C World
Developing a digital product catalog for an offline retail business
I designed the first iteration of an online storefront for Cosmetic World, a retail beauty-supply wholesaler based in metro Atlanta. My client currently operates fully offline—he communicates with customers in person or by phone, and fulfills wholesale orders manually. As he plans to expand across the southeastern region, he needs a digital presence that can streamline order intake, showcase inventory, and eventually support online invoicing. My goal for this project was to build a functional, visually coherent foundation he could implement in the new year.
I decided early on to use WordPress with the Botiga theme, specifically because Botiga allows more control over color, typography, and layout than many other popular free themes. Before touching the site, I created a small brand system: a style guide, color palette, and updated logos (exported from Canva for both the site logo and favicon). I chose #fc07cb, a saturated magenta, as the primary accent color for buttons and small headers. To keep everything clean and consistent, I used Inter in varying weights for hierarchy across all pages.
Since Cosmetic World sells more than 100 products across 15+ brands, my client asked me to focus this first iteration on his “hero brand,” L.A. Girl, and its top-selling items. I built three core product pages (Face, Eyes, and Lips) and used WooCommerce’s Products by Category block to ensure each page displays exactly the right items. The product images and descriptions come from L.A. Girl’s official materials, which helped maintain accuracy and consistency.
The entire project took about a week, including page design, product entry, and back-and-forth communication with my client about his long-term goals. One unexpected part of the design process was pinning the store’s exact location in Google Maps and verifying the business information, which I captured in a screenshot for my documentation. Here's an image of my seperated thai milk tea that sat at my desk for almost as long as I did…
The biggest challenge I faced was the same issue I’ve had in previous WordPress projects: lag and downtime caused by heavy themes, caching, and limited hosting performance. The site slowed significantly when I uploaded product images or switched between the Page Editor and WooCommerce product editor. Several times, the dashboard stopped loading entirely and I had to close out and reopen my site. I’m already someone who compulsively saves my work thanks to Adobe, but this project reinforced that habit even more. Especially in WordPress, where losing changes is painfully easy.
Despite these hurdles, I’m proud of how polished and intentional the final build feels. This project helped me refine my ability to design within the constraints of a theme, structure product-based pages efficiently, and work collaboratively with a real client’s business goals in mind. It also laid the foundation for future iterations: in the coming months, I’ll continue refining the site with my client, adding more brands, and moving toward a full-featured online ordering and invoicing system.