Selected work
Building and marketing an ecommerce business from the inside.
When I first became involved with the Kirsty Meakin business, she was selling nail tools such as files, buffers and brushes through a fairly simple Square website.
It did the basics, but it wasn’t really built for what we wanted to do next. We needed a proper ecommerce site that gave us more control. We wanted to track sales properly, run adverts and have something we could build on as the product range grew.
I designed and built the replacement.
This wasn’t a normal client job either. I was helping run the business behind the website.
I was a co-founder and co-director of the company behind the Kirsty Meakin brand from 2020 to 2026.
I designed and built the ecommerce site, ran the paid social side and got involved in a lot of the day-to-day work behind the business too. Kirsty supplied much of the original product knowledge and content; I helped shape it into something that worked properly on the site.
I handled the structure and navigation, product pages, checkout and the supporting pages around the shop. I connected Mailchimp, worked on email marketing and put the analytics and sales tracking in place.
I ran the paid social side too. That meant planning campaigns, building audiences, working on the adverts and copy, managing budgets, optimising campaigns and keeping an eye on what was actually selling.
New collection launches, Black Friday and the brand’s birthday sales became some of the biggest trading periods.
The screenshot above shows real campaign data from the account. The purchase results shown are Meta-attributed figures rather than independently verified business turnover.
I also worked on product uploads and launches, making sure new products and launches were prominent on the site, promotions and pricing, customer-service problems and fulfilment. The job definitely didn’t stop when the website went live.
The Square site was fine for selling a small range of tools, but we needed more control if we were going to properly track sales and run paid campaigns.
The replacement site gave us somewhere we could build product launches, promotions and advertising around rather than treating the website and marketing as separate jobs.
I introduced the line “Built by nail techs, for nail techs.” Kirsty supplied the product knowledge and much of the original content, and I helped refine and present it.
It gave us a simple way of explaining why the products existed and who they were actually made for.
One of the things running the business taught me is that ecommerce problems rarely stay neatly inside the website.
When DPD made a significant change, we had to move quickly. We negotiated with UPS, changed the shipping setup on the site and also changed the process used by the people picking and packing the orders.
The customer only sees the delivery option at checkout. Behind that button there’s an actual business that has to make it work.
We went from a fairly basic Square shop to a proper ecommerce setup we could actually market. We could track sales, run paid campaigns properly and build launches and promotions around the website.
I also built an internal staff tool to help deal with delivery-related issues, and spent plenty of time working across customer service, fulfilment and the less glamorous bits of running an online shop.
That experience is a big part of how I approach ecommerce work now. I haven’t just built online shops. I’ve had to help run one when orders are coming in, customers need answers and something has suddenly gone wrong.
Tell me about the business, what you’re trying to do and what’s getting in the way.
Website design, ecommerce and practical marketing support.
DM2, Bovis House
Victoria Road
Hartlepool
TS24 7SE