Willenborg
From a one-off Shopify build to ongoing E-Commerce operations — across two businesses.
- •Two businesses under one family: Maler Willenborg is a 30+ year painting contractor.
- •Farben Willenborg is their Brillux paint e-commerce shop (~€500K annual revenue, 200+ products, 1,515 paint colors).
- •The collaboration started as a project and grew into an ongoing external Head of E-Commerce role.
Key milestones on the customer journey:
- 1Maler Willenborg: full Shopify site build
- 2Farben Willenborg: external Head of E-Commerce
- 3Custom color picker (1,515 colors)
- 4Full GA4/BigQuery audit (powered by Bottomline + Sigma)
- 5Klaviyo CRM audit & retention strategy
- 6Pricing & consent systems
The Challenge
The painting business (Maler Willenborg) had no professional website — relying entirely on word-of-mouth. The paint shop (Farben Willenborg) was running but lacked operational depth: broken GA4 attribution, no CRM strategy (0 campaigns ever sent, key Klaviyo flows broken), no privacy/consent automation, and pricing inconsistencies across 1,515 color variants.
The Solution
Phase 1: Maler Willenborg — Full Shopify Build
＋- • Built a dynamic service page system using Shopify metaobjects — each service (Malerarbeiten, Fassadenanstrich, Lackierarbeiten, Raumgestaltung, Fußbodenarbeiten) gets its own page with structured content, managed entirely from Shopify Admin
- • Custom before/after split-view sections and photo galleries organized by service category to showcase craftsmanship
- • Booking flow, store locator, FAQ system, testimonials, and newsletter sections
- • SEO-friendly German URL structure and responsive theme customization
Phase 2: Farben Willenborg — Custom Color Picker
＋- • Rebuilt the color picker from scratch: 3-step selection flow (broad family → intensity/HBW tier → specific color) across 1,515 Brillux colors and ~180 RAL classics
- • Deterministic classification via Brillux numbering system — no manual color assignments needed
- • Search by Brillux code or color name, dynamic pricing per HBW brightness tier (hell/mittel/dunkel)
- • Identified and flagged a live pricing bug: 95 colors with incorrect HBW values causing wrong tier assignment
Phase 2: SEO & Analytics Overhaul
＋- • Full GA4/BigQuery audit (Q1 2026) using Bottomline + Sigma: uncovered that 100% of purchases showed as 'Unassigned' channel — attribution was fundamentally broken
- • Root cause: Shopify privacy/consent automation was not activated, causing GA4 to fire in restricted mode for all EU visitors
- • Activated consent management, fixed tracking — measurable attribution improvement expected within weeks
- • SEO cleanup: removed title suffixes flagged by Sistrix, set meta titles/descriptions, verified H1 hierarchy, added collection intro text
Phase 2: Klaviyo CRM Audit
＋- • Audited all Klaviyo flows: Welcome flow working (€3.5K revenue), but Add-to-Cart flow completely broken (0 delivered), Abandoned Checkout skipping 81% of entries, and 0 campaigns ever sent
- • Identified €17–26K quarterly revenue potential from fixing flows and activating campaigns
- • 83% of customers buy once and disappear — retention is the #1 growth lever
Phase 2: Pricing & Operations
＋- • Built a strikethrough pricing system: auto-generates Shopify compareAtPrice for volume discounts (1L base → larger sizes show savings)
- • Per-color-tone baselines, psychological rounding (€X.90), safety margins, bundle exclusion logic
- • Scope: 222 products, 44 eligible, 175 variant updates — script built, reviewed, ready for deployment
Powered by Bottomline + Sigma
＋- • Bottomline synced 8,000+ Shopify orders into a single source of truth — cross-referenced with GA4/BigQuery data to verify reporting accuracy (GA4 undercounted orders by ~12–14%)
- • Sigma (CFO copilot) produced the full Q1 2026 shop analysis in minutes: revenue trends, retention breakdown, funnel analysis, and device split — delivered as a branded PDF report
- • Without Bottomline, the attribution bug and Klaviyo revenue gap would have taken weeks to surface through manual analysis
Key Takeaways
Starting with a defined project builds trust — the ongoing engagement followed naturally
Broken attribution can silently undermine months of marketing spend. Always verify consent/tracking setup first
Shopify metaobjects replace complex CMS builds for service businesses — structured, maintainable, no plugins
CRM revenue potential is often hiding in plain sight: one broken flow and zero campaigns left significant money on the table
This engagement runs on our persistent AI memory infrastructure — context compounds across every session, decision, and team member.
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