Case Study · New Store Build · Fine Jewellery

A fine jewellery store
built for the world
from New York City.

The Gem Fly is a New York City jewellery brand specialising in fine gemstone jewellery — rings, necklaces, earrings, and bracelets crafted around the beauty of natural gemstones. We designed and built their Shopify store from the ground up: a jewellery-forward, editorial storefront that brings New York's diamond district energy to the global online market.

NYC
Jewellery brand
Fine
Gemstones
Scratch
Built from scratch
2.0
Shopify 2.0
Live Store Preview

The finished store, live on Shopify

A dark, gemstone-forward editorial storefront built to showcase fine jewellery and convert the considered buyer. Desktop and mobile views of The Gem Fly Shopify store.

Visit thegemfly.com
The Gem Fly desktop
The Gem Fly mobile

A New York City fine jewellery brand built around the gemstone

The Gem Fly is a New York City-based fine jewellery brand with a focus on natural gemstones the brand is built around the belief that each gemstone has its own character, and that jewellery should be a reflection of the person who wears it rather than an off-the-shelf commodity.

Operating in the highly competitive online jewellery market from one of the world's great jewellery cities, The Gem Fly needed a Shopify store that matched both the quality of the pieces and the ambition of the brand a store that could compete credibly in global fine jewellery eCommerce while maintaining the distinctive New York energy and direct approach that defines the brand.

The brief was clear: build from scratch, make the gemstones the hero, and deliver a store that converts the considered buyer who arrives ready to invest.

The Gem Fly screenshot Homepage — thegemfly.com

Four facts that shaped every design decision

Before laying out a single page, we needed to understand what The Gem Fly was at its core and what it required from a store to compete and convert in the fine jewellery market.

01
Natural gemstones as the hero
The Gem Fly's product identity is built around the gemstones themselves their natural character, colour variation, and rarity. The store needed to surface gemstone information type, origin, carat weight, cut, clarity, colour as prominently as the jewellery design around them.
02
NYC brand identity with global ambitions
A New York City-based brand with a direct, confident tone of voice and a global customer base. The design needed to project New York City credibility editorial, confident, slightly undone while delivering a checkout experience that worked for buyers in any timezone.
03
High-stakes purchasing decisions
Fine jewellery purchases are considered, emotional, and often significant in monetary terms. The store UX needed to deliver the reassurance architecture that high-value purchases require: detailed gemstone and material information, sizing guides, care instructions, returns policy prominence, and review visibility.
04
Jewellery photography requirements
Macro photography of gemstone settings, lifestyle imagery of pieces being worn, and 360° or multi-angle product views all requiring careful layout architecture that presented the photography at high fidelity without sacrificing page performance.

Fine jewellery eCommerce has unique demands

Building a Shopify store for a fine jewellery brand from scratch is not a standard eCommerce project. These were the four core challenges we were brought in to solve.

Trust
Building trust for high-value online purchases
Fine jewellery carries significant purchase risk for the customer the inability to examine the piece in person, questions about gemstone quality and certification, and the anxiety of a high-value transaction with a brand they may not know personally. The store needed to address every one of these trust barriers proactively.
Discovery
Gemstone & jewellery taxonomy
A jewellery catalogue can be organised by gemstone, by metal, by jewellery type (rings, necklaces, earrings), by occasion, by price range, or by collection. Getting the taxonomy and navigation right so customers can find what they're looking for through multiple valid paths — required careful information architecture work.
Photography
Fine jewellery photography at commercial scale
Macro jewellery photography is technically demanding lighting, magnification, depth of field — and the resulting images are high-resolution files that can destroy page performance if not managed carefully. Delivering high-fidelity jewellery presentation without performance penalty was a central build challenge.
Mobile
Fine jewellery browsing behaviour is mobile-first
Discovery of fine jewellery happens heavily on mobile through Instagram, Pinterest, and gift-purchasing searches. The store needed to deliver the full quality of the jewellery photography and the complete purchasing confidence on a mobile screen as effectively as on desktop.

Built from scratch, gemstone-first

We started from a blank canvas and a clear brief make the gemstones the hero, build the trust architecture that fine jewellery demands, and deliver a store that earns the considered buyer's confidence before they reach the cart. Every phase was structured around that goal.

