The Challenge
Little Preppies is an Australian business that helps children aged 3 to 5 get ready for Kindergarten. It sells printable activity packs for literacy, numeracy and pencil skills, plus a 4 week video program called Kindergarten Kick Off. Most of what it sells is something a parent buys and uses the same evening.
That puts a lot of weight on the shop. A parent who is already juggling daycare, naps and dinner needs to find the right resource quickly, trust the checkout, and have the files in hand straight away. If any of that is clumsy, they close the tab. And the owner, Brooke, runs hands-on sessions with local families, so she needs the shop to look after itself.
The business started on WordPress, which carries a lot of maintenance overhead to keep running. Little Preppies is a shop, and Shopify is built for selling, so the move meant less time on upkeep and more time on teaching.
The Approach
I started from the parent, not the product list. Someone landing on the site wants to know three things: is this right for my child, will it be easy for me, and what happens after I pay?
A few decisions came out of that:
- Shop by skill, not by catalogue. Parents think “he needs help with his pencil grip”, not “which of 40 products”. So the shop is organised around the skill.
- Say what happens next. Instant download, print at home, secure checkout: the reassurance sits right where the parent is deciding.
- One flagship offer. The 4 week Kindergarten Kick Off program gets its own spot, so the business has a clear next step for parents who want a plan rather than a single pack.
The Solution
A Shopify store with a theme redesigned around how parents shop:
- Pick a skill: the homepage asks “What would you like to work on?” and sends parents to Literacy, Numeracy, Fine Motor or Letter Packs
- Clear prices: individual activity packs start from $3.50, and the full program is a one-off payment of $99, shown up front
- Reassurance at the point of decision: each product page has a short box under “Add to cart” saying the download is instant, files can be printed as many times as the family needs, and help is on hand
- “How it works” in three steps: choose, download, learn through play
- Answers to the usual questions: age range, how files arrive, what you need at home, how the program works, using it with more than one child, and what happens if something isn’t right
- A free checklist: a school readiness checklist in exchange for an email address, so a parent who isn’t ready to buy can still start
- Parent quotes from families who have been through Brooke’s sessions
Behind the scenes, the files themselves needed somewhere safe to live. The download app the store would normally use wouldn’t install on it, so I built Vaulted Downloads, which delivers files from the merchant’s own storage with no limit on how many times a customer can come back for them. It later became a public app: see Vaulted Downloads and Parcel Rules.
The whole project, from moving the store to building the custom app, happened in a month.
The Result
Parents can choose a resource by the skill their child needs, pay, and have the printable on the way to their printer, without needing a teaching background. Brooke has a shop built around what she sells, rather than one she has to explain.
The store has only just launched, so it is too early to report results. I will add them here once there is something worth sharing.