Trust is the product

Context

This is an Egyptian unisex fashion brand on Shopify: designed in Greece, stitched in Egypt. Every piece has a name and a one-line story. The Linguini Shirt’s is “The sauce takes longer than the pasta does.”

I did this in collaboration with Polaria, in two parts: get the website ready for the AW26 winter drop without a big overhaul, and sort out the order operations behind it.

The brand is warm and specific. The store wasn’t. Clothes are a hard thing to buy from a phone: you can’t try them on, and here you can’t swap them either. So the question I took to the audit wasn’t “does it look good?” It was “can a shopper believe what this store tells them?”

The audit

I went through the store as a shopper on an iPhone, read every policy line, and compared them with the rules the team actually works by. The shopping engine was fine: clear categories, quick add, strong photography. The problem was that the store contradicted itself.

None of these is a big bug. Together, they teach a shopper not to believe the store, right before it asks for money.

The clothes were already good. The store had to be believable.

One set of rules

The first fix wasn’t a design. The brand doesn’t offer exchanges, so the site had to stop offering them. I wrote each rule once, in English and Arabic, and put that one line everywhere the question comes up, next to the button rather than inside a closed accordion.

These are also the rules the order system runs on. The 7-day window on the page is the 7-day check in the code, so a promise on the site and what the team can deliver are the same thing.

The size finder

No exchanges changes what a size chart is for. A wrong size isn’t a swap any more, it’s a return, so the page has to get the size right the first time. The old chart gave garment numbers in inches and left the shopper to work it out. The new one answers the question they’re actually asking: which size am I?

This is the finished product block and finder, running here with the theme’s own recommendation code. Try a height and weight, then pick a fit.

The rest of the product page follows the same idea: answer the doubt where it happens. The whole photo comes first, with the model’s height and size on it. Delivery, cash on delivery, WhatsApp confirmation and returns sit right under the button. The matching short is offered as “Complete the set”, and the bag says so when you’ve done it.

Product page

The bag

The House Menu

Arabic

Second opinions

Even with the right size, people still want to check with someone before they buy. So the store gives them two ways to ask without leaving: a friend, or a bot that knows the rules.

The bot follows the same principle as the rest of the store. It can only say what the store can stand behind, and when it can’t help, it passes the shopper to a person.

Two directions

I took two directions to the client. Direction A, “Sunlit editorial”, was the safe evolution: story before sale, every doubt answered next to the button, calm on a phone. Direction B, “The Menu”, was the bold idea. The brand already writes like a menu, so B made the whole store one: pieces as dishes, dotted lines to the price, the delivery terms as the bill.

The client chose A with a touch of B, and that’s what was built. A carries the store, and B stays as its signature: the House Menu section, the “served warm” stamp, the moving quote band and the italic accents.

Scroll the page

Order automation

A rule on a web page only holds if the operation behind it holds too, and at the audit this one ran on people remembering. The Bosta app created the shipment and marked the order fulfilled seconds after checkout, before anyone had confirmed it. Cash orders stayed pending until someone marked them paid by hand. Returns, refunds and reconciliation were all manual.

So the new system runs every order down one path, as a Cloudflare Worker sitting between Shopify, WhatsApp, Bosta and Paymob.

1. 01Shopify

   Order in

   Held the moment it lands. Nothing can ship yet.

2. 02WhatsApp

   Confirm

   Summary with Confirm and Cancel. Reminder at 12 hours, cancelled and restocked at 24.

3. 03Release gate

   Check

   Before every booking: confirmed, paid, in stock, no hold, no shipment yet.

4. 04Bosta

   Ship

   One shipment, booked once. Pickup marks it fulfilled and sends tracking on WhatsApp.

5. 05Paymob · cash on delivery

   Get paid

   Cards are paid before shipping. Cash counts only when Bosta’s amount matches.

6. 06Bosta · Paymob

   Return and refund

   7-day check, Bosta pickup, each item inspected, one refund per case.

Ops pageCloudflare Worker · English / عربي

Anything that can’t finish by itself lands here, with what to do and the button that does it.

• Ops
• Warehouse
• Finance

The release gate is the part that matters. It runs right before every Bosta booking, so nothing ships unconfirmed and no order gets two shipments, even if a webhook repeats or someone clicks twice.

The team doesn’t watch the system. The Ops page shows only the orders that need a person, in English or Arabic, filtered by Ops, Warehouse or Finance. Each card says what happened, what to do, and has the button that does it.

POF OPS

Sample orders

عربي

All Ops Warehouse Finance

• Bosta booking failed 14 h ago #1043

  What to do: Check the address on the order, then retry.

  Retry booking

• Return request needs a decision 20 h ago #1038

  What to do: Approve or decline. The customer is told automatically.

  Review return

• Returned items waiting for inspection 3 h ago #1035

  What to do: Inspect each item and record the result.

  Record inspection

• Delivered, cash not confirmed 2 days ago #1029

  What to do: Check the Bosta cash-out. When the cash is confirmed, record it.

  Cash received

Outcome

All of it was delivered in one week and handed over on 3 November 2026. The redesign is built on the store’s existing Broadcast theme, so checkout stays Shopify’s own and going back to the old site takes one click. With it go the team guide for the Ops page, the return and refund rules, the WhatsApp templates, a cutover and rollback plan, and a video on adding a product. The client also had a live status page showing what was done, what we were on, and what was waiting on them.

The order system passed its 107 tests in simulation before handover. The size finder on this page runs on sample sizes, which is why it says so.

What changed is simple: the new store says one thing, and the system behind it is built to do that thing.