Building a Scalable, Fully Customizable E-Commerce Experience for a Minnesota Therapy Supply Company

Meet Our Client

Our client is a family-owned medical therapy and rehabilitation supply company in Minnesota with four decades of experience supplying customers across the U.S. They serve physical therapists, chiropractors, athletic trainers, sports medicine professionals, clinics, hospitals, schools, and individuals doing rehab at home.

Their catalog is large and specialized, covering everything from TENS and NMES units, electrotherapy electrodes, iontophoresis supplies to resistance bands, hot and cold therapy, braces, and clinical rehab products. What sets them apart is how well they know those products. Customers come to them for responsive service, fair pricing, and a library of guides, protocols, and troubleshooting resources that help people choose and use the right equipment.

That’s where we come in. At 10X Tek, we’re a sustainable growth partner based right here in Minnesota, and we work with local businesses to grow their digital footprint while tightening up how they operate behind the scenes. Our approach rests on four pillars: Business Growth and Strategy, Technology and Development, AI, Cloud and Systems Infrastructure, and Digital Marketing and Growth. This project leaned hardest on Technology and Development, with support from the other three.

Challenge

The Client Pain Points

Our client’s online store ran on a standard Shopify theme. It had served them well, but the business had outgrown it. When we sat down with their team during discovery, a few roadblocks stood out:

• Limited by a template: The theme decided how pages could look and how products could be presented. The team couldn’t shape the site around how their customers actually shop or give their key product lines the spotlight they deserved, so the website felt generic for a company with this much expertise.
• Products were hard to find: With nearly 50 product categories, shoppers often had to scroll through long product lists to get to what they wanted. There was no simple way to browse one type of product, like TENS units or resistance bands, all in one place.
• Hard to choose the right product: Once shoppers found the right type of product, picking the exact one was the next hurdle. Many items look alike at first glance but differ in size, style, or pack quantity, and product pages didn’t make it easy to compare them, choose the exact item, or find the accessories that go with it.
• Valuable education was hard to find: The client’s product guides, protocols, and comparisons are a big part of why customers trust them. But the blog showed them as one long feed of articles, so a shopper looking for help with a specific product had to dig to find the right guide.
• A store that needed to be faster: On theme-based stores, new features often mean adding third-party apps, each with its own scripts. Those add up to slower page loads, which frustrate shoppers and can hurt search rankings. Speed was a priority for the new site.
• Limited control over SEO: Beyond basic page titles and descriptions, settings like social sharing (Open Graph) tags and schema markup lived in the theme code or depended on third-party apps. The team had little direct control over how their pages showed up in search results and when shared on social media.
• No room to grow: Each new feature or page type meant working around the theme’s limits. The business needed a platform that could scale with them instead of holding them back.

The Stakes

In medical and therapy supplies, buyers need to feel confident before they click “add to cart.” Clinicians want to know a product is the right fit for their patients, and home users often need a little guidance to choose well. Meanwhile, big online marketplaces and national suppliers have set high expectations for speed and ease of use.

A slow, rigid website doesn’t just look dated. It means shoppers who leave before they find what they need, more “which one do I need?” support calls, and a brand that undersells decades of hard-earned expertise. Our client needed a site that worked as hard as their team does.

Solution: Our Strategy in Action

We built a headless e-commerce setup that separates the shopping experience customers see from the commerce engine running behind it. Shopify still handles the checkout, payments, inventory, and orders. But everything shoppers see and interact with is now custom-built and fully under the client’s control. Here’s what we put in place, and which of our four pillars each piece draws on.

Discovery and Migration Planning

Pillar: Business Growth and Strategy

Before writing a single line of code, we audited the existing store, mapped out the client’s customer types, and traced how each group searches, compares, and buys. We then planned the migration in phases so the store kept taking orders the whole time. No downtime, no surprises for loyal customers.

Migration to Shopify Hydrogen

Pillars: Technology and Development, AI, Cloud and Systems Infrastructure

We moved the storefront from a Shopify theme to Shopify Hydrogen, Shopify’s framework for building custom, headless storefronts. Because Hydrogen connects directly to Shopify’s commerce back end, the client kept the checkout, product data, and order management they already trusted. What changed is the front end: it’s now fast, modern, and completely customizable, with no theme rules dictating what’s possible.

