We're Andrew and Kris, two UX specialists who spent years working inside the platform that powers over a million stores, reviewing hundreds of storefronts and seeing the same conversion-killing patterns repeat across industries and price points. We built Spruce Pixel around one idea: your store shouldn't have to be huge to get a serious UX audit. Every audit gets that same level of scrutiny, whether you're just starting out or scaling fast.
Andrew is the technical backbone of every Spruce Pixel audit. He spent years at Shopify, starting in Technical Merchant Support before moving to Theme Support, where he debugged thousands of theme and integration issues across real merchant storefronts and developed an instinct for the UX patterns that quietly erode conversions. That experience led to a role as a software developer on the Online Store Themes team, where he worked on Dawn, Shopify's most widely used free theme, collaborating with engineering, UX, and product to bring updates to merchants everywhere. He also spent time on Shopify's Storefront Optimization team, gaining firsthand exposure to the research-backed auditing methods that now form the foundation of every Spruce Pixel audit. Outside of storefronts, you'll find him out on his motorcycle, traveling with Kris in search of good local food, or behind a camera.
Kris's work started at Shopify, where she began as a Support Advisor and quickly discovered that theme issues were her favourite thing to troubleshoot. She joined the Theme Support team, coding custom frontend solutions and developing a sharp instinct for spotting UX and design issues across merchant stores. That instinct led her to Shopify's Storefront Optimization team, where she conducted heuristic UX evaluations for Shopify Plus merchants, writing detailed audit reports grounded in research and data rather than assumptions, a habit that carries through to every Spruce Pixel audit. Her background in illustration and visual design, including work for Shopify's own design team, gives her a trained eye for hierarchy and detail that shows up in every page of her work. Away from the screen, she's likely planning her next getaway with Andrew, tending to her plants, or sketching.
