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Case study

Toronto Vape 360 Website Design & Build

How we redesigned the website for Toronto Vape 360 to turn a sprawling in-store product catalog into a fast, easy-to-browse online experience for adult customers across Oshawa and the wider Durham Region.

  • Client Toronto Vape 360
  • Location Oshawa, Ontario
  • Industry Vape Retail
  • Services New Website Design & Build
  • Live site torontovape360.com
Toronto Vape 360 Website Design & Build
The challenge

A deep in-store catalog with no online presence to match it

Toronto Vape 360 carries one of the deepest catalogs in the Durham Region: dozens of disposable brands, pod systems, e-liquids, and devices, from Elf Bar and Geek Bar to Level X, STLTH, and Caliburn. In-store, that range is the business’s biggest strength. Without a website, none of it was visible or searchable online.

  • No website meant no way for local customers to check stock, browse the range, or find the store before walking in
  • Every product discovery happened in person, so first-time customers had to already know to visit rather than finding the store online
  • Local searches like “vape shop Oshawa” or “vape store near me” had nowhere to land, handing that traffic straight to larger provincewide competitors
  • Age verification (19+), a legal requirement for the category, had no online equivalent to build in from day one
  • There was no way to showcase what made the store worth visiting: knowledgeable staff, fast service, and a genuinely wide selection
  • A catalog this broad needed real structure from the outset, not a flat product list bolted together after launch

The bigger issue was that the business’s biggest strength, its depth of selection, was invisible to anyone who hadn’t already been in the store. Toronto Vape 360 needed a website built from the ground up that made that same in-store experience easy to find and easy to shop online.

As your product range grows, your website needs to grow with it

Vape retail evolves fast: new devices, new puff counts, new flavour drops, seemingly every month. Toronto Vape 360’s catalog had scaled well past what the original site structure was built to handle, and new products were simply being added onto old category pages, one at a time, with no real system behind them.

The result was a site that had everything, technically, but made it hard to find anything specific. A shopper looking for a particular pod system or puff count had to dig, and on mobile (where most local, in-the-moment searches happen) that friction was costing the store visits and sales.

As your product range grows, your website needs to grow with it
Our approach

Start with how people actually shop for vapes, not the product list

The easiest mistake in a retail redesign is starting with the homepage banner. We started with who’s searching, what they’re trying to find, and how they actually browse a vape shop: in person and online. Those answers shaped everything that followed.

01 step

Ask the business questions first

Is someone looking for a specific brand, a puff count, a flavour, or just “what’s new”? Are they a regular who knows exactly what they want, or a first-time visitor comparing options? Those questions shaped the category structure from the ground up.

02 step

Build a clearer path from browse to buy

We restructured navigation around how customers actually decide (disposables, pods, e-liquids, devices, accessories) instead of one undifferentiated product feed, so shoppers can filter down to what they want in a couple of taps.

03 step

Design for trust and compliance, not just products

Age verification, product sourcing, and in-store pickup information were designed to feel like a natural part of the experience rather than a legal speed bump: clear, upfront, and out of the way quickly.

04 step

Build on a platform the team can manage themselves

New products and flavours land constantly, so the site needed to let staff update stock, pricing, and new arrivals without waiting on a developer every time a new drop comes in.

05 step

Design mobile and local SEO in from the start

Most searches for a vape shop happen on a phone, often close to the store. Navigation, page speed, and category structure were all built mobile-first, with local SEO for Oshawa and the Durham Region built into the foundation rather than added later.

INSIDE THE PARTNERSHIP

How the decisions stacked up

Toronto Vape 360 needed an e-commerce storefront that could sell across pods, disposables, e-liquid, and closed systems without confusing a first-time shopper while staying visibly compliant on an age-restricted product. Here’s the reasoning behind the path through the site, the look, the build, and the foundations underneath

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

Creating a clearer path through four product types

Vape retail has its own vocabulary pods, disposables, closed systems, e-liquid that a new shopper doesn’t necessarily know going in. The main navigation splits Vape Pods and Disposable Vapes out as their own top-level items rather than burying them in a generic “Shop” menu, so returning customers can jump straight to what they buy every time.

Underneath that, a “Shop by Category” grid does the explaining: each of the four categories Disposables, Pods (2ML), E-Liquid, Closed Pod Systems gets a one-line plain-English description of what it actually is, not just a product photo and a name. That’s the difference between a shopper knowing what a “closed pod system” is before they click, instead of guessing.

VISUAL DIRECTION

Bold retail energy, with compliance built into the layout

The hero leans into the category rather than around it a dark, neon-lit backdrop with the product lineup front and centre, and a gold-and-teal palette that carries the Toronto Vape 360 logo mark through the rest of the page. It reads as a specialist retailer, not a generic template store.

The nicotine warning banner sits fixed above the header, not tucked into a footer, so it’s the first thing every visitor sees regardless of which page they land on. That was a deliberate placement decision, not a legal afterthought compliance messaging needed the same visual priority as the logo.