Sanity CMS Development

Pillar: Technology and Development

We built a custom content studio on Sanity so the client’s team can manage their own site without touching code. Homepage sections, banners, collection pages, images, policies, and educational content can all be edited, previewed, and published in a few clicks. We structured the content around how their team already thinks about products and customers, so updating the site feels natural instead of technical.

We also built SEO management right into the CMS. The client’s team can add and edit Open Graph tags, schema markup, and other SEO settings for any page themselves, giving them full control over how their site appears in search results and on social media.

Custom Shopper-Friendly Web Design

Pillars: Technology and Development, Digital Marketing and Growth

We designed the new site from the ground up around real shopping behavior. On top of a cleaner, more modern look, we added features that make it easier to find, compare, and buy the right product:

• Product Collections that group related products by category, so shoppers interested in a certain type of product can browse all their options together instead of scrolling through the full catalog.
• Improved product page design that lays out details, specs, and pricing clearly, so shoppers can make confident decisions without calling to ask.
• SKU management right on product pages, so shoppers can pick the exact size, style, or pack they need and clinics can reorder with confidence.
• A product compare option that lets shoppers line up similar items side by side, which is a big help with products like electrodes and TENS units that look alike at first glance.
• “Frequently bought together” suggestions that point shoppers to the electrodes, accessories, and supplies that pair with what they’re already buying.
• Shop Pay at checkout, giving returning customers a fast, familiar way to pay with their saved details.
• Separate landing pages for featured products, giving the client’s key product lines their own space to explain what they are, who they’re for, and why they’re worth it.
• Article Collections that organize the client’s guides by product category and topic, turning the blog into an easy-to-browse support, training, and education hub. Shoppers can go straight to the guides for the product they use, or browse every article in one view.

Site Performance Optimization

Pillars: Technology and Development, AI, Cloud and Systems Infrastructure

Speed was one of the main reasons for the move. Alongside the Hydrogen migration, we optimized the overall site for performance, so pages load more quickly and shopping feels smoother on desktop and mobile alike.

Protecting Search Visibility

Pillar: Digital Marketing and Growth

A new platform shouldn’t mean starting over in Google. We mapped old URLs to new ones, set up redirects, and carried over page titles, descriptions, and other SEO essentials so the client kept the search visibility they’d spent years building.

The Strategy Behind It All

Pillar: Business Growth and Strategy

Underneath the technology sits a simple goal: a website that grows with the business instead of capping it. Choosing a headless setup with Hydrogen and Sanity means new pages, features, and integrations can be added as the client’s needs change, without another rebuild. That long-term thinking shaped every decision, from how we structured content in the CMS to the order we rolled out each part of the new site.

The Collaborative Experience

We didn’t just launch a new website and walk away. We worked side by side with the client’s team through design reviews and testing, and we tailored the CMS to fit how their staff already work. Once the site was live, we trained the team on Sanity so they felt confident updating content, launching new pages, and managing the site on their own from day one.

Results

Steady Growth After Launch

Since the site moved to Shopify Hydrogen and the new design and features went live, the client has seen consistent growth in website traffic. More people are finding the store, browsing the catalog, and exploring the educational content that sets the client apart.

That growth didn’t come from one change alone. It reflects the combination of a faster site, organized product and article collections, product pages that answer shoppers’ questions, smarter ways to compare and discover products, SEO settings the team can manage themselves, and dedicated landing pages that give key product lines room to shine.

The Wins Beyond Traffic

For the first time, the client’s team owns their website. They can launch a new collection page, update a promotion, or publish a new product guide on their own schedule, without waiting on a developer. That means faster reactions to new products, seasonal demand, and customer questions.

The site also finally reflects who they are. Instead of a generic template, shoppers get an experience that feels as knowledgeable and helpful as talking to the client’s team on the phone. And because the new platform is built to scale, there’s no ceiling on what the website can become in the future as the business grows.

The Bottom Line

Our client started with a Shopify theme that limited their design and left little room for the rich educational content their customers rely on. By migrating to Shopify Hydrogen, building a custom Sanity CMS, and designing a shopper-friendly experience from the ground up, they now have a fast, flexible website they control, and a platform ready to grow right alongside their business.