w/ Michal Klim, Commerce-UI
Lady Gaga has a new Shopify site. But this isn’t just a merch store. It’s a stage, a story, a digital home—built to evolve as fast as she does.
Her team needed something different. A site that could change overnight and feel as immersive as her albums. So they went headless, partnering with Commerce-UI, a Shopify agency known for pushing boundaries.
In this episode, Shopify Partner Michal Klim takes us inside the build:
It’s a story about what happens when a global superstar takes Shopify beyond ecommerce best practices.
🎧 Listen now on The Unofficial Shopify Podcast.
The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is made by possible by our sponsors:
Special thanks to our friends at Shopify and to our listeners.
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Kurt Elster
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Michal Klim
Uh I'm doing great. Thank you. Thank you for having me. So yeah, hi everyone.
Kurt Elster
And so all right, your your Shopify agency is Commerce UI. How did you get connected with Lady Gago's team?
Michal Klim
Uh yeah, so actually uh on that matter we didn't do much. Like we were contacted by Michael. So Michael found us, uh found us directly through Shopify channels. So uh Michael Pansky was actually looking for an agency that has an experience y uh building sites using hydrogen. So he has this idea of Lady Gaga. com being headless or hydrogen, therefore, uh right from the beginning. So at this point, Commerce UI had already a good track record building hydrogen-based sites we won uh build awards from Shopify for one of our projects and Nuramour So uh yeah, that's how hu uh how Michael found us and that's how we started the project.
Kurt Elster
And Michael Polanski, that's Lady Gaga's fiance and an IT investor. Like this is This man we assume is is technically proficient. And so he made the decision that headless is the way to go?
Michal Klim
Uh yes. So so Micah is definitely technically proficient. Uh he's He is in fact uh Lady Guy of Beyonce and he was very hands-on leader in the for the entire project. So he approached us with this idea of this side being headless, being hydrogen-based. Uh we had an initial discussion uh around this, uh and after you know hearing the requirements after Getting to know what they want to achieve, we we felt totally comfortable with this this choice and totally agreed to that this is a good way to go.
Kurt Elster
And like surely Lady Gaga had their their they had a website before what was it on? How did it work?
Michal Klim
So actually there were two sites. Uh This is a pretty pretty common setup for a legacy site. So the editorial site, ladygaga. com, was a WordPress-based site and it was purely, purely editorial Uh the second part was the store itself living under a subdomain and that was the online store uh or liquid-based Shopify store.
Kurt Elster
Okay. And that yeah, that's not an unusual setup for well for a lot of stores. Like we see that with content creators, influencers, um, well, uh incredible musicians. And It really the it's like they want this very creative editorial experience and so they have that on one CMS and then oh also we have a merch store and that gets put on like a subdomain, you know, like shop. ladygaga. com and that ends up on a Shopify store. It's not an unusual setup. Um, what powered, what was the the reasoning, the logic behind saying, let's go, let's make these one cohesive site and let's make it headless?
Michal Klim
So I guess like there are numerous, you know, like more of a standard reasons to go, you know, consolidating tech stack, making things easier for the operations. Um and reusing all of those or actually starting using all of the functionalities of Shopify or more modern platforms. Putting that aside, I guess it's very important uh in the context of this project to understand that uh the store of ladygaga. com is not the the most important part of the site. The editorial part of things is the most important uh part of the site. So This site serves us more as a you know digital home for for Lady Gaga. It's a directory, go to directory for the fans where they can get to know more about her music, see her all music in one place for the first time. And uh get to know more of, you know, all of those behind the scenes. And it's always also a platform to communicate almost directly, you know, from Stephanie to to their fox. So editorial parts played crucial role in in ladydegaga. com and then the store is uh is coming uh right right after mmm and when we think about it is So nowadays this this distinction between an editorial and e-commerce, uh either through the tech stack or you know, through having two different sites for it, is quite artificial. So Nowadays we want to actually connect the the editorial part, the the this extended storytelling or rich storytelling with the e-commerce part with uh with with the merchandising. So that was the idea of consolidating everything in one and making it one, I would say, cohesive cohesive experience.
Kurt Elster
All right, you're building for a high-profile client, right? And not just a high-profile client, but the music industry where things move very quickly. What what's that experience like? How does that change things for you?