Phase 01
Discovery & Jewellery UX Research
A detailed discovery process examining how fine jewellery buyers research and purchase online mapping the information requirements at each stage of the journey: discovery, consideration, trust-building, and commitment. Gemstone taxonomy architecture designed before any page layout work began.
Phase 02
Design Direction
Dark, editorial, gem-forward: a visual language that let the gemstones lead dark backgrounds that made coloured stones glow, minimal surrounding design elements, and a layout architecture that gave each piece the space to be seen in full. Desktop and mobile wireframes reviewed simultaneously.
Phase 03
Shopify 2.0 Theme Development
Custom theme built with jewellery-specific page templates: product pages with gemstone specification blocks, 360° view support, ring size guide, metal option selectors, and a care and certification section. Collection pages with gemstone-type and metal filtering. Homepage with editorial feature collections.
Phase 04
Gemstone Taxonomy & Metafield Architecture
Shopify metafield schema built to store gemstone-specific data: gem type, origin, carat weight, cut style, colour grade, clarity grade, and certification. Faceted filtering by gemstone type, metal, jewellery category, and price range implemented with metafield integration.
Phase 05
Trust Architecture & App Integration
Ring size guide with visual sizing chart. Returns and guarantee policy prominently positioned at the purchase decision point. Certification and authenticity information on gemstone product pages. Judge.me reviews configured to collect and display verified purchase reviews. Wishlist and email marketing (Klaviyo) integrated and tested.
Phase 06
Photography Optimisation, QA & Launch
All product photography processed through WebP conversion and responsive srcset for optimal quality-to-performance ratio across all device sizes. Pre-launch QA across devices with particular emphasis on the mobile browsing and purchasing journey. Launch managed with post-launch monitoring.

Four things that define the finished store

The Gem Fly store launched with a gemstone-forward design, a complete trust architecture, and a mobile experience that supports the Instagram-to-purchase journey that drives fine jewellery traffic. Here are the four areas that define the work.

01 — Design
Gemstone-forward editorial design
A dark, jewellery-focused visual language that makes gemstones glow on every screen editorial without being cold, premium without being unapproachable. The design puts the gemstone first at every page and every scroll depth.
02 — Trust
Complete purchase confidence architecture
Gemstone specifications, certification information, ring size guide, care instructions, guarantee policy, and review visibility every trust barrier addressed proactively within the product page design, so the buyer arrives at checkout confident.
03 -Taxonomy
Jewellery discovery built for multiple paths
Browse by gemstone type, metal, jewellery category, occasion, or price range — giving different types of buyers (gift buyers, collectors, self-purchasers) equally effective paths to the right piece, on every device.
04 - Mobile
Full-quality jewellery experience on every device
High-fidelity gemstone photography delivered at optimised file sizes, with a mobile layout that matches the desktop shopping experience supporting the Instagram-to-purchase journey that drives significant fine jewellery traffic.
NYC
Fine jewellery brand, built for the global market
Gem-first
Taxonomy & metafield architecture
2.0
Shopify 2.0 — custom theme built from scratch
Mobile-first
Optimised for social-to-store conversion

Built on the right foundation

Every technology decision for The Gem Fly was made to support fine jewellery commerce specifically trust, photography, discovery, and the mobile-first purchase journey that fine jewellery demands.

Shopify
Shopify's platform provides The Gem Fly with a secure, fully hosted checkout environment essential for a fine jewellery brand where customer trust in the transaction is as important as trust in the product.
Shopify 2.0 Custom Theme
Bespoke dark-editorial jewellery theme with gemstone-specific product page templates, collection filtering, ring size guide component, and full-bleed photography sections built to showcase fine jewellery at its best.
Gemstone Metafields
Custom Shopify metafield schema storing gem type, origin, carat weight, cut, colour grade, clarity, and certification data displayed on product pages in a clear specification block that gives buyers the information they need for confident purchasing decisions.
Judge.me Reviews
Review system configured for fine jewellery with review prompts designed to surface product quality, gemstone accuracy, and delivery experience, building the verified social proof archive that is critical for high-value online purchases.
Klaviyo Email Marketing
Klaviyo email flows for The Gem Fly's purchase-considered audience: welcome sequence with brand story and bestsellers, abandoned cart recovery with gemstone detail highlights, post-purchase care guide, and occasion-based gift recommendation campaigns.
Image Optimisation & Performance
WebP conversion, responsive srcset, and macro photography lazy loading delivering fine jewellery photography at its full quality on all devices, with load times competitive with any major jewellery retailer.

What our clients say about working with us

View all on Shopify
★★★★★

"Axis Web Art developed our website. They are easy to work with, thorough, and responsive. We have been very happy with their service."

GL
Garrett Leather
Roberta Sand, Marketing Director
★★★★★

"Great work, they know how to change your theme effectively without any issues. Fixed a few tiny issues moments after identifying them. Always a pleasure to work with this team of highly skilled players."

TC
Timothy
Founder, Timothy De Clue Collection
★★★★★

"We crafted a soothing online shopping experience for Bubbaroo, a leading Australian baby sleep bag brand. Our Shopify store design and development focused on safety, comfort, and parent peace of mind."

BU
Bubbaroo
Nicole Cassey, Founder
Launch
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