duttonbrown.com is competent. It loads, sells, and serves. It also feels like every other Shopify theme — because it is one. This document is a tour of eight directions to take the site from competent to unmistakably us — built around the period-as-architecture work we already started, with working demos for every concept. Tap, hover, and play. Then tell me which ones we ship first.
Walking the site like a stranger would. Three tags: keep, fix, burn it down. Most of it is the middle one — small things adding up to "fine."
We sell color. The site barely shows it. Make all 14 powder coats visible at all times — as a scroll progress bar, as section dividers, as the cursor's mood, as a color-of-the-moment that washes the page when you tap it. Every visit becomes a different page.
Stars and review counts are footnote design. Customers said beautiful things — show them at the size they deserve. One quote at editorial scale, with the customer's color, city, and the install photo behind it. Rotate slowly, like a magazine spread.
We didn't pick a sconce. We picked a color first and then asked Dutton Brown if they'd build a sconce around it.
The constellation doesn't have to be passive decoration. Each dot is a small inheritance — tap it and a fact, a discount, or a hidden message appears. Three flavors so it doesn't feel like a single mechanic: facts, coupons, greetings. Some dots stay quiet. The mystery is part of it.
You're already using it on this page. A custom cursor that breathes like the logo period, expands to a soft pink disk on link hover, and shrinks when you press. The whole site feels alive, instead of waiting for input. Off on touch devices. On for everyone else.
Most brands hide their factory. Ours is the brand. Replace the generic "trust badge" row with a four-step horizontal timeline that shows the customer's order moving from design → powder mix → bake → ship. Each step has live data. Each step has a photo on hover. People who care about made-to-order will read every word.
One kinetic moment per page where typography stops behaving and starts performing. A horizontal marquee of the brand pillars and customer-trigger phrases. Dotted breath punctuation. Dim-to-bright contrast for emphasis. Used once, used loud — the way editorial design uses a pull quote.
The current "14 colors / Lead time / Trade?" row reads like every Shopify theme on Earth. Make each cell pull live data, write the copy at hero scale, and let the white space do the rest. Three cells, three feelings: scope, now, belonging.
A homepage module, two columns. Left: a hero product, painted live. Right: all 14 swatches. Tap one — the product repaints, the background washes, the page accent changes. Make playing with color the demo of what the brand actually does. People stay on this for 30 seconds. Industry average for hero engagement is 3.
Three phases. Each one stands alone — if we stop after Phase 1 the site is already meaningfully different. If we go all the way, duttonbrown.com becomes a reference site for made-to-order brands. Estimates are working time, not calendar time.
The audit said most of the homepage is "fine." Phase 01 alone moves it to "ours." Phase 02 and 03 move it to unmistakably ours. Pick your phase. I'll plan the implementation.