Your search for a Shopify design studio who truly gets conscious craft brands is over.
Simply Digital Shops helps conscious craft brands build refined, conversion-ready Shopify stores, so you can stop apologising for your website and start letting it work for you.
You are too good at what you do for your Shopify store to be letting you down.
If you are like most conscious craft brand owners, you want a store that genuinely reflects the level of what you have built. But you keep running into designers who understand either the aesthetic or the strategy, and rarely both.
You know your products are good. You have poured everything into your brand. But every time you share your website link, there is that slight hesitation.
You have tweaked your theme more times than you can count. Added apps. Moved sections around. And it still does not feel right.
You are making sales. But you often wonder how many you are losing because your store does not match the quality of what you are selling.
That is where we come in.
"Simply Digital Shops is the Shopify design studio for conscious craft brands. I'm Anchen, the founder, developer and strategist, and together with my design collaborative we build refined, conversion-ready Shopify stores for sustainable, handmade product businesses so they can sell with confidence, not guesswork. I lead the strategy, Shopify development, and client relationship on every project. You will always deal directly with me."
— Anchen le Roux, Founder
Not your average Shopify design studio.
Strategy before design
Every project begins with strategy, not aesthetics. Because a beautiful Shopify store that does not convert is just an expensive brochure.
Built for your specific buyer
Conscious craft brand buyers have distinct expectations. Every layout, every section, every word on your store is considered with that buyer in mind, not a generic "premium" mould.
Technical depth beyond the theme
With more than 20 years in web development, we go further than surface-level design. Custom Liquid, conversion architecture, SEO foundations, and the technical precision that makes a store actually perform.
A clear process, not endless revisions
Every project follows the Simplify, Beautify, Amplify framework. You know exactly what is happening at every stage, and when you will see results.
Intentional over impressive
No trend-chasing. No overdesigned layouts. Every element on your store earns its place.
Meet Anchen, founder of Simply Digital Shops.
It started with physiotherapy, not code. I was on campus training for a completely different career when I found my way into the computer labs, back in the nineties, when the internet was still new to most people. That was enough to pull me sideways. The next year I switched to Information Science, then completed an Honours degree in Information Technology: coding, systems design, the real foundations.
By 2003 I was working as a developer, deep in ASP.NET, building websites the hard way for a decade.
Then in 2013, my first freelance client changed everything. It was an ecommerce project, and everyone told me the same thing: don't hand-code it, don't use ASP.NET, use WordPress instead. So I did. My first WordPress site, my first ecommerce build, and I didn't know enough yet to know it was supposed to be hard. I just built it.
For the first two years, freelancing stayed on the side. Most of my time was still spent as a developer. Then in late 2014, I went all in. I registered the business and started focusing less on just building, more on strategy, on making the whole process actually work. I started speaking at summits and WordCamps, sharing what I was learning as I went.
By 2016 I was full time in the studio, bringing on designers to help me grow it into something bigger than just me.
In 2022 I left South Africa to travel, running the studio fully remote, my designers still based back home. Then in 2023, a longtime client asked if I'd ever used Shopify. I'd already been circling the idea. I'd built plenty of ecommerce on WooCommerce and WordPress by then, and it worked, but I never loved it. So when she asked, I said yes.
Her site was half-built already. We scrapped it and started from scratch. It took a year to build, my first real Shopify project, while I picked up other Shopify sites alongside it. That first one launched in 2024. That's how the switch happened.
Shopify changed something fundamental in how I work. The checkout, the cart, the core shopping experience: it's designed to work a certain way, and I love that. It means I'm not reinventing decisions that don't need reinventing. The creativity goes where it actually matters. Customers already know how to shop on Shopify. Nothing extra to learn, everything where they expect it to be.
And somewhere in that same shift, I became more strategic. Not because Shopify demanded it. I just hadn't questioned WooCommerce's patterns before. The platform switch and the strategic switch happened together, and I don't think that was an accident.
Today, Simply Digital Shops is a Shopify design studio built entirely around that lesson: strategy first, then beauty, then growth. I work with brand owners, the candle makers, the capsule label founders, the artisan jewellers, and the digital shop owners who built something real and are ready for their site to finally show it.
Every project runs on the same framework: Simplify, Beautify, Amplify. Clarify the strategy first. Build something you're proud of. Then help it grow.
I'm based in Tauranga, New Zealand, working with brands wherever they are. If your site has outgrown you, or you've outgrown it, let's fix that.
This is what we actually care about.
We're drawn to eco-conscious, artisanal brands, not because of price point or status, but because of what they represent. We've loved this world as shoppers ourselves, long before it became our work. Fifteen years ago, when eco-friendly products were still something you had to hunt for online, this was already our favourite corner of the internet. It's aligned with how we actually live.
What pulls us in isn't luxury in the traditional sense. It's the feel of things done with care, the weight of good packaging, the scent of a candle, the texture of something made properly. That sensory richness, more than any price tag, is what we actually mean when the word luxury comes up.
But more than the products, it's the women behind them. The ones who started this as something on the side, a candle poured in a kitchen, a small batch of something handmade, and grew it into a real, thriving brand. Women building a living for themselves and their families, out of something they made with their own hands. That shift, from side project to real business, from uncertain to sure, is the thing we actually care about.
We get to be part of that. Not just building their website, but helping it finally look like the brand they've already become.
Ready to build a Shopify store that finally reflects your brand?
Explore the services to find the right fit, or book a discovery call and let's talk about where your store is now and where it needs to be.