Michal Klim
To some extent it was a usual project for us. Like uh definitely, definitely very, very high profile client. Uh But to a certain extent it was quite a standard project. We we uh migrating from uh from older solution to a new technological stack to headless. And there's all the things that comes with it. So we we felt very comfortable with the stack. We we worked with it uh previously so both Shopify and Scientity. So From that point of view, not nothing new. But at the same time I I I would say that you know uh saying that music industry is fast moving industry is is even an a bit of an understatement. So mmm This is true for many high profile clients from other verticals also like fashion or product uh it's like everyone wants to move fast and you know, create campaigns uh that last for a week and then change it for another. But music industry is a completely another level. Like things change from day to day As worm-off as it sounds, you have to be ready for everything. Like you you have to be truly flexible. Uh there are always multiple stakeholders uh involved. Uh Multiple, you know, creative ideas floating around, uh multiple creatives working constantly on new cool visual assets or new cool creative ideas. It's a usual thing that one of this creative idea just clicks, like either on socials or through through other channels, and when this idea clicks, Why not to use it uh everywhere? And since it's based on uh, you know since it's directed or the fan base, you have to be fast. So when this idea clicks, you have to you have to show it everywhere in newsletters or on your site. So you have to be ready to change everything from day to day. Uh Time zones don't exist. So basically you have to be able to push the content on any hour and any day and uh constantly pivoting with Uh constant keepbotting is just a day-to-day in the music industry.
Kurt Elster
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Michal Klim
Oh my gosh. It may. It may sound like so. It's definitely challenging. Uh But the thing is that we knew it knew this like we were prepared by by Mike and Lady Yang team for that. And we knew that this is the requirement right from the beginning, so we could prepare ourselves. we could actually build the system that allows us to to to achieve that.
Kurt Elster
And so your Shopify's headless solution, hydrogen and oxygen, and then on top of that you've that gets paired to A third party CMS. So you're not using the Shopify theme editor instead in this case, uh, you're using Sanity, correct?
Michal Klim
Yes, exactly. So Uh Sunti is overall our CMS uh CMS of choice and commerce UI. We we very much like it flexibility uh when it comes not only to the data structures but also when it comes to building flows and custom editorial experience. And in the context of this project, that was even more important than it is usually. So Going with headless CMS, with flexible headless CMS, is a number one reason for us to go headless actually. So Whenever you have this more advanced editorial needs uh and you need uh something beyond built-in Shopify capabilities. That's where this is like a strong indicator for us to go helpless. And that uh and this was uh this was the this was the case in this project. So I've mentioned that we build the system around that helps us to to to actually work in this you know hydro environment and that's uh exactly what we did using the sanity. So we could we could build very much bespoke editorial flows that for one allow Lady Gandhi team to uh to build whatever they want, to to reuse even the smallest pieces of data or even smallest pieces of structures across different ideas but at the same time allows us to reuse them or and build something new or what's needed. uh reusing the small small structures uh from uh from our previous work. So mmm I guess having this flexibility, having this more of a external SMS was A big part of the success.
Kurt Elster
To this day, I still don't understand the advantage of the third-party CMS over the traditional theme editor. Like it just it feels so vague and abstract to me. Uh definitely it may.
Michal Klim
Definitely it may. So I guess the number one advantage is that For one, it's very easy to integrate the data from various different resources. Uh so that's one. For two, but you can build your own Panel or your own editorial experience. So uh Shopify editorial capabilities are great. They are actually very, very good, but they are very generic. So if you have deeply nested data structures like meta objects inside the meta objects inside the meta objects. It's become it it can become comp very complex uh in a very short time. So And you have just one structure, one language, one viso visualization for all of the cases. That's completely understandable. With the external CMS, you can build something that is understandable by non technical people and speaks the the the actual language of the user. So we we we can make those this puzzle more theirs and therefore Mmm make make them use use it basically. So we historically we we saw a couple different examples. Either completely lack of desire or experience or abilities to to to actually change the editorial of the site or actually actual uh you know editorial editorial experience in place, but so complex, so unpredictable for non-technical users that people weren't actually using it So that's where where those headless CMS uh came in where you can actually build much more flexible system.
