A Digital Refresh: By Malene Birger Embraces The Future
By Malene Birger Oslo — design refresh on Shopify, Q1 2025. Sales up 40 per cent year on year.
Design and build: Sylte Studios
By Malene Birger Oslo is Norway's only By Malene Birger store, independently owned and run by Merete Beckman at Paleet in Oslo. The shop was trading well. The site was not keeping up with it. The design had grown page by page over several years, and the standard set in the store was not reaching the screen.
We worked inside the existing Shopify theme rather than replacing it. Structure came first: navigation and information architecture rebuilt so a visitor reaches a product in fewer decisions, with the collections ordered the way the store actually sells.
Then the type. A typographic system with a defined hierarchy, scale, and rhythm, set against one grid and one spacing scale across the store. This is where most of the improvement came from, and it is the part clients rarely expect. When headings, prices, and product names follow a scale, and space repeats, the whole store reads as calm without a single new image.
Product and collection pages were rebuilt around clearer visual priorities, with filtering and sorting simplified, a consistent image logic for how products are cropped and ordered, and microcopy rewritten so every button and label says the same thing in the same voice.
To keep it that way, we set a component library in the design, with rules for using it, so new pages and campaigns could be built quickly without the design drifting.
Delivery also covered Shopify theme customisation, mobile-first layout, accessibility improvements, performance work against Core Web Vitals, and an SEO foundation across structure, metadata, and internal linking, along with integrations for the loyalty programme and campaign functionality.
Sales rose 40 per cent year on year. The store was easier to shop and faster to load, and the team could add to it without asking anyone's permission. That last part mattered more than expected, because it is what made the next step possible.
Scope
— Shopify UX and UI redesign
— Information architecture and navigation
— Typographic system, grid, and spacing
— Component library and usage rules
— Product and collection page templates
— Performance and accessibility
— SEO foundation
— Theme customisation and integrations
If your team runs the site themselves and it has drifted out of step, that is a short, defined piece of work rather than a project. Send an enquiry: hei@syltestudios.com
Visit By Malene Birger’s Oslo store
