When the team at Igennus approached Total Commerce, they weren’t simply looking for a visual refresh. Their existing Shopify storefront had evolved into a highly customised experience powered largely through GemPages, with individual pages manually built and managed through a page builder structure.
While the front-end experience appeared functional, the backend reality created significant operational and performance challenges:
- Content was difficult for search engines and AI systems to crawl effectively
- Site management had become increasingly complex and inefficient
- Heavy page-builder usage introduced unnecessary bloat and performance issues
- Scaling new landing pages and campaigns required recreating full pages from scratch
- Existing free gift functionality relied on unstable app dependencies
The objective was clear: rebuild the site architecture around modern Shopify standards while creating a premium, clinically credible customer experience aligned with the Igennus brand.
The Challenge
The existing website relied heavily on custom GemPages builds, where virtually every page existed as an isolated custom layout.
This created several problems:
Uncrawlable & AI-Unfriendly Content
Much of the content structure was locked within the page builder environment, limiting how effectively search engines and emerging AI discovery systems could interpret and index the site.
As AI-driven search and recommendation systems become increasingly important for ecommerce discovery, this presented a growing visibility issue.
Operational Complexity
The internal team faced significant limitations when managing or expanding the site.
Simple merchandising or content updates often required rebuilding entire pages manually, creating inefficiencies across marketing and ecommerce operations.
Performance & Site Speed Issues
The accumulation of page-builder scripts, duplicated sections, and unnecessary assets introduced substantial front-end bloat.
This impacted:
- Page speed
- User experience
- Mobile performance
- Conversion potential
App Dependency Problems
The existing free gift setup relied on an external app that was causing ongoing functionality and reliability issues within the checkout experience.
The Solution
Total Commerce executed a complete Shopify retheme built around Shopify’s modern HORIZON theme architecture. Rather than simply redesigning the frontend, the project focused on rebuilding the entire ecommerce foundation for long-term scalability, performance, and discoverability.
Full Custom Clinical-Focused Design
The new site experience was completely redesigned to better reflect the scientific and clinical positioning of the Igennus brand.
The refreshed design system introduced:
- Cleaner information hierarchy
- Improved readability for educational content
- Enhanced product storytelling
- A more premium healthcare-oriented visual experience
- Better UX across mobile and desktop
The result was a storefront that balanced ecommerce performance with clinical credibility.
Replatforming Away From GemPages
A major component of the project involved migrating away from the previous page-builder-heavy structure.
By rebuilding the site natively within Shopify’s modern theme architecture, Total Commerce delivered:
- Cleaner, crawlable code
- Reduced frontend bloat
- Faster page performance
- Easier content management
- Greater flexibility for future growth
The new structure also positioned the brand more effectively for evolving AI-powered search environments and indexing systems.
Built on Shopify’s HORIZON Theme Structure
The rebuild utilised Shopify’s newer HORIZON framework, creating a far more scalable and future-ready architecture.
This enabled:
- Improved theme maintainability
- More modular content management
- Better performance optimisation
- Cleaner development workflows
- Greater adaptability for future Shopify updates and feature expansion
The result is a storefront designed not just for today’s needs, but for long-term ecommerce growth.
Checkout & Free Gift Optimisation
Total Commerce also replaced the problematic legacy free gift app setup.
Using Checkout Buddy and SupaEasy we implemented a significantly more stable and streamlined free gift experience directly within checkout.
This eliminated issues caused by the previous app dependency while improving reliability for both customers and the internal ecommerce team.
The Outcome
Following launch, Igennus immediately began seeing measurable improvements across both customer experience and operational efficiency.
Key outcomes included:
- Improved AI search visibility
- Faster, smoother user journeys
- Better site performance
- Simplified content management
- Reduced reliance on bloated third-party tooling
- Strong positive customer feedback on the new design and experience
Most importantly, the rebuild created a scalable ecommerce foundation aligned with the future of Shopify and AI-driven commerce discovery.
Client Feedback
“It’s been genuinely great working with Total Commerce! Throughout the project, from planning to execution, we felt in very good hands and truly appreciated their guidance and expertise.
This was far more than a simple theme and customisation upgrade. They went above and beyond our expectations, and we can already see the positive impact of this first project: improved AI search visibility, a smoother customer journey, and very positive feedback on the look and feel of our website.
We’re looking forward to continuing the collaboration!”
