subscribe and save, and flavour profile quiz
- Automated review engine and lifecycle email (replacing Mailchimp)
- Abandoned cart, checkout, and browse abandonment recovery
- SEO and AEO with product, FAQ, and homepage schema
- Shopping feeds (Google, Microsoft, Meta)
- Google Ads, Meta Ads, and Microsoft Ads build and management
Tech Stack
The Challenge
A headless Shopify setup with a Framer front end looks like a modern architecture decision. For a small food brand running the store themselves, it is an operational trap. GA4 was not firing correctly. Microsoft Clarity showed no session data. The sitemap was invisible to search engines. Every legacy URL from prior platforms returned a 404 error with no redirect in place, quietly destroying organic search equity built over years of trading.
The store was not converting because customers could not find it, and when they did, the experience was not built for someone who wanted to buy BBQ sauce. The bundle builder was buried. There was no subscribe and save. Cart abandonment was invisible. Analytics could not tell you where anyone dropped off because nothing was being tracked accurately.
Conversion sat at 0.2%. The 1% benchmark for a food brand with real demand was five times higher. And the Christmas season was three months out.
The Solution
We rebuilt the store from the foundation up, prioritized redirects and tracking before anything else, and structured the three-month timeline to have paid campaigns learning before the Christmas window opened.
Migration and store rebuild in 42 days
We rebuilt the entire Shopify store on the Trove premium theme, preserving the existing brand, layout, menus, and filters while removing the Framer dependency entirely. Store ownership was transferred from the prior agency to Smokin Jon's on Day 1, collaborator access was cleaned, and payment providers were kept live throughout the handover. All 34 products with images, variants, pricing, and descriptions, plus customer records from WooCommerce and Etsy, were migrated with zero data loss.
Every legacy URL redirected, 404 monitoring installed
We mapped every prior URL to its Shopify equivalent with 301 redirects, submitted the new sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and installed 404 monitoring so broken links surface in real time rather than silently costing organic rankings. 100% redirect coverage on launch day. Zero 404 errors in the first 30 days of monitoring.
Tracking rebuilt end to end
GA4, Google Search Console, Microsoft Clarity, Meta Pixel, Meta Conversions API, and Shopify native analytics were all configured and validated through a live test purchase on launch day. For the first time, the business could see sessions by device, landing page, referral source, cart add rate, checkout rate, conversion rate, and per-sale attribution, all in one place.
Conversion and retention layer
The bundle builder was repositioned with a visible call to action and in-flow product previews. A flavour profile quiz routed hesitant buyers to the right collection based on heat and taste preference. Subscribe and save launched for jerky with 30-day replenishment reminders. An automated review engine fires seven days post-fulfillment, capturing low scores privately and publishing five-star reviews to the product page and Google Business Profile. Abandoned cart, abandoned checkout, and browse abandonment recovery went live with discount codes. Lifecycle email was rebuilt inside Shopify, replacing Mailchimp, with segments by province, purchase history, and subscriber date.
SEO, AEO, and shopping feeds
We ran keyword research against the highest-traffic terms for artisan BBQ, hot sauce, and gift box searches, then optimized titles, meta descriptions, and handles across every product and collection. Product schema, FAQ schema, and homepage schema were implemented so the store surfaces in AI answer engines including ChatGPT, Copilot, and Perplexity alongside traditional search. Google Merchant Center, Microsoft Merchant Center, and the Meta catalog were connected with Instagram and Facebook product tagging.
Three paid channels live before October
Google Ads (Search and Shopping), Meta Ads with audiences built from Shopify purchase data, and Microsoft Ads covering the search volume that never touches Google were all launched before October. The $1,000 advertising allocation was distributed across the term and shifted in real time based on which platform was producing customers, giving campaigns enough learning time to perform before Christmas demand peaked.
The Results
With the Framer front end replaced, Clarity heatmaps immediately showed where the checkout path was breaking. Conversion climbed from 0.2% to 1.4% within 60 days of the rebuilt store going live. Three paid channels were running with campaign audiences building from real Shopify customer data before the Christmas season opened. The first Christmas with a real plan produced 220% more online revenue than the entire prior year combined. Subscribe and save for jerky created a recurring revenue base that continued compounding after the holiday peak closed.