Min Bui
CRO Strategist
Table of Contents:
Project Overview
Tortuga makes carry-on backpacks for travelers who want to pack what they need, keep their luggage with them and move comfortably after they land.
The brand already had years of travel-product expertise, a clear carry-on philosophy, substantial customer proof and products designed around the realities of one-bag travel.
The project focused on making more of that product thinking visible in the shopping experience.
UXphoria worked across conversion strategy, content and copy, CRO-focused UX/UI, conversion graphics and Shopify implementation for the homepage, Travel Backpacks collection and flagship Pro 40L product experience.
As of November 2026, the redesigned homepage is live while the new PDP and collection experience are being tested. This case documents the work and the decisions behind it rather than claiming a conversion result before that evidence exists.
Category: Travel gear / DTC ecommerce
Platform: Shopify | Ecommerce Store Redesign
UXphoria role: CRO strategy, conversion copy and content architecture, UX/UI design, conversion graphics, responsive ecommerce design and Shopify implementation
One trip, several different buying decisions
Buying a travel backpack involves more than choosing a color and capacity.
A traveler may be deciding how long they are going away, whether a bag will stay within airline limits, how much they can carry comfortably, whether they need a hip belt, how the bag opens, how it organizes gear and whether the differences between two backpacks matter for their trip
Those questions do not all need to be answered on the same page.
The homepage would orient the traveler.
The collection would help narrow the choice.
The PDP would make the individual product easier to inspect and evaluate.
That separation became the foundation of the work.
Instead of making every surface repeat the same product story, each part of the journey could carry the level of detail appropriate to the decision happening there.
The homepage starts with the trip
The homepage opens with a simple proposition:
Bring everything you need in a carry on.
From there, the range is introduced through travel context.
A multi-week traveler, someone packing for a shorter trip and someone looking for a smaller personal-item bag do not necessarily need the same product. A bag for every kind of trip gives those differences a place before the customer has to study dimensions and feature lists.
The page also connects carry-on travel with the practical experience surrounding the flight.
Bag-drop lines, baggage claim, checked-bag fees and moving a suitcase through streets, stairs and crowds make the luggage decision relevant beyond airline dimensions.
That gives the products a clearer context.
Tortuga designs luggage for the flight and for everything the traveler has to do after leaving the airport.
The collection narrows the choice
The Travel Backpacks collection has a different job.
A grid alone would leave customers comparing similar-looking bags through names, capacities and prices.
The revised collection gives the range more context before the customer reaches an individual PDP.
Carry-on use, comfort and durability establish common principles across the range. Individual bags can then be differentiated through capacity, trip length and how they are intended to be carried.
Collection-level information can answer questions such as:
Which size suits the trip?
How much can each bag carry?
Which bags are designed around carry-on limits?
What are the most important differences between nearby options?
Questions about suspension, organization, construction and product-specific details can remain deeper in the journey.
The collection helps reduce the range. The PDP handles the closer inspection.
The gallery carries part of the product education
A major part of the Pro 40L work happens inside the product media itself.
Rather than using the gallery only for conventional product photography and moving all explanation into sections further down the PDP, the media sequence can also explain the bag.
The visual system covers areas such as:
maximum carry-on capacity;
scale and fit when worn;
suitcase-style packing and organization;
access and pockets;
load lifters, shoulder straps and hip-belt support;
the adjustable back system;
material construction and weather protection;
durability for repeated travel.
Each one answers a buying question.
Carry-on dimensions can be understood visually instead of being left only in a specification table. Suspension components can be identified directly on the backpack. Material information can sit beside the part of the product it describes.
The gallery becomes part of the decision architecture rather than a separate image carousel sitting above it.
Comfort becomes mechanical evidence
“Comfortable” is easy to say and difficult to evaluate online.
For the Pro 40L, the carrying system gives the claim something concrete behind it.
Load lifters, padded shoulder straps, the sternum strap, adjustable back panel, breathable back padding and hip belt can be shown in relation to the bag itself.
Product imagery can also make scale and fit easier to judge across different people.
This becomes especially useful when comparing the Pro 40L and Pro 34L.
They belong to the same product family, but size, intended trip length, harness design and hip-belt configuration are not identical.
Those differences can matter to the purchase.
Bringing them closer to the decision makes comparison more useful than relying on product names and liter capacity alone.
Different product facts need different forms
Tortuga has a lot of technical product information worth communicating.
That does not mean every detail needs another paragraph or another feature card.
Some information works best as concise purchase copy.
Some belongs in a comparison.
Some belongs in FAQs.
Photography can answer questions about scale, access and real-world use.
Annotated product graphics are better suited to suspension components or construction details that would be harder to understand through prose alone.
The interface can vary the form of the information while keeping the product story coherent.
That is particularly important on smaller screens, where adding more content without changing how it is communicated can simply create a longer page.
Tortuga already had proof worth preserving
The project did not begin with an empty brand story.
Tortuga already had years of product history, customer reviews, travel content, editorial recognition and a clear point of view around carry-on travel.
Those assets could do more work inside the ecommerce experience.
Traveler stories can show the bags in the context they were designed for.
Reviews can sit alongside the product decision rather than functioning as a generic trust badge.
Returns and warranty information can answer practical purchase questions without taking over the page.
The ecommerce structure changed while the evidence remained recognizably Tortuga.
That distinction mattered. The aim was to make the existing product expertise easier to read, not replace it with generic conversion patterns.
A reusable baseline without making every product tell the same story
The Pro 40L also established patterns that Tortuga can reuse more broadly.
The above-the-fold purchase structure, FAQ treatment, product-information components, media system and responsive behaviors can provide a stronger starting point for other PDPs.
Reuse does not require identical storytelling.
A Pro backpack with an adjustable suspension system creates different questions from a packing cube. A smaller everyday bag may need a different balance between capacity, fit and organization.
Shared components can create consistency while the product-specific information continues to follow the decision each product actually requires.
Tortuga is considering how far that baseline should extend across the wider catalogue as the current tests produce more information.
Testing before wider rollout
The new experience is being introduced in stages.
The redesigned homepage has already moved into the live store. The new Pro 40L PDP and Travel Backpacks collection are being evaluated before the direction is extended more widely.
This gives Tortuga a chance to learn from actual use before committing every product and template to the same approach.
The new experience is being introduced in stages.
The redesigned homepage has already moved into the live store. The new Pro 40L PDP and Travel Backpacks collection are being evaluated before the direction is extended more widely.
Where the project is now
As of November 2026, the redesigned homepage is live and the new Pro 40L PDP and Travel Backpacks collection are in testing.
Tortuga is also considering how the new direction could become a stronger baseline across additional PDPs, collection pages, informational pages and editorial content, alongside new product-specific graphics for the wider range.
The case can be updated when the testing produces evidence that can be interpreted responsibly.
Explore Tortuga
See the current travel system and product range at Tortuga Backpacks.
Explore the Pro Backpack 40L or browse the Travel Backpacks collection.
Related UXphoria work
For deeper work on product education, media hierarchy, comparison, reassurance and add-to-cart decisions, explore Product Page Optimization.
For projects where discovery, product pages and the wider Shopify buying journey need to be considered together, explore Shopify CRO Agency.