Kurt Elster
That makes a lot of sense to me. Is like really the big advantage here is we want to customize the theme editor. That's the thing we can't do. Yes. And so if we can p pair a third party CMS to the Shopify ecosystem, aha. The third party CMS like sanity, which sanity seems to be like that is the the number one choice if you're doing headless these days, um, which it comes up a lot. That that's the big the big advantage. Custom CMS. Okay, gotcha there. Uh on a site like this. The focus is not necessarily sales. So it isn't e traditional e-commerce metrics like conversion rate. So what is what's the measure of success here? Engagement?
Michal Klim
You can call it engagement. Uh but I guess if if we call it engagement many People that are listening to us to us c may think okay there is like a certain characteristic, like there is a engagement score somewhere. Uh and there isn't. Like it's very very natural. So I guess this site wasn't like the main goal wasn't you know to to increase the conversion rates to increase the some some other characteristics. So uh This site is very personal project for for Stephanie and it's dedicated towards the fun fans and I can say that both Stefane and Micah they have like a this really good sense of what their what their fans want and what they expect and how how they uh like what they would like actually. So uh a lot of decisions is based on hench or uh you know or just on this ability to understand their fan base Um and it works out. Like uh I had this discussion about the site that some of the features are completely unreasonable. Like uh the amount of work they took uh may not the other n may not have very good, you know, our why. But it actually has like we This is a thing about the Sunt. We get the instant feedback about any feature we introduced to the site. Like the moment we put it on the production Thousands of people actually trying it out and sharing their thoughts on, you know, Reddit, Twitter, whenever. And we instantly know if it clicked or not. And for the most of time it it it's totally clicking.
Kurt Elster
It is yeah, it is it it's a different thing when there's like an entire sub active subreddit devoted to And watching four changes instantaneously the site you're working on. I have not had this experience. I've talked to a few people who they were always big musicians and they they had this experience. And they're like, oh, it It's different. It changes you. When did the set go live?
Michal Klim
Uh almost a month a month ago, actually. So uh Which would be what date? It's it was so it's over a bit over a month. It was twenty-seventh of January.
Kurt Elster
What's that experience like launching this thing?
Michal Klim
Uh yeah, it was quite a different rush. Like every release, you know, uh is is is something uh something uh something different so and it's always a bit uh you know ner uh chaotic or nervous uh nervous time but this was something entirely different. Like we were expecting a huge spike in traffic just just before the release, like one week before, we actually released this countdown page. So Every every day on a certain hour the the graphic changed uh on the site. So every day there was a different graphic. So the second it changed Once again, Twitter read it, it was blowing up. Like everyone was writing, okay, what does it mean? How cool it looks, or etc. etc. And that's where we actually felt like Okay, many people are watching us and uh very closely. So it has to be the so mmm We are very used to launching the site on a you know on a specific date, but in this case it has to it had to be launched on a specific in a minute or so. So it was created with all other marketing uh campaigns with uh with setting up all the balance and uh tr in traditional media and so on so We had to be ready on an almost exact second and we knew that thousands of people would would be watching us
Kurt Elster
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Michal Klim
There are a couple of them that that I really like. So for one, the moot experience. So the mood experience is this kind of a an unreasonable feature I I did talk about. So Uh the mood feature is uh whenever whenever you go to to collection page to PLP and there is a certain era or certain music release. Uh you can turn on the mood, which basically changes the side, changes it its background to corresponds to the To the exact music release uh pipe.
Kurt Elster
Let's call it that's a cool one. You know the worst part is we have I mean not as nice as yours, but we've built things like that for clients. And they're like, nah, because it's they're not focused on storytelling. Right. They're like, well, you know, I don't know if that'll help. And then never launch it. Or even just like, hey, d let's just switch between light and dark mode, guys. And like it we get pushback on that too.
Michal Klim
Exactly, and it whenever you think about, you know, ROI of something like that, the answer will always be don't do it. But if you won't like to go beyond it There that's where you know the magic happens basically. So but the thing about it, we don't not only changing the the background itself. There are a couple of UI elements that we are changing. It was to some extent changing t uh technological uh feature. But if you look closely it it just feels natural. But if you look closely all of the pictures of the items are also changing to correspond to the mood. So you know for one it's quite challenging technologically, for two it's quite challenging operationally. So you can see the level of, you know, devotion to that, uh to that mindset, basically.
Kurt Elster
One of my my favorite little Easter egg on this site is the pagination on a collection. It uses a load more button, but every time it there's uh lyrics at the end of the collection grid, and every time you click load more, the little line of lyric changes to a different song. I think that That's just a small one. I love those little Easter eggs. They're so fun. Alright, give me one more.
Michal Klim
One more? Uh Free Dire. I have to I have to go with it. 3D gallery on a music.
Kurt Elster
3D gallery. Where do I find that on the site?
Michal Klim
So just go to to music. You can go from homepage in the header. just go to the music we have this uh music showcase so this is this should resemble you know going through through the vinyls uh and if you go And you can see the effect there. So if you swipe it. Yes, yes, exactly. You can see the shadows overlapping uh different elements.
Kurt Elster
It makes it feel very physical.
Michal Klim
It is. It is. And that was that was the the the actual idea that you you know you go through through the collection of of your vinyls and and uh yeah you had this this uh feel of it. So uh yeah I could do it myself so that's why I I had to I had to mention it. I like it very much. Uh quite private with it. So
Kurt Elster
What's funny is like I I have a uh a CRO checklist I use that's like this is our best practices and it you know it's all built around conversion rate. It's like there's so many things Like if I didn't auto this side, I'd be like, Well, here's the twenty things that our best practices say you would change. And of course that's absurd, you know, to say that on a like a creative um very branded experience like this. Like it would just it would ruin the mood and the purpose of it to make it like this very conversion focused thing. And yet I'm sure this does phenomenal sales. Because this like that's the power of brand storytelling. And more importantly, knowing your audience. Like that, you know, if I'm running an e-commerce store, it may be tough to relate to you know Lady Gaga's experience running a Shopify store. But I think like for me that takeaway is know your audience. Like over and over like she like the reason it looks the way it does or operates the way it does is because they know what their fans expect and want. from them. And this is representative of that. So Londa, that know your audience one. Would would you agree with that takeaway?
Michal Klim
I I totally agree. I totally agree. Uh and I guess, you know, right after we launched the site, already some of the items were gone after like it was solved a after a couple of minutes. So I I guess you can call it a success and Uh of course Vedicaga example is is is quite unique to some extent, but definitely know your audience and What works for everyone doesn't have to uh have to work for you. And uh sometimes being different it's is is is what makes the success
Kurt Elster
For sure, I think if like creativity is a cornerstone of your brand, of your you know, of tone and personality, then you probably want to avoid you know, taking a conversion first approach for a hundred percent of everything. Like, you know, the late Gaga site, still very easy to use, still quite intuitive. It just doesn't follow best practices. You know, we're doing a little more exploration and a little more novelty. Um, are there do you think there's any other takeaways that like everyday Shopify brands may have about this site?
Michal Klim
I was thinking about this kind of page building experience, like you know, building building every page out of the sections. I guess everyone is very much uh used to it at this point. So but with Lady Gaga there is something different. We we're going actually outside of of this page building experience and building bespoke features for certain campaigns uh or for certain releases. My takeaway for this would be to to actually think about you know Actually going outside this page building experience, making something crazy, adding this kind of an Easter egg. Going outside of a system, doing something non-standard, and Of course it's uh it depends, but it it can bring great results.
Kurt Elster
And the like and you said you you had to move fast on this and stay flexible. How fast did you do this?
Michal Klim
So the entire project took s something around, you know, uh five to six months. So that's That's I I guess this is a pretty normal time frame for projects as such, but at the same time we pivoted uh the project a couple of times uh during that that development. Uh To give you the sense of the speed, uh after the after the release, so we are one month after, we rebuilded the homepage already four times and it wasn't pre-planned. Like every new version of the homepage was created out of the idea in a couple of days and released as as is. So this is the kind of speed you you have to uh you have to uh you have to do
Kurt Elster
It it's quite incredible what what you've done here collectively as a team. Um the you know, I think my takeaway here is We can be so focused on optimizing for one metric when instead we could optimize for the experience, in which case, really what we're optimizing for is being unforgettable. And that's what this has done. And that's what I love about it. So congrats. Phenomenal job.
Michal Klim
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Kurt Elster
Uh and if we wanted to learn more about you and your services, where would we go?
Michal Klim
Um just visit our site commerce UI commerce-ui. com. Beautiful.
Kurt Elster
Michael, thank you so much.
Michal Klim
Thank you very much.
Kurt Elster
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