Double Take Salsa is a good friend's business that went from making salsa as a hobby, to farmers markets, to now on the shelves of stores like Whole Foods and Target.
From a humble beginning to now being a successful salsa and hot sauce brand with products on store shelves across the U.S., Double Take's website needed to reflect their progress.
Originally built on Squarespace, the website had served its purpose to sell online, but Double Take had outgrown that setup. My primary goal was to move from Squarespace to Shopify, a platform focused on e-commerce, and upgrade the site’s overall design without losing the brand’s unique personality.
On top of the platform upgrade I want to help Double Take improve their SEO, and start capturing and displaying product reviews. All of this to help Double Take sell more of their amazing products online and grow their awesome business.
The Transition to Shopify
Shopify was the obvious choice for Double Take Salsa's new site. It offered more features, better customization options, and, most importantly, was tailored specifically for e-commerce.
The shift wasn’t just about changing platforms; it was about evolving Double Take’s digital presence to match its growth. Despite Shopify having numerous ready-made themes, I knew customization was key. I wanted to create a site that felt fresh and professional, yet still maintained the fun and approachable vibe that customers had come to expect and love from the brand.
To achieve this, I chose a theme that struck the right balance and then customized it with new graphics and content areas. I aimed for a clean and bright layout that build on the brand and packing that each jar of salsa and hot sauce already had.
A design that communicated trust and established credibility without losing the brand’s quirky and fun personality.
Shopify brought a deeper set of e-commerce features for Double Take to leverage. Features like product suggestions to add to orders, cart abandonment emails, better customer notifications, and more all have expanded the arsenal.
Enhanced User Experience and Product Organization
One of the biggest changes was how the products were presented on the site. Previously, all products were lumped together on a single "shop" page. There was no clear product organization, and the homepage didn’t feature any products, instead directing users deeper into the site to shop.
With the redesign, I wanted to streamline the shopping experience, making it easier and more intuitive for customers to find what they were looking for.
Separating the product categories not only makes shopping more intuitive for the consumer, but it allows the ability for the salsa, hot sauce, and gift pack categories to rank better in Google too.
I introduced featured products on the homepage to instantly give visitors a connection with the most popular products.
I should also mention my favorites from Double Take are the cilantro avocado hot sauce, the sweet corn salsa (Aces & Eights), and the smoked hatched salsa (El Jefe). But seriously, EVERYTHING is amazing.
Home page content also introduced the brand, highlighted news and features like Double Take’s appearance on the popular YouTube series Hot Ones, and links to special collections such as gift packs. Products were now categorized into three main collections: salsas, hot sauces, and gift packs. T
This new organization allows customers to shop more efficiently and give the site a more polished, professional feel.
Improving Product Detail Pages and Adding Reviews
The product detail pages received a major upgrade as well. My focus was on clarity and conciseness, making it easy for customers to understand the product offerings at a glance.
But the most significant addition to the product pages was the ability to read and leave reviews. Social proof, especially in the form of reviews, is a crucial element for e-commerce success, and it was high time Double Take harnessed this power.
With my background in reviews, I knew this would be a great addition to the site. I chose to use Omnisend for this.
The brand already had reviews scattered across Amazon and other retail sites that sell Double Take products, but none directly on their own platform. Now, Double Take’s site could showcase customer feedback, helping build trust and drive sales.
The review display on the product detail pages take advantage of review schema with Google to display the rating and quantity of reviews in the search results. This helps trust from the searcher to click the Double Take result.
Boosting SEO Health and Technical Fixes
SEO was another critical area that needed attention. The old site was lacking in basic on-page SEO tactics like page titles, product/page names, and internal linking. The old site had maybe one or two internal links, which I quickly improved upon with more relevant, SEO-friendly connections between content.
I also ensured 301 redirects were in place when taking the new site live, preserving link equity from the old URLs.
However, Shopify did present a few SEO challenges. While Shopify’s e-commerce focus was a plus, it wasn’t without quirks—specifically, how it handles URLs.
Shopify generates additional URLs based on a user’s click path, which can result in unwanted duplicate product pages. This could hurt SEO if left unchecked. Since I wasn’t as familiar with Shopify’s Liquid code, I turned to a freelancer on Fiverr to fix this issue. For a small fee, I was able to ensure that each product only had a single, consistent URL, no matter where the user is clicking from. This would help maximize SEO efforts and avoid unnecessary duplicate URLs.
I've identified a few of the products that are ranking on page 2 or 3 in Google searches that could boost to page 1 and really increase traffic. I'll be working with Double Take on a few more SEO initiatives and building some links to try to get these to pop.
The Move to Shopify Conclusion
The redesigned Double Take Salsa website isn’t just a visual improvement—it’s a comprehensive overhaul that better aligns with the brand’s growth. By moving to Shopify, organizing products more effectively, enhancing the user experience, adding social proof through reviews, and fixing SEO pitfalls, Double Take now has a website that reflects its maturity while keeping its fun and authentic personality intact.
This transformation not only makes it easier for customers to shop but also sets the brand up for continued success in a competitive marketplace.
Now go buy some amazing salsa and hot sauce, you'll thank me for it!
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