Aquila Cycles: Aquila

Hand-built Canadian bikes since 1988. I led the complete digital rebrand, run the email program and direct the photography.

CategoryRebrand · Shopify · Klaviyo

RoleCreative Director & Digital Lead

Years2015–present

Canadian site traffic8.5×

Scroll for the full story ↓Drag the pagesFrom Toronto · TO

The brief

Give a hand-built Canadian bike brand, founded in 1988, a digital presence to match: a site, an email program and photography that sell a made-to-measure bike online.

Client: Aquila Cycles
My role: Creative Director & Digital Lead
Years: 2015–present
Services: Rebrand · Shopify · Klaviyo · Instagram · SEO
Live site: aquilacycles.com ↗

The result

8.5×

Canadian site traffic, last 12 months vs the 12 before

Visits from Canada, Aquila’s market: 7,941 in the last 12 months, up from 934 the year before.

Visits from Canada, per monthShopify analytics · last 18 full months

Visits from Canada, per month
Period	Value
May ’25	86
Jun ’25	97
Jul ’25	146
Aug ’25	83
Sep ’25	62
Oct ’25	81
Nov ’25	94
Dec ’25	78
Jan ’26	62
Feb ’26	92
Mar ’26	151
Apr ’26	99
May ’26	96
Jun ’26	1,123
Jul ’26	1,207
Aug ’26	1,620
Sep ’26	1,741
Oct ’26	1,545

Then and now

Drag to see the difference.

2018Today

aquilacycles.com in 2018 (Internet Archive) and today.

Speed check · Google Lighthouse · Nov 2026

Fast on every screen.

Performance

69Phone97Desktop

Accessibility

97Phone97Desktop

SEO

100Phone100Desktop

The homepage scored 33 on phones before the rebuild. Run it yourself at pagespeed.web.dev.

What I did

Every part of it, hands-on.

01
Code-first design system and Shopify migration
02
Scroll-reveal product pages, mega menu and a custom paint configurator
03
Guided shopping assistant built with Claude Code: bike finder, spec builder, add-to-cart
04
Klaviyo: a 16-part brand story series, abandoned checkout, cart and browse flows, sign-up pop-ups and automated non-opener resends
05
Automated Instagram posting for @aquilacycles and @ka.dre__, scheduled months ahead
06
Art-directed product and lifestyle photoshoots: shot lists, locations, riders and bikes, then the edit
07
Apple-style story pages for all six bike families, a Shop lineup and matching wheel and accessory pages
08
My Aquila owners’ page: bike and wheel registration, reached from a QR code on the frame
09
SEO: 7 old collections retired with 301s, CollectionPage, ItemList and breadcrumb schema, reviews in product schema, a custom 404
10
Shopify order and shipping emails restyled, and a print-ready Realspeed wheel hang tag with a QR code

Best pages · click to scroll the whole page

Running now

The system behind it

5Klaviyo
2Automations
6Built with Claude Code

Klaviyo5

Abandoned checkout, abandoned cart and browse abandonment flows
A 16-part brand story campaign series, scheduled through November
Ka.dre off-season emails
Non-opener resends, scheduled automatically by a daily Claude task
Sign-up pop-up

Automations2

Instagram auto-poster on Vercel for @aquilacycles and @ka.dre__: Stories daily at 7 am, feed posts Mon, Wed and Fri, Reels queued months ahead
A status page to see what posted and what’s next

Built with Claude Code6

Custom Shopify theme sections: bike story pages, mega menu, sticky buy bar
Website concierge: a scripted bike finder and spec builder with add-to-cart, no AI cost per chat
Paint configurator and Fit Passport saved to the customer’s account
Fit tables that map height and inseam to frame size
Wheel and accessory pages matched to each bike page
Theme work always on a duplicate draft, published after review

More work