Personalized Children’s Book E-Commerce Site

Shopify Website Development for Personalized Children’s Book Brand

We are looking for an experienced Shopify developer/designer to build an e-commerce website for Fibblewick, a personalized children’s book brand.

We want to use Shopify and reliable third-party apps wherever practical rather than building unnecessary custom systems. However, the customer-facing website must feel unique, premium, magical, and highly customized — not like a standard Shopify template with different branding.

A large percentage of traffic will come from Instagram, TikTok, influencers, and paid social, so the website must be mobile-first, fast, visually engaging, and optimized for conversion.

About Fibblewick

Customers create personalized children’s books by providing information about a child, uploading photos, selecting a book format, and placing an order.

Longer term, we want Fibblewick to become more than a one-time book purchase. Customers should be able to save a child/character profile and return to purchase additional stories or personalized products featuring the same character.

Core Requirements

The website should support:

* Customer registration/login
* Online payments
* Digital and physical products
* Order management and confirmation emails
* Reviews
* Shipping/tracking
* Discount codes
* Mobile-first responsive design
* Analytics/conversion tracking

Personalized Book Order Form

Customers should provide:

* Child’s name
* Age/date of birth
* Personality
* Interests/favourite things
* Preferred story/theme
* Additional requests
* Multiple photo uploads

We want a simple multi-step mobile experience, for example:

1. About Your Child → 2. Personality & Interests → 3. Story Preferences → 4. Upload Photos → 5. Choose Your Book → 6. Checkout

Personalization information and uploaded photos must be securely associated with the correct customer and Shopify order.

Customer Accounts & Saved Characters — Important

Customer accounts should support retention, not only order history.

Customers should be able to create and save one or more child/character profiles containing information such as name, birthday/age, personality, interests, story preferences, and relevant photos.

Example:

Login → My Characters → Emma → Create a New Story

A parent should be able to have multiple children/characters within one account.

When returning, customers should be able to select an existing character and purchase another personalized product without entering all information again.

Example:

Select Emma → New Story/Product → Checkout

This is a core feature.

The architecture should also allow us to later sell additional products using saved characters, such as:

* New stories
* Birthday/Christmas books
* Posters/prints
* Cards
* Clothing
* Personalized merchandise

Future features may include a digital bookshelf, birthday/milestone campaigns, referrals, gift purchasing, and sibling stories.

These future features do not need to be built at launch, but the initial character/account architecture should make them reasonably easy to add later.

Affiliate System — Very Important

Influencer/affiliate marketing will be a major acquisition channel.

We require:

* Unique affiliate referral links
* Unique affiliate/discount codes
* Automatic purchase attribution
* Automatic commission calculation
* Pending period for refunds/cancellations
* Affiliate login/dashboard
* Commission/sales reporting
* Payout account setup
* Automatic payouts of approved commissions

We do not want to manually calculate or send affiliate payments.

Please use an established Shopify app or third-party affiliate platform rather than building this from scratch.

Expected flow:

Affiliate → Referral Link/Code → Purchase → Attribution → Commission → Pending Period → Approval → Automatic Payout

Affiliates should be able to log in and see their links/codes, sales, pending/approved/paid commissions, payout details, and payout history.

Please recommend the specific platform/app you would use.

Customer accounts and affiliate accounts can be separate systems.

Design

Shopify can be the backend, but the storefront should feel like a standalone premium DTC brand.

Design direction:

* Premium
* Magical
* Warm/playful
* Modern and clean
* Mobile-first
* Strong visual storytelling
* Suitable for parents purchasing personalized gifts
* High-quality presentation of illustrations/books

A generic Shopify appearance is not acceptable.

Using an existing theme as a technical foundation is fine, but it must be customized enough to feel unique to Fibblewick.

We can provide our logo, brand assets, illustrations, product images, and examples.

Mobile & Conversion

The journey from:

Social Media → Landing Page → Understand Product → Personalize → Checkout

should be extremely clear and frictionless.

Please pay particular attention to mobile speed, CTAs, navigation, personalization UX, reviews/social proof, trust, pricing clarity, and checkout conversion.

Expected Pages

Approximately:

* Home
* How It Works
* Create Your Book/Product
* Personalization Form
* My Account
* My Characters
* About
* Reviews
* FAQ
* Cart/Checkout
* Contact
* Privacy/Terms

We are open to recommendations on structure.

Privacy & Data

Customers will upload information and photographs relating to children, so secure data handling is important.

Please explain how you would securely store and manage uploaded photos and character information, associate them with customers/orders, control access, and support deletion of saved data.

Scope Clarification

We are not asking for a fully automated AI book-generation system as part of this project.

The website needs to collect personalization information/photos and correctly associate them with customers and orders.

Book production after an order is received can be handled separately.

Development Approach

We prefer:

* Shopify native functionality
* Reliable Shopify apps
* Established third-party services
* Lightweight custom development where necessary

We prioritize customer experience, design quality, mobile conversion, reliability, retention, scalability, and maintainability over unnecessary custom engineering.

Launch Scope

The initial launch should ideally include:

* Shopify setup
* Premium/custom storefront
* Mobile-first design
* Multi-step personalization
* Multiple photo uploads
* Digital/physical products
* Payments/checkout
* Customer accounts
* Saved character profiles
* Multiple characters per account
* Character reuse for future purchases
* Reviews
* Shipping/tracking
* Affiliate integration
* Affiliate dashboard
* Automatic attribution/commission calculation
* Pending commission period
* Automatic affiliate payouts

Future features such as digital bookshelves, merchandise, milestone automation, referrals, advanced gifting, and sibling stories can be quoted separately.

Please Include in Your Proposal

1. Portfolio

Provide links to relevant Shopify/e-commerce projects, especially premium DTC, personalized products, gifts, or highly customized Shopify stores.

Please briefly explain your role.

2. Technical Setup

Explain your proposed:

* Shopify theme/storefront approach
* Apps and third-party services
* Custom development
* Customer account solution
* Character profile data architecture
* Photo upload/storage solution
* Affiliate platform

We prefer a simple and reliable architecture.

3. Character Profile System

Please explain how you would implement:

Customer Login → Create Character → Save Information/Photos → Associate With Orders → Return Later → Select Character → Buy Another Product

Explain where the data would be stored and how multiple children within one account would work.

4. Affiliate System

Explain how you would implement:

Referral Link/Code → Attribution → Commission → Pending Period → Approval → Automatic Payout

Specify the platform/app, payout methods, refund handling, monthly costs, and relevant fees.

Automatic payout is required.

5. Personalization Form

Explain your approach to:

* Multi-step form
* Multiple photo uploads
* Mobile UX
* Shopify order integration
* Saved character integration

6. Design Process

Explain your design process and whether it includes Figma/wireframes, mobile design, revisions, custom theme work, and interactions/animations.

7. Timeline

Provide an estimated timeline for:

Planning → Design → Development → Personalization/Character System → Affiliate Integration → Testing → Launch

8. Price

Provide your total price for the launch.

Where possible, separate:

* Shopify website/design
* Personalization form
* Character Profile functionality
* Affiliate integration
* Other major functionality

Please quote optional future features separately.

9. Ongoing Costs

Estimate ongoing costs for Shopify, apps, file storage, affiliate platform/payout fees, reviews, email marketing, and other required services.

Please distinguish essential from optional costs.

What We Are Looking For

We want someone who understands both Shopify development and high-quality DTC/e-commerce design.

The goal is not the most technically complicated solution.

We want Fibblewick to be technically simple and reliable behind the scenes while feeling unique, magical, premium, and highly personalized to customers.

Most importantly, we want a foundation where a family can create a child’s character once and continue that character’s journey through future stories and products.

Please include your relevant portfolio, proposed technical approach, timeline, total price, and expected ongoing costs.