Prism Card Studio
The brief said e-commerce site. The actual problem was fraud.
Graded card buying is a market where counterfeits, resealed boxes and doctored photographs are routine. A buyer's whole decision comes down to one question they can never fully answer online: is this the item in the picture, and is it what you say it is?
So we stopped designing a shop and started designing a body of evidence. Every decision after that was measured against one test — does this make the buyer more certain, or less? Photography of the actual item. The certification number where it can be checked. Condition stated as a fact rather than a boast.
Designed and built by us, not handed to a developer.
Around thirty templates sit behind this, with a style guide kept in the codebase beside them — so a new category page can be assembled by someone who is not us.
The checkout repeats the evidence rather than hiding it. Nobody abandons a basket because they were reminded what they were buying.
A binder that holds what a collector owns, values it against the market, and shows how far through each set they are.
A reason to come back on a day you are not buying — and once the binder lives here, this is where you shop. It is the only part of the build that has nothing to sell you, which is precisely why it works.
Everything on the site answers one question the buyer cannot answer alone: is this the item in the picture, and is it what you say it is? Design that does not help with that was cut.