The Botanist's E‑Commerce Pro Replatform Yields +49% New Customers

The cannabis industry runs on creative problem solving. Whether it’s navigating evolving regulations, staying compliant across markets, or finding new ways to drive revenue, retailers have gotten good at working with what they’ve got.

For The Botanist, that meant building a lean, focused team that could do it all. “We’ve really become smaller, scrappier, more nimble,” shared Sierra Lloyd, Sr. Retail Marketing and Operations Manager at The Botanist. With multiple locations across three states and no shortage of priorities, they needed a tech partner they could rely on to simplify operations.

That’s where their previous providers fell short: their e-commerce site was difficult to shop, couldn’t scale across multiple markets, and wouldn’t sync with their point of sale. For a dispensary running at least half of its transactions online, that wasn’t just an inconvenience. It was a liability. The Botanist needed to make a change.

The Challenge

The Problem With Their Previous Setup

Before switching to Dutchie E‑Commerce Pro, The Botanist’s e-commerce site never quite delivered. Mismatched product sizes, misaligned categories, and discount logic that couldn’t be replicated consistently from menu to menu created constant friction across channels, making it nearly impossible to deliver a consistent experience online and in store. Angela Pih, founder of Point Brand Marketing Agency, was brought in to help rebuild their online experience and put it plainly:

“The biggest issue was the customer experience, cluncky and unshoppable. Customers had to work too hard to find products and complete a purchase. In retail, every extra click is a potential risk of losing a sale.”

Angela Pih, Founder, Point Brand Marketing Agency

For a busy team managing multiple locations, a website that didn’t convert and a tech stack that didn’t talk to itself wasn’t sustainable. It was time for a redesign and a fresh start.

The Switch

Choosing the Dutchie Platform

When The Botanist added Dutchie E‑Commerce Pro to their existing Dutchie setup, the goal was clear: one place to manage their entire online experience, keep everything connected, and get more time back for the team:

“E‑Commerce Pro gave us one place to manage everything — product entry, menu management, discount builds. From an ops standpoint, it cut out a lot of the platform-to-platform jumping that was slowing us down.”

Sierra Lloyd, The Botanist

Angela Pih, who had been brought in to help guide the transition, shared the team’s excitement:

“The retail team was really enthusiastic. More than a website redesign, we wanted a platform that gave the team real control over merchandising and promotions while making shopping easier for customers. The goal was to bring the digital experience in line with what customers expect in-store.”

Angela Pih, Founder, Point Brand Marketing Agency

With everything connected under one roof, The Botanist finally had the foundation needed to turn their attention to updating their online experience.

Building Something Better on E‑Commerce Pro

Switching to E‑Commerce Pro opened the door to new ways of connecting with and converting customers, and for a team that had been previously held back by their e-commerce site, the difference was immediate.

Custom collections gave The Botanist a new creative outlet. When a snowstorm hit, Sierra’s team pulled together every strain with “snow,” “blizzard,” or “ice” in the name and built a campaign around it. “We were able to do some really fun stuff on e-commerce to make it less pushy and more like — hey, we’re having fun, it’s a snow day — but still definitely driving sales.”

Discount logic that held up consistently across channels closed a gap that had caused headaches for months, and an abandoned cart flow brought customers back to complete purchases they’d left behind. For the first time, the quality of their in-store experience was matched online, giving customers a seamless journey from discovery to purchase. The growth followed, with overall customers up 25% and transactions up 24% year-over-year.

The back end improvements were just as impactful. “It’s less duplicated work, less platform-to-platform jumping,” Sierra said. “It’s allowed us to operate as a leaner team without losing our reach across markets.”

With a platform they could rely on, The Botanist was ready to take things further, tapping into Dutchie’s Certified Partner Program to fully customize and elevate their online experience.

The Build

Reimagining Their Online Experience with LeafBridge

With Dutchie E‑Commerce Pro in place, The Botanist settled on a group of certified partners to help bring their online vision to life. First up was partner LeafBridge who owned The Botanist’s website development. As Nick Stephenson, Co-founder of LeafBridge explained: “Most of the work really was in developing the custom elements for the E‑Commerce Pro theme. What was really important was being able to carry forward as many of the ideas that surfaced from the Botanist team and make it work with the platform.”

LeafBridge built out a mobile-anchored CTA bar for instant access to search, deals, and loyalty, dynamic location-specific menu pages surfacing the right products to the right customers, and custom brand takeover capabilities that gave The Botanist a powerful new tool for vendor partnerships. Sierra from The Botanist summed up their collaboration simply:

“LeafBridge is really the backbone of the site. The user experience is a direct result of what they built through Dutchie — they figured out how to make a lot of things possible that we didn’t know were possible.”

Sierra Lloyd, Sr. Retail Marketing and Operations Manager, The Botanist

The Design

A Design Built to Convert with PufCreativ

With LeafBridge’s development work on their E‑Commerce Pro complete, The Botanist turned to PufCreativ for the branding and design. Working through a custom Figma process, PufCreativ built out every page for both desktop and mobile. Angela recalled:

“One of our priorities was creating a digital experience that felt current, intuitive, and distinctly The Botanist. PufCreativ brought that vision to life while keeping navigation and conversion at the center of every design decision.”

Angela Pih, Founder, Point Brand Marketing Agency

John Shute, CEO of PufCreativ, explained how their designs, in tandem with LeafBridge’s website buildout, built a foundation for discoverability:

“The whole time we’re running these designs and working with the LeafBridge team to ensure that the UX is optimized and that everything is in the proper place for SEO purposes. So that all funnels lead customers to menus.”

John Shute, CEO, PufCreativ

Organic Search

Setting the Stage for SEO with deeproots

The work PufCreativ and LeafBridge did wasn’t just about aesthetics. It laid the groundwork for what came next. The previous site had left The Botanist’s SEO partner, deeproots, without the access and tools they needed to execute. The new build, running on Dutchie E‑Commerce Pro, changed that entirely:

“With Dutchie E‑Commerce Pro, we were able to apply our full suite of technical SEO and schema optimizations easily across the menu, which helped with the increase in rankings of the product pages and category pages. Whereas with other systems, sometimes they’re not able to implement those tactics as easily.”

Matthew Shterenberg, CEO & Co-Founder, deeproots

Working closely with LeafBridge throughout the build, deeproots guided decisions around meta descriptions, content structure, and how store pages were named and organized to make sure each location could be found in search. According to deeproots data, the results were significant: average non-brand ranking position improved by 44% and organic clicks to menu pages increased by 55%.

With deeproots driving new traffic to a site that was finally easy to shop and consistently branded, The Botanist was able to grow new online customers by 49%.

The Results

One Platform, Measurable Growth

By partnering with Dutchie and certified partners LeafBridge, PufCreativ, and deeproots, The Botanist built an online experience that delivered on every front. E‑Commerce Pro gave them a sturdy backbone for merchandising and operations with everything connected under one roof, LeafBridge engineered a custom user experience built on top of it, PufCreativ brought consistent branding to every page, and deeproots drove the organic traffic to bring new customers through the door.

“The success came from aligning technology, design, SEO, and merchandising around a common goal: making it easier for customers to shop. When those pieces work together, growth follows.”

Angela Pih, Founder, Point Brand Marketing Agency

The result was one polished, high-performing site built to handle a dispensary running more than half of its sales online. Since launch, new online customers increased by 49%, and according to deeproots data, average non-brand ranking position improved by 44%, and organic clicks to menu pages increased by 55%.

Ready to see what Dutchie E‑Commerce Pro can do for your operation? Schedule a demo.