A London coffee roaster on Shopify

Broken logo on every page

Where the logo should sit in the header, the served HTML prints a theme error: Liquid error (sections/header): invalid url input. It appears on the homepage, collection, product, subscription and gifting pages.

It is the first thing a new visitor reads. A shop that shows a code error where its own name should be looks abandoned or hacked. Nobody hands card details to a site that looks unattended, and the damage lands hardest on the visitors you most want: people arriving from a recommendation who have never bought before.

The fix

Shopify admin, Online Store, Themes, Customize, Header section. The logo image field is either empty or points to a deleted file. Re-upload the logo (SVG or PNG, about 300px wide). Check on mobile as well as desktop. Do this today.

Verify in a normal browser first. If the logo shows for you, clear the cache and check on a phone that has never visited the site; the error text is in the page source either way.

Back to the top

The homepage does not say who you are

The first content block is a referral-scheme banner, then a heading that reads SHOP WHOLE BEAN COFFEE, then eleven product cards. There is no sentence about the roastery, the founders, the location, or why a bag here costs £15 to £28.

This roaster was founded by two world champions and has roasted in London for the best part of twenty years. That fact alone justifies the price to a stranger, and it is nowhere on the shop. Visitors who already know the brand do not need it. Visitors who arrived by search or a shared link do, and they are the ones who leave.

The fix

Add one line under the header, above the product grid. Keep the grid; do not push it below the fold. One sentence is enough.

Back to the top

You are charging more for the worse option and hiding it

The house espresso is £15.25 for a one-off 350g bag. The same bag on subscription is £13.50 per delivery. The product page mentions this only as a plain-text link at the end of a paragraph: Also available as a subscription.

Subscription is 11.5% cheaper, ships free, can be skipped or paused, and locks in the customer. It is the best deal on the page for the buyer and the best outcome for the business, and the page treats it as a footnote. Every one-off sale of the house espresso at £15.25 is a subscription you did not win.

The fix

Put a two-option selector directly above Add to cart: One-time purchase £15.25 / Subscribe and save £13.50. Show the saving as a percentage and state the three things people worry about (price, flexibility, delivery) in one line. Shopify's native subscription selector or the app you already run for Manage Subscriptions can render this.

Back to the top

Not one review, rating or press mention

No review app was detected on any scanned page. There are no star ratings on product cards, no customer quotes, no press logos, no mention of awards, and no customer count. The only social proof is the referral banner, which asks existing customers for something rather than reassuring new ones.

A stranger comparing a £28.25 bag of Ethiopian filter against a supermarket bag has nothing but your word for it. Reviews on product cards are the single most reliable conversion lift on Shopify stores. This roaster almost certainly has thousands of happy customers and years of press; none of it is working for you.

The fix

Install a review app (Judge.me is free and adequate; Okendo if you want photos and Q&A) and send a review request email to the last twelve months of customers on day one. Put star ratings on every product card and a three-quote strip on the homepage. Add a short credentials line near the footer.

Back to the top

Your two best reasons to buy are on the Shipping policy page

The Shipping page says: free tracked delivery on every UK order, orders processed at 8:30am and roasted and shipped the same day. On the homepage, free shipping appears only in the browser tab title. On the product page, neither fact appears anywhere near the price or the Add to cart button.

Roasted this morning and free delivery answer the two questions that stall a coffee purchase: is it fresh, and what will it really cost me. Answered at the point of decision, they close the sale. Answered on a policy page, they help nobody, because the visitors who needed them have already left.

The fix

Add a single line directly under the Add to cart button on every product page, and a matching line in the announcement bar (see finding 10).

Back to the top

Eight subscription plans, one carousel

The Subscriptions page presents roaster's choice espresso, roaster's choice washed espresso, roaster's choice filter, roaster's choice washed filter, the house espresso, the house filter, decaf espresso and decaf filter as eight equal cards in a slider, each with its own START A SUBSCRIPTION button and its own starting price.

The visitor has already decided to subscribe. This page then asks them to understand the difference between washed and natural processing before they can pay. Four of the eight cards are variations on one product. Most people scroll, feel unsure, and put it off. Deferred subscriptions rarely come back.

The fix

Replace the eight-card carousel with three doors, then one toggle. Door one: The same great cup, every time (the house espresso or house filter). Door two: Surprise me (roaster's choice). Door three: Decaf. Then Espresso or Filter. Offer Washed-only as a checkbox inside Surprise me, not as its own plan. Three decisions instead of one eight-way comparison.

Back to the top

Whole bean only, and no help for people without a grinder

Product variants are 350g, 1kg and 2kg. There is no grind selector. The collection heading says SHOP WHOLE BEAN COFFEE but nothing on the product page tells a visitor what to do if they do not own a grinder.

A large share of UK coffee buyers use a cafetière or filter machine and buy pre-ground. Those visitors reach Add to cart, realise there is no ground option, and leave without a word. If whole bean only is a deliberate quality stance, say so and sell the grinder in the same breath. If you can grind to order, the option is invisible.

The fix

Either add a grind selector (Whole bean / Espresso / Filter / Cafetière) or add a one-line note beside the size selector that owns the decision and links to your grinders under Equipment.

Back to the top

Your most expensive espresso has no tasting notes

Every coffee on the homepage and collection page carries a flavour line (the house espresso: CHERRY / CHOCOLATE MOUSSE / CARAMEL / SMOOTH). The £26.25 espresso shows only Espresso and Ethiopia / Kenya.

At the top of the price range the tasting note is the entire pitch. Without it, this is a £26 bag with a name and two countries, sitting next to a £15 bag with a full description. It reads as an omission, and buyers assume the worst about omissions.

The fix

Add the metafield. Sixty seconds in Shopify admin.

Back to the top

The bigger bag is cheaper and nobody knows

House espresso: 350g £15.25 (£4.36 per 100g), 1kg £40.75 (£4.08 per 100g), 2kg £78.75 (£3.94 per 100g). The page shows the per-100g price only for the selected variant, so the visitor never sees the comparison.

That is a 6.5% saving on 1kg and 9.6% on 2kg. Households and small offices would trade up if the number were in front of them. Right now the 1kg buyer is doing mental arithmetic, and most people do not.

The fix

Label the variant buttons with the saving.

Back to the top

The announcement bar is talking to the wrong people

The only site-wide banner reads: Share your love for coffee and refer a friend. Click here to learn more.

The bar is the one message every visitor sees on every page. Referral matters only to people who have already bought. First-time visitors, the ones a banner should convert, are shown a request instead of a reason.

The fix

Rotate two messages, with the buying reason first. Keep referral as the second slide, or move it to the post-purchase email where it belongs.

Back to the top

The product page speaks barista, not customer

The house espresso page leads with component percentages, then a recipe developed on a competition espresso machine with 20g precision baskets, a 1:2 brew ratio and a 94.5ºC brew temperature. The plain-language description (an ideal espresso for any occasion) is further down, under the About tab.

That recipe is a genuine asset for the 10% of buyers with a prosumer machine. For everyone else it says this coffee is not for you. The product that is meant to be the accessible everyday espresso is presented as the hardest one to use.

The fix

Keep the recipe, move it below the fold under a Brew guide tab, and lead with two lines a newcomer can act on: what it tastes like and what to make it in.

Back to the top

The gifting page cannot take a gift order

The copy is general (a grand gesture, an act of kindness). The buttons are Shop Coffee, Select Amount, Choose the Perfect Plan and Buy Now for a partner training centre. There is no gift bundle with a price, no gift box, no gift message option mentioned, and no delivery date reassurance.

Gift buyers arrive with a budget and a deadline and want to finish in two minutes. This page sends them back to the full catalogue to build something themselves. Most will buy from a competitor who shows three boxes at three prices.

The fix

Build three fixed bundles as real products with a gift message field, and put a delivery cut-off line at the top of the page. Keep the gift card and gift subscription links below the bundles.

Back to the top

A nine-item menu with two riddles in it

Top-level navigation: Coffee, a fermentation project, Products, Subscriptions, Events, a coffee course, Gifting, Wholesale, plus Search and Log in. Products then repeats as its own sub-item.

The project and the course are named after themselves, so they mean nothing to a new visitor, and they sit next to Coffee as if they were equally likely destinations. Wholesale and its trade login share the bar with consumer shopping. Every extra item costs a little attention that should go to Coffee and Subscriptions.

The fix

Cut to five: Coffee, Subscriptions, Equipment, Gifts, Learn (with the project, the course, Events and the blog inside). Move Wholesale to the footer and the utility bar. Rename nothing else; just group it.

Back to the top