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Abstract Webs are planar graphs with boundary that describe morphisms in a diagrammatic representation category for $$\mathfrak{sl}_k$$. They are studied extensively by knot theorists because braiding maps provide a categorical way to express link diagrams in terms of webs, producing quantum invariants like the well-known Jones polynomial. One important question in representation theory is to identify the relationships between different bases; coefficients in the change-of-basis matrix often describe combinatorial, algebraic, or geometric quantities (e.g., Kazhdan–Lusztig polynomials). By ”flattening” the braiding maps, webs can also be viewed as the basis elements of a symmetric group representation. In this paper, we define two new combinatorial structures for webs: band diagrams and their one-dimensional projections, shadows, which measure depths of regions inside the web. As an application, we resolve an open conjecture that the change of basis between the so-called Specht basis and web basis of this symmetric group representation is unitriangular for $$\mathfrak{sl}_3$$-webs ([ 33] and [ 29].) We do this using band diagrams and shadows to construct a new partial order on webs that is a refinement of the usual partial order. In fact, we prove that for $$\mathfrak{sl}_2$$-webs, our new partial order coincides with the tableau partial order on webs studied by the authors and others [ 12, 17, 29, 33]. We also prove that though the new partial order for $$\mathfrak{sl}_3$$-webs is a refinement of the previously studied tableau order, the two partial orders do not agree for $$\mathfrak{sl}_3$$.