Trust is carried through a dedicated strip free shipping over $75, authentic products, age-verified delivery, fast Canada-wide shipping placed right after the category grid, at the exact point a shopper is deciding whether to keep browsing or bounce.

THE BUILD

An e-commerce catalogue built to scale across brands

With category pages, a rotating “Popular Categories” carousel, and a brand wall spanning names like STLTH, Geek Bar, Flavour Beast, and Oxbar, the underlying product catalogue needed to handle a large and constantly changing SKU list without every new brand requiring a template change.

The “Why Buy From Us” section pairs a Canada outline map with three concrete guarantees genuine products, best price guarantee, fast and reliable shipping turning a page that’s often just a a list of adjectives into something that visually backs up the coast-to-coast shipping promise made earlier on the page.

FOUNDATIONS

Mobile-first, because most of this shopping happens on a phone

Vape retail shoppers browse and buy overwhelmingly on mobile, so the category grid, brand wall, and “Shop Now” actions all needed to collapse cleanly into single-column layouts without losing the product photography that sells flavour and device design.

The nicotine warning, age-verification messaging, and contact details (email, phone, and the Oshawa storefront address) all needed to stay legible and present at every breakpoint not just on desktop since compliance content doesn’t get to disappear on a smaller screen.

VISUAL DIRECTION

Bold retail energy, with compliance built into the layout

The hero leans into the category rather than around it a dark, neon-lit backdrop with the product lineup front and centre, and a gold-and-teal palette that carries the Toronto Vape 360 logo mark through the rest of the page. It reads as a specialist retailer, not a generic template store.

The nicotine warning banner sits fixed above the header, not tucked into a footer, so it’s the first thing every visitor sees regardless of which page they land on. That was a deliberate placement decision, not a legal afterthought compliance messaging needed the same visual priority as the logo.

Trust is carried through a dedicated strip free shipping over $75, authentic products, age-verified delivery, fast Canada-wide shipping placed right after the category grid, at the exact point a shopper is deciding whether to keep browsing or bounce.

Homepage Transformation

Clearer categories, stronger local identity, and an obvious path into best-sellers and new arrivals from the very first screen.

After
After: Homepage Transformation

Product/category page transformation

Easier to scan and filter, with products grouped the way customers actually shop (by type, brand, and puff count) instead of one long undivided catalog.

After
After: Product/category page transformation

Mobile experience

Faster browsing, clearer age verification, and simplified navigation between categories, without the friction of the old flat product list.

After
After: Mobile experience

The result

The result is a website that reflects the depth of what Toronto Vape 360 actually stocks: without making customers dig for it.

  • A clearer identity. The site now reads as a serious, well-stocked local vape shop, not a generic catalog dump.
  • Faster browsing. Customers can move from category to specific product in a few taps, on any device.
  • Better shopping journeys. Clear pathways from “what I’m looking for” to “add to cart” or “reserve in-store.”
  • A stronger foundation for growth. A site structure built to absorb new brands and products without another rebuild every time the catalog changes.

 

What we learned

A vape retail website redesign is really about taming a fast-moving catalog, not just refreshing the design. Toronto Vape 360 had outgrown a site built for a smaller, simpler product range: it needed structure that could scale with new drops every month while still keeping browsing fast, compliant, and genuinely easy on mobile.

That’s what we set out to achieve: a website that finally matches the range and knowledge available in-store.

Want to see the finished website?

Visit Toronto Vape 360 to explore the new experience.

4

Weeks from design to build

1

Custom WordPress theme

3

Key plugins powering the build

Has your website fallen behind your product range?

If your catalog has grown faster than your website, customers are probably working harder than they should to find what you actually sell. Let's talk about your website.

FAQs

Frequently Asked Questions

Pricing, timelines, and what we need from you. The same things clients ask us on the first call, answered here so you can skim before we talk.

As the in-store product range grew across disposables, pod systems, e-liquids, and hardware, the old site structure could no longer keep up, making it hard for customers to browse or find specific products.

WordPress, built on a custom theme chosen to let the Toronto Vape 360 team add and update products, brands, and pricing without needing a developer for routine changes.

The Codecaste team designed and built the new website in collaboration with the Toronto Vape 360 team.

Yes.Category structure, page content, and local SEO were all built to target searches from customers across Oshawa and the wider Durham Region.

Yes, mobile browsing was treated as the primary experience throughout, given how many local vape shop searches happen on a phone.

The entire project took 4-5 weeks, from design to build.

contact us

Let’s talk

We can help you build, fix, and manage your Website. No matter how messy things are, send them our way. We'll review everything and give you a clear plan with a fixed price.

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901, Shapath V, Sarkhej – Gandhinagar Hwy,
opp. Karnavati Club Road,
Prahlad Nagar, Ahmedabad, Gujarat 380015.